Hello again readers!
In this biweekly period, a lot of positive changes have occurred for our team! Here are some of the occurrences in review.
Firstly, we experimented with MetaHuman creator for our main character. The original intent behind this process was to create a good 3D reference for our sculptors later so that we may tweak facial features quickly and visualize them in real time. After an hour of experimentation, we realized that MetaHuman's range of facial features wouldn't work for our model.
The first major complication came from the eye shape. Our model Charles has a brow ridge that is very close to the top of the eyelids, almost obscuring them to an extent. They seem to form a sort of combined feature where the eyelids retract behind them when the eyes are open. The second issue came from the jaw shape. While this focal length may influence the perceived squareness of the jaw, our model does have a very angular jawline. In MetaHuman, the only way to get close enough in the change of direction for the jaw would have made his front facial proportions overly thick and wide. And some final annoyances were the limited variety of hair and beard customization available by default. None of them were very representative of the hair he has or the hair we will inevitably want.
Our tests with MetaHuman were not a complete failure though. We did really like the hair shaders that MetaHuman uses, and the eye/wetlid geometry will prove to be useful for our main character. For now, we will continue using our photo references to sculpt on our newly finished human basemesh.
The next big development came from the space intro sequence that I had created. The majority of the team was pretty on board with what I had created, where we start in the void, fly past Saturn and Mars, before inevitably arriving at Earth. There was one member who was not on board, and refrained from giving any comments or participating when it came to this shot. Rather than brute force and ignore this team mate, I offered them a week to try and concept out a version of their vision as well, so that we could make an informed decision or compromise between the two. Their idea involved some version of a hyper jump strobing effect similar to light speed in Star Wars. And as fate would have it, we had our perfect compromise delivered to us the next day.
While working in the labs, I struggled with the pacing of the movement in order to not fly too far or slowly during the intro sequence. The way I created that camera move was by drawing an EP curve, parenting a locator to the curve, and attaching a camera and image planes of the title sequence to that locator. While moving up and down and going around Saturn, the parallax of the stars was rather distracting. So, I sought out better reference to execute on what I wanted. From that search, I found a video which zoomed out from a laboratory in Germany all the way to the Milky Way, and combined both my flying past planets/stars and their Hyperjump vision. Now, our storyboards reflect this change and we are going to continue researching how we would make this effect in 3D for ourselves!
The final big contribution I made for this week in terms of research and development was how we were gonna make Earth. When perusing the internet, there are a lot of maps with different proportions, colors, unfolding, etc. And in order to make a convincing Earth, we'd need layers of maps to create the combination of biomes and city lights. I researched how we could make North America out of geometry, as that is where we zoom into from space. The solution I came up with is taking maps with accurate land mass proportions in a flat perspective, tracing them out with geometry, and then using two specific bend deformers to curve them over a sphere. By doing this, we can essentially create a globe without any smoothing issues quickly and can easily adjust the level of details on it.
As of now, our team is revising our vision for the inside of the ship again. What we are focusing on is making new concepts for the hallways, so that we can then apply those rules to the rest of the ship. I am also giving some time to modeling the Peterbildt 359 that our main character drives to include as part of the gas station.
That is all for now, thank you so much for your time!
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