Educational animation for children

Hi guys!

Currently I’m preparing a short educational animated film for children. I thought, why not to share my workflow, and maybe get some advice on improving it?

Anyways, the scenario is not ready yet, but the point is to explain children how a wastewater treatment plant works.

So, we have a main character, a girl named Cośka Czyścioszka. If I were to translate her name, I’d go with “Some clean girl” or so. Really, it’s not translateable (is that the word?). And we have her friend, well, kind of a pet friend, a bacteria of a kind that really works at wastewater treatment plants. Two candidates here, Wicio (a flagallate), and Nitro (a nitrobacter).

No surpise at the beginning, I started with some concepts. Few different ones, but I had somewhat clear vision on how I wanted my characters to look like. So below you’ll find charcoal sketches, and digital drawings (Affinity Design + Krita) made to have something to show to the client. I’m showing you only the versions I liked the most, but there weren’t really many more.

Next to do is to model the characters, and shade them. The plan is to prepare the important stuff (characters, unique environment assets, animation) in Blender, render it in Unity (and add less important environment assets in Unity as well), and do some post pro with either Blender or BM Fusion.

PS: Tha last picture is (most probably) one of the most up do date pictures, as I try to update the thumbnail of the thread, and that’s the only way I know… :smiley:

[IMG]https://preview.ibb.co/i1mSiQ/WP_20170523_001.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]https://preview.ibb.co/mNAniQ/WP_20170524_002.jpg[/IMG]
[IMG]https://preview.ibb.co/njm4V5/WP_20170524_003.jpg[/IMG]
[IMG]https://preview.ibb.co/eLAL3Q/Co_ka_druk.jpg[/IMG]
[IMG]https://preview.ibb.co/nnrGck/Nitro_druk.jpg[/IMG]
[IMG]https://preview.ibb.co/jCmhHk/Wicio_druk.jpg[/IMG]

Attachments


Ok, so here we go with a first character in 3D - Wicio.
He’s got some quick materials applied just so I could judge whether I like him or not. The renders are also raw renders, nothing fancy, because the intention is to render the whole thing in Unity, so I didn’t want to spend too long working on shaders in cycles. But, I may do some proper renders for the client, after posing this guy.

So, short explanation. The body, legs and arms were modelled separately, and joined aftewards.

https://preview.ibb.co/eRAOOQ/Wicio_rece_i_nogi.png
https://preview.ibb.co/iXmzV5/Wicio_wireframe.png

Hair was done with curves - few for the strands, and one for taper effect.
Eyes were made with the lattice mod, but pupils are separate objects, with the same lattice mod + shrinkwrap mod. Let’s hope I’ll find some way to transfer pupils animation to Unity… :smiley:

https://preview.ibb.co/gR0hiQ/Wicio_1.jpghttps://preview.ibb.co/bGpa3Q/Wicio_2.jpg
https://preview.ibb.co/izMYq5/Wicio_3.jpg

Alright, I’m fairly happy with this one, nest thing to do is to rig and pose the guy. I already am aware of the fact, that if I want to use shapekeys for facial animation, and transfer that to unity properly, I’ll have to apply subdiv surface mod before creating the shapekeys, which is not really that comfortable. Unity does not recognize shapekeys, if you export a model with it and a subsurf modifier from Blender - I’m not shure about other modifiers, maybe I’ll give it a try during this project. On the other hand, creating a facial rig with bones… Meh.

So after all I did some renders in Cycles. My excuse was, that I needed to check the rig in different poses… Ok, next I’ll finally get to animating. The only thing bothering me is how to transfer all the good stuff you can do with your character in Blender to Unity? Cycles is still a bit too slow for my needs on my computers and it would exceed the budget to render the animation on a render farm. Would be great if Evee was already here… Any solutions/ideas guys?

https://preview.ibb.co/dLONqF/Wicio_welcome_3.jpg

https://preview.ibb.co/k79Rja/Wicio_ok_2.jpg

https://preview.ibb.co/m2oYxv/Wicio_jump_1.jpg

Not really a big update, but I finally got to do some animations today. The results are not refined, but I’m posting this because you know, the deadline is coming. So I REALLY need to get to creating another character. Anyways, this one was rendered with a Blender PBR branch by Clement Foucault.

