3D Modeling & Animation

My main character is a bird, shown in the image below. Several parts of its body are made in skeleton so that it matches the surroundings of a forgotten, mysterious temple. The sketches helped me to create the basic body shape and sizes of components. I used edit poly the most to modify my bird, since all the details of bones and feathers cannot be made only with primitives. In order to unwrap the UVs cleanly, the type of the maps is one of the most important things to keep track of. If the type of the map does not fit well, the UV will look unclean and cannot resemble what the model actually looks like.

I picked different materials for different parts of the bird, mostly changing the reflection and roughness parameter helps the body parts to create different reflections as a result of the light. It makes the model more realistic, for instance, the bones don't usually have strong reflection under light so setting the reflection parameter lower helps it look more real. 

The most challenging part is the shape of the bird's wings, both feathers and bones, because they are the most important part of the model and if they do not have the right shape the bird will look fake and stand out from the scene in a weird way. To solve this problem I used my draft as a reference and placed the bones and feathers roughly the same place where I sketched them and adjusted them after all. I am most proud of the left wing made of bones, cause it took me a long time to detail the bones. The bird will be placed in the temple scene later and I'l animate it so it can fly in the scene. 

I modeled the statue, stage, and the six pillars. Those assets fill up the scene and form an abandoned and mysterious vibe for the scene. I choose to model the statue and stage with more details because they are in the relative center of the scene. The pillars, on the other hand, will be over the side and show as a background. When modeling those, I used edit poly the most, since a lot of the shapes are based on primitives, like a box or cone. To make sure the model match the overall scene, I adjust the material and color of them after joining them into one scene. I grouped the assets together and freeze them so they won't be moving around when animating. The asset list helped me in checking which model I already made and what might take more time on modeling so I can do them first. 

If I want to improve something, I'll model the details of them before putting them together and adjust later, cause adding details became harder when things are joined and grouped. I am most excited on adjusting the light throughout animation, since it is a huge part of the storyline of the scene. 

For this scene, I used targeted spot lights and omni light. The first spot light was placed on the top of the temple which represents the sunlight. The other spotlight is pointing to the middle of the scene from the side of the camera, it allows us to see the shape and details of the models more clearly when the light on the top is off. An additional omni light is placed in the statue since it's shelled. The light can go through the cracks and create some interesting shadows and shapes of light. The intensity of the top spot light and the omni light will change over time. the omni light will shine for short randomly when the top light goes brighter then darker. 

I animated the bird flying, cause the scene is about the bird becoming alive when light shines on it. In order to make it run seamlessly, I copied the first frame and dragged it to the last so it starts and ends exactly the same. The biggest challenge in this part of the project is to adjust the timing of bird movement, lights, and camera so they run smooth. The spot lights was animated to be the brightest during the middle of the animation, and the omni light goes on when the spot light is off. The omni light also glints when the spot light is on. The camera movement was adjusted so that it briefly follows the movement of the bird.