Final Major Project 2022 (Production)

 Final Major Project 2022 (Production)

Now, that I've got all of my Pre-Production documents finished, it's time to do some filming. I was originally had planned to do filming over the Easter holidays but, I've not had anyone to help hit record for me so, I've had to wait until that has finished. I've been using some of my lesson time to film. 

I've used a Nikon D3300 DSLR Camera to film and these were the settings I've used for the indoor shots were;

• Shutter Speed: 1/50
• ISO @ 200 or 300(depending on room lighting)
• Frame Rate: 25fps
• Aperture: F3.5

Filming outdoors was a bit of a difficult experience for me this time, mainly due to people coming in & out either to go to their next lesson or their leaving campus, for the day. The weather changing was also a bit cumbersome during filming, and it kept me adjusting the camera settings repeatedly. It was a bit of a hassle and some of the harassment from pestering students I experienced didn't help either. However

• Shutter Speed: 1/50 - 1/1000 (due to weather changes, we had to keep adjusting the shutter speed & ISO settings)
• ISO @ 1600 - 3200 (dependent on weather changes)
• Frame Rate 25fps
• Aperture f3.5

Originally, I was meant to film over the Easter holidays but, none of my classmates were able to help film, I tried asking some personal friends of mine but, it would require an extra member of Staff to supervise us. So, in the end, I gave up and decided to film during lesson time. 

I was inspired by the shots from the TV Show, Breaking Bad. The cinematography is brilliant even in today's standards. So, I decided to focus on the composition and incorporate some of the ways the camera crew did the shots in Breaking Bad, into my film. For example, I made an over-the-shoulder shot, this type of shot was used in Season 5, Episode 7 of Breaking Bad.

Over The Shoulder Shot from S5 Ep 7 Breaking Bad

My Take on an Over the Shoulder Shot

A shot from Breaking Bad where it's from the angle of an ATM screen

My take on a shot where it's from a perspective of a screen
(inspired by the one from Breaking Bad)

Making the CG Character: Modelling Stage

Modelling the CG Character, overall, wasn't a cumbersome task. There some sections of the modelling, such as the UV-Unwrapping, which was cumbersome, but overall it went fairly okay.  

Firstly, I drew a quick turnaround of my CG Character to make modelling easier for me. I drew the front & the sides of my character, and posted them in Blender. 

Then, using a plane mesh, I scaled it to match the width of my character, and extruded the mesh to match with the bottom part of my character. Then it was just a case of extruding & scaling the mesh to match with the front. I split the front face where the monitor should be & did an inset to both of the split faces. On the left where the monitor is & on the right where the faucet/dispenser is. 

For the monitor I extruded in to give off that there's an edge around the screen and, on the top left & bottom right corners of the left inset, I did a small bevel to add more corners. For the face on the right, I made an inset & extruded that inset face inwards, to make a hollow box. This was to represent the dispenser. Then, I extruded the top face & roughly modelled the faucet. I then spawned in a cylinder mesh and scaled the top layer of vertices to form a point, and placed it under the extruded top face. I duplicated the bottom face and extruded & scaled it slightly, to form a drip tray.

On the face above it, I did an inset & extruded in. This to form the eyes. This is what the main body of my CG Character looks like;

Now that was done, I moved on to making the border for the main body. So, I duplicated the faces of the mesh which were on one side, separated them so that they're a separate mesh. Then, I extruded it side ways and I selected the top vertices and moved it so that it's slightly higher than the main body. I then made a loop cut, making sure the loop cut is sitting in line with the height of the main body. I extruded the face via the X-Axis and I used a mirror modifier so that it copies it onto the other side & that I don't have to do the same process again. This is what that looks like; 

For the eyes, I quickly placed in a cube mesh scaled it so that it was a flatter cuboid & made into a trapezium-looking eye. That was done by taking two sets of vertices of one face and scaling it to it's X-Axis. Then I added in, a mirror-modifier so that it's on the other side. 

For the arms, I wanted a cartoonish-style robot arms. I did a quick mock up of how I wanted the design but, I also made a quick, moodboard for the arms and the claws as well; 

So after I expanded on the design of the arms, it was time to model them. I spawned in a cylinder mesh, scaled it down so it was smaller and placed on the side of my CG Character, this is to represent the shoulder area. 

I used a sphere mesh and scaled it down to make it smaller, this is to represent the joint to the bicep. I placed another cylinder mesh but for this one, I selected one end of the vertices and scaled it down to make it a cone shape. 

Then I copied the sphere mesh to form the elbow joint and I duplicated the cylinder, rotated it by 180 degrees, to form the fore arm. 

To model the claws, I was inspired by the 60s films, Dr.Who and the Daleks & Dalek Invasion of Earth 2150 C.E., as the Daleks had a claw instead of the plunger. 

Screenshot of a Dalek from the film, Dalek Invasion of Earth 2150 C.E., with the claw.

Closeup of the Claw

I used a cube mesh and extruded it so that its solid and extruded it by its y axis so that its more solid and less flat. Then I extruded to match with the Dalek claw. I used a mirror modifier and used it by its Z-axis to flip the claw so that it's on the other side.

This is what my claw looks like

Then to hide that one cylinder joint, which is representing the wrist, I spawned in another cylinder modifier, and made it like a small hinge joint for the claws.

To summarise how I got the arms to the other side of the model, I used a mirror modifer on each part of the arm so that they're on the other side. Then I applied the mirror modifier and made the meshes on the other side separate meshes.

Making the CG Character: UV Unwrapping & Texturing Stage

The UV Unwrapping stage for my CG Character was very cumbersome and it didn't make my texturing experience any easier either. Firstly, I made a bevel to my border mesh which I really shouldn't have done because it caused a lot of issues when I tried to do the prodedural way of UV Unwrapping (Mark edge as seam > U > Unwrap). For the border, I've had to UV Unwrap by faces. This was done by going into face select mode, selecting the faces I wanted to unwrap and hitting U, then Unwrap. However during this process there was a problem. When I did the bevel, it made some unnesscary faces and topology. And it was intefering with the UV Unwrapping. So, what I did was I selected all the vertices of that border mesh hit M, then merge by distance and adjusting the distance. This is how I got rid of the unnessary faces which were causing issues. Then, I was able to UV Unwrap the meshes. For the border mesh, I UV Unwrapped by faces. This was to make the UV Unwrapping process a bit quicker. Then for the main body of the CG Character. For this one, and for the rest of the meshes, I went back to procedural UV Unwrapping (select an edge > Ctrl + E > Mark Seam > U > Unwrap > Repeat). 

Now that all of my meshes have been UV Unwrapped, I've exported all the pieces of my mesh into an FBX file and imported it into Substance Painter. Then, I used the method of creating a fill layer and making a black mask to that layer to select which parts of the mesh I wanted to texture. When I did the concept art for my CG Character, I did several colourways, all of them would work really well. 

However, I decided to go with the one on the far right. Using the eyedropper tool in photoshop, I coppied the hex code of each colour and, I paste it into the colour tool in Substance Painter. To texture the "COFF-E" logo, I made an alpha map in photoshop, set the canvas size to 1024 x 1024, made the background black, and typed in "COFF-E". I used a Porscha 911 font to get that distinctive, futuristic look of the text and I typed it in. The black represents the transparency and the white is the least transparent. So, the text is the one which'll be visible.

Then in Substance, I click on Import resources > add resources > find my coff-e alpha image > change the setting to alpha (so that it's a brush) > import resources to shelf. And that's how you can make custom alpha brushes in Substance Painter. Then, I adjust the size of my new brush adjust the height so that it's slightly raised and, I paint it.