Ok, so it’s been quite a while since the last uptade, but I had some other stuff do to. Let’s hope I’ll manage to finish the whole piece before deadline… :smiley:

Anyways, here’s the second character, Nitro. Again, his rig is made from scratch, but is not too complicated. I decided to give him few shapekeys for facial expressions, even if I’ll have to redo them for Unity. Will be animating this dude soon, but I posed him a little today to see how the rig works. Well, it’s not perfect, but it works. Any minor issues that may still occur I will fix later on, while animating.

https://preview.ibb.co/kSXWpk/NITRO_fighting.jpg

https://preview.ibb.co/nmFj9k/NITRO_OK.jpg

https://preview.ibb.co/dQTRN5/NITRO_sad.jpg

https://preview.ibb.co/k0qUaQ/NITRO_winning.jpg

I think it’s looking good! You really did a good job translating the characters from the sketches. They both seem to have the same feel when you’re looking at them. Overall, I think you’ve done a nice job on it.

Hope you’re able to get it done before the deadline! Do you know if it’s going to work with Unity yet?

Nice post… The movemet in the animation loos smooth and natural

@michalzisman thanks! I’ll try to make the final animations as good as I can, but the time is running, the deadline seems to be soo close… And I still don’t even have the script!

@ArtOfLight Thank you! About the deadline, I’m trying to be positive. But in the worst case, if I don’t deliver the work on time, I’ll be paid a bit less (and a bit later…). That’s not the end of the world right? :smiley:
At the moment I’m pretty sure Unity isn’t going to handle all the mods and techniques I’ve used to create my characters. It certainly isn’t going to understand shapekeys in the form I’ve created them (with subsurface mod still active, not applied). But they could be reworked quite easily when preparing models for rendering.
I’m more concerned about lattice mods, rigid bodies (still to be done), and the whole blenrig I’m planning to use on COŚka, the main character. I haven’t done any tests yet, but I’m afraid I was too optimistic about using Unity just for rendering. And since I don’t know a thing about programming…
I’m thinking about using Clement Foucalt’s PBR branch. That is, If Evee is not going to support armature modifier on time (I mean, before my deadline)…
Does counting on Evee renders, even knowing the engine is not production ready, sound desperate?
Well…

Yeah, deadlines can be tough. :slight_smile: Something that I heard that seems to always be true is that after estimating how much time something is going to take, you always at least double, maybe even triple it, because there are always unexpected things that come up while you’re working on it that take extra time.

That’s too bad about Unity not working out, but I’ve seen good things done with the PBR branch. I’m pretty sure this animation was done with it: http://www.weybec.com/portfolio-item/adventure-of-tanu/ So you might be able to still get something that looks pretty good, after enough experimenting. :slight_smile:

ArtOfLight - Sooo true about estimating time to finish a project - so many things can happen along the way :wink: The animation looks really good - so there is a light at the end of that tunnel :slight_smile:

Anyways, I still don’t have the script, so decided to do some other stuff waiting for it (like going for short holiday) - but now I’m getting back to work. Below are first screencaps of COSka. She’s nothing near to be finished yet. At the moment I have her head and hair sculpted (but will do some minor changes in some areas), and models of her pants, shoes and visible parts of her body. Materials are not set yet, the colors you see are set quickly and roughly, only to give the model some… color while working on it :-).






I realize it’s been about a week since you posted it, but I still wanted to say I think that looks great! You’ve really done a good job with your characters. Hopefully the animations will turn out okay :slight_smile:

so there is a light at the end of that tunnel :slight_smile:

Yeah, I hope so :slight_smile:

Alright! Or not? Well, it seems, that this project, despite all the problems, is not dead. Well, actually, it’s finished. And I’m sorry I never posted anything from the latest production stage - that’s simply because the deadline being soooo close and my partners being sooooo delayed (and me having to do their work) - I simply didn’t have time to prepare proper material from the production. I’ll try to make it up to you, and describe the whole process.

