Production Logs

Einar's robot arm is a very important part of his character. So far we only had a rough blocking of the geometry in place for animation tests. As shot production comes closer, we have to start detailing the block progressively. This week I worked on the upper and lower arm mechanics and underlying structure.

Created more props for the hut this week. Spending time on iterating the armchair and starting the blow dart gun.

This week I mostly worked on translating previz files into official layout files. A bit boring but necessary and useful to implement the individual shots and function within the pipeline. For the ending sequence I did a quick prelighting pass to feel the mood and feel of it.

I was only here for a couple of days this week, and spent most of that getting started with Einar's face.

I mainly worked on the inner mouth of Einar. A detailed pass is still missing but overall this mesh is ready to be used for the rig.

This week I started (re-)modeling the security robot to replace its blocked out geometry and define its body in detail. I'll still have to model the white 'shell' pieces and gun arm in the future to give the bots its final appearance.

This week I started collecting props for our reference recordings that include fighting, running, sneaking and assembling a carjack. In order to get some true feedback on holding a carjack and assembling components, I took the liberty to 3d print some aditional components to be able to slide them on the carjack. Next to that I did a quick animation test with the existing 'Snow' rig to start the conversation about the eye rig system for einar together with the rigging department.

This week I shared the current files and results from the facial shapes sculpting and baking process. The current results are a good enough base for further rigging and shading tests, but more is planned.

During this week I work on translating the temporal layout models to the previz version of the film

This week was all about modeling hero props and making them distressed using shapekeys and displacement modifiers. Also went out to scout for a possible location to shoot reference object, textures and structures.

I've been working on the Blender SVN add-on for the past couple of weeks.

My priority this week was to figure out the final look and feel of the factory production floor set. Previously the space felt a bit too open and gave Einar too many routes of escape in the fight with the security robot. More 'technology' was added to fill the background next to the entrance, pits were added to the floor. In addition to that the brightness of the interior was dimmed down to give us a better read of the characters.

This week I jumped into the previz rollercoaster, along with Hjalti and Pablo to make a full 3d version of the film. With some feedback I was assigned to previz the ending and I decided to bring in the latest models and environment to see how that would feel within the composition. This was a great help and gave us new insights on how to tackle the story beats a certain way.

I worked more on our asset pipeline to allow us a fully dynamic workflow where we are able to change the topology of a character slightly without losing compatibility with older versions.

These past week we have started to create an asset library sorted into different catalogues. For the upcoming weeks, this library will be expanded and prepared for production