Category: Virtual Spaces

Evaluation and review

In the project “Lighthouse”, I was concerned with the fact that the plot of this animation is set in a future era, an era where humans are already very familiar with and use robots and artificial intelligence. Many jobs that are fraught with danger and far from human society have been replaced by different kinds of robots. In the animation, a large robot replaces the lighthouse and the lighthouse keeper because of the danger and solitude of the job. The animation shows a dormant old lighthouse robot sitting on an island far from the city, blending in with its surroundings. That is, until one night when storm conditions in the nearby waters worsen and the waves begin to affect a nearby ship. The ship’s alarm was detected by the lighthouse and it was activated once again. The giant robot slowly rises from the island and begins to slowly and heavily turn around and start walking in the direction of the ship to save and help the nearby ships.

Based on the feedback given to me about this 3D world and animation project, there is a section on my direction and the theoretical knowledge I have gained from this work that can also be used to help me in my creative practice. Due to the specificity of maya and the fact that this is the first time I have tried and learnt the software and skills involved. I need to have ideas, experiment on different levels and have the ability to explain to others the direction I want to explore and understand. There is also the ability to implement innovation well in the development of the project.

But on the other hand. After self-examination and feedback, I have recognised the problems that exist. There are different levels of issues that I need to address in each part of my 3D world and animation. Firstly, I need to learn a better way to use the implementation of feedback in maya. Also, I need to learn how to use more software and plugins in maya to help me express my projects better, such as adding more attempts to prove my ideas and the ability to maintain my logic and continuity of work. Also, I need to experiment more with new materials and new ways of modelling, choosing carefully which materials I need and might use so that I can strengthen my skills and knowledge of materials to experiment with in my 3D world and in my animations. Most importantly, I need to apply professional behaviours effectively in my practice and improve my productivity. I need to develop a daily schedule through thorough reflection and personal development to help me start working and practising creatively and effectively. However, due to my laptop hardware, unity’s entire animation seemed out of reach and the long loading times often crashed my computer, which caused major problems for me at the end of using unity.

 Overall, animating characters using skeletons and rig in maya was a new thing for me personally. Not only that, but because my character is a robot it doesn’t have the same skeletal system as normal human skin, thus taking me a lot of time to work out and learn this stuff. But it also helped me, now I understand the character skeleton which I then use multiple methods to create and have some knowledge of it. On the other hand, in this area of motion capture I used them later due to equipment and various delays. And because my character is a robot, its movements should be different from those of a normal human. However, I didn’t take this into account, which led to a lot of problems with the motion capture animations, such as different bones, misalignment and conflicts between models, which took me a long time to adjust and change. The last problem was that when I tried to export to untiy there were often some decals that disappeared and reappeared, I didn’t solve and understand this problem in the end, which is a pity, maybe I need more time to understand unity and maya.

Overall, for me personally, Maya and unity is still a software and skill that deserves more time to explore. Each one of them is worth more time for me to learn.

Plot and characters

Plot Outline

The plot of this anime is set in a futuristic time, a time when humans are already familiar with and use robots and artificial intelligence with great intensity. Many jobs that are fraught with danger and far from human society have been replaced by different kinds of robots. The animation shows a large robot replacing a lighthouse and lighthouse keeper’s job because of the danger and loneliness of the job, and shows a dormant old lighthouse robot sitting on an island far from the city and blending in with its surroundings. It is not until one night when the stormy conditions in the nearby waters deteriorate and the waves start to affect a nearby ship. The ship’s alarm is detected by the lighthouse and it is activated once again. The giant robot slowly rises from the island and starts to slowly and heavily turn around and start walking in the direction of the ship in order to save and help the nearby ships.