So, for starters, let’s see the main character. She’s modelled in Blender, and textured in Substance Painter (apart from skin, I painted the skin tex in Blender). Here she is simply cutout from a random scene, so no proper character render :wink:

https://preview.ibb.co/mqnhpR/Opowiesc_04635.png
https://preview.ibb.co/gJsMim/01_06_czekalam_01310.png
https://preview.ibb.co/b3fJUR/COSKA_cosiedzieje_C_03140.png

I’ll post her in motion maybe tomorrow. As well as assets created for the animation. Sadly, when animating COSKA, I had to leave her hair rig alone (created according to Daniel Kreuter’s tutorial - you can find it on youtube, it’s a good one) - it was behaving a strange way, and I couldn’t rely on it (probably due to the starting position of positioning bones, but I can’t be sure). Taking into consideration that I had only one chance to render the whole thing before the deadline (have I mentioned, that eventually I decided to render it in… Cycles?) - I could take no risk. So sadly, her hair doesn’t move at all.

That’s awesome you finished it!, and did it in Cycles no less :D. That’s too bad the hair didn’t work out. From the pictures though, it looks like everything else turned out good in the end, so that’s a plus! I can see why the deadline was so tight with all the background work you had to do too. Definitely a nice job overall!

What was it like using Substance Painter to do more cartoonish texturing? I haven’t seen anyone do that before. I’m guessing it worked out well?

ArtOfLight, I was soooo glad to have it done! But one the other hand, I feel like the piece is not really done the way it should. I’d need like 2 more weeks to do some improvements and fix some stuff.
And SP did great for texturing this one. Apart from COSka, Sediment village was also textured in Painter.

I was delaying posting final version here, as I’m not supposed to put it online according to the deal, but… As soon as they put it on their site I’ll change the link, promise!

The video is not searchable (it’s not public). Since I’m posting it, I’m not showing you any pics of assets, or screencaptures with animation or so.

Anyways, there are many things I regret I didn’t have time to fix, especially when it comes to facial animation. Especially in first scenes, I didn’t even touch the spline editor :-/
Despite COSka having a walk cycle, her movement is done by animating an empty, to which the rig is parented. This was done mainly because like half of the animation (I may list the exact scenes, if you’d like to) is directed and animated by some other guy. I did all the character animation, but without the movement in his scenes. He could then animate the empty as he pleased, set the camera, and animate without resendig me files and so (not to waste more time than needed).
As mentioned before, only one chance to render it, so you can see all the flaws here… Well, all the ones I couldn’t fix in postpro :slight_smile:
Guys, is there any specific thing you’d like to know about this animation? I’ll post it in finished works with credits as soon as the client puts it online, but here I may show you any part of production you’d like to see (or tell you how things were done).

That’s great Substance Painter worked well; I’ll have to remember that. Yeah, that’s tough when you can’t finish something the way you want to; such is production life I suppose :). I guess that’s the nice thing about personal projects, actually being able to take the time on it.

It still looks pretty good for not having any time to refine it though. Everything seems to fit well together and there aren’t too many things that you get distracted by when watching it, so I would say it turned out pretty well, and still something to be proud of :). I haven’t done much animation work to be able to know very well, but the character animation looks pretty good too. You don’t really notice too much that it’s just an empty being animated when they’re walking, and that lip syncing looks pretty close.

I guess again I would just say that you really did a good job on it with all of the difficulties you had along the way!

Wow, Your work is awsome!
I’m just a beginer with both animations and blender. here is the best i can do as free educational resources for kids: https://youtu.be/3dLv5deySrA
Wish you all the best!

Thanks guys :slight_smile:
ArtOfLight, I guess I doesn’t really matter whether you use painter to texture a cartoon, sci-fi or realistic scene. As long as you know how you want your piece to look like. Painter is