Bear Metal Animation
by Curtis C.
Each year, Autodesk sponsors a challenge for FRC teams to produce an animation. This year, it's called the 2011 Autodesk Award for Excellence in 3D Animation, and the challenge describes a "playful alien race" called the "iiko" whose world is suffering from severe environmental problems – we are to create a 30-second animation telling how we would help the iiko. It can be anything which would help them live better lives and rebuild their world for a sustainable future.
We wanted the specific problem to be a natural disaster, so we decided that their planet was drifting too close to their sun. Having the idea, this was our production sequence:
- We created a storyboard. Gavin C. and I did that together. We used SketchBook Pro, drawing software from Autodesk which works well for storyboarding. A storyboard is a collection of drawings in which we include the main points of each scene.
- Then I modeled the main character. I used Maya, also from Autodesk. Modeling is kind of like sculpting. I start with a simple polygon, a square for instance. Then I add divisions to it to show the features of the character. Then I can stretch and shape the divisions to create the details of the character. With the iiko, I modeled one character, and used the one model for all the actual characters.
- After modeling the characters, I modeled the scene. This was a little different. Parts of the scene I sculpted the same as for the character. But for other parts, I just used shapes as building blocks.
- Next came texturing. When I did the modeling using Maya, that produced a "mesh". I imported the mesh into PhotoShop, and added textures to the characters and scene parts.
- With the characters modeled and textured, I was ready to animate them. I added a skeleton to the character, and this allowed me to move the parts of the character. For the mouth, I created a library of mouths so that I could change the expression.
- Rendering is where the actual images that will be used in the final animation are generated. This is a two-step process. The first step is technical – using Maya, I chose the type of renderer, motion blur, reflections, etc. The second step was to actually do the rendering. Rendering yields a bunch of "still-motion" like frames, and it takes a long time. The longest scene took more than three hours.
- With the frames from the rendering, I used a program which made them into a smooth-running animation. Then I put it into iMovie from Apple, which allowed me to add a title, music, sounds, transitions, etc.
The deadline was at 5pm on February 15, but we finished it the night before, and submitted it then. This was a good thing, because it seems the submission website was overloaded for the half hour or more leading up to the deadline.