Characterization

A giant lighthouse robot, basically 10-15m high. Not only its old model but also because of its huge size, its movements look slow and heavy. The column on its head is actually a light-emitting part, similar to the principle of a lighthouse, which guides and warns of approaching ships and can be used to receive distress signals. The robot is painted in orange and black stripes to make it more visible in the sea, but due to long periods of inactivity and lack of maintenance, much of it has been corroded to reveal its original metallic colours and rust, especially on the lower part, which has been immersed in the sea for years. To power its huge body and engines, two heat sinks on its shoulders emit a black puff of smoke when activated.

Plot script

The camera starts with a blur, which only captures the front of the robot’s head and the part of the lighthouse that is not working (the area around the head is covered with plants and vines, creating a sense of disuse that has not been used for a long time). The camera then gradually moves backwards and pulls up higher at the same time, gradually zooming in to capture the entire island. The entire robot can be seen collapsed on the island, with its back against the only hill on the island, the upper half of its body leaning on the hill while the lower half is submerged in water near its feet. Bright sunlight shines on the lifeless robot (Fig. 1, the white and middle jar part serves as the island and the hill, the silver is the ocean that surrounds the island). The small island is surrounded by blue-green water, around which nothing but seawater can be seen. The whole scene mainly presents a kind of oceanic island deserted in the daytime sun, but full of natural life. (The whole scene lasts 6-8 seconds)

Act II, (Same position as the final shot of Act I.) A loud thunderclap and the scene changes to a dark night, with a huge storm at sea and lightning sweeping through the surrounding waters. (The scene lasts 6-8 seconds) until a ship appears in the distance, hidden by an island, and slowly moves between the waves until a loud ship’s whistle sounds. This whistle sounds like an alarm triggering the robot to run and (the camera starts to follow the robot) its lighthouse and eye parts start to glow orange. As if activated, the robot slowly starts to stand up, first by slowly tightening its legs in preparation for supporting itself, first by favoring the left leg part, and then by slowly organizing the rest of itself to stand up (the whole movement is much slower than normal in order to convey the mechanical feel and the sheer size of the robot) (the camera slowly rises with the robot’s movements and holds it in place once it is fully standing) 

After standing fully the robot turns to look in the direction of the ship, (the silver screw represents the cargo ship) and after confirming its target turns and starts walking towards the ship, the sea water flooding its lower limbs more and more with each step it takes. (The robot walks towards the ship with its back to the camera) Ending the shot after four or five steps.

Reconstruction of character models and refinement of model UV

As the clay model I created did not meet my vision for this, I recreated this robot character model directly in the computer in the meantime.

After I had created the model I started to try to change its UV map, but an accident happened that I did not expect. Because I had created too many square-like mechanical surfaces, they each had tiny, individual surfaces as shown in the upper part of the picture above, overly repetitive and unidentifiable squares. I don’t know if it was the excessive threads that caused my computer to lag or what, but I couldn’t get the model to stitch properly, even though I had successfully used the technique on the previous model.

In the end, several unsuccessful attempts at stitching the UV line I tried another way to make up for this blunder. First of all, I UV’d the different parts of the model, left and right hand, head, chest, waist, bottom and both legs, as shown in the picture above. As I had envisioned most of the robot’s skin to be more of an old monochrome metallic look, I placed the glowing and special areas at the bottom for alteration, such as the camera mirror on the head, the screen and backpack on the chest and the signal unit at the top.

3D scanning of the model and testing of the model

After mastering the relevant 3d scanning techniques, I started to use the relevant parts to describe the robot model. From taking plural photographs of the model from different angles and using metashape to create a digital model of it, to importing it into software to further modify it and finally to recreate a UV map of the model. During this process, I found that the model created by the 3D scan was not suitable for the robot character. The clay model I had created did not meet my vision for this, so I felt that recreating the model directly in the computer and using it would give better results than this technique.

Early on in this idea, I wanted to create and design a robot character. A more conservative and classic square robot, this robot would be more of a large engineering machine kind of feel. With this in mind, I drew the basic robot design and used clay to create the most basic model. In my opinion this design can still be added later with more elements and corresponding character behaviours and background to help the character make sense and be better understood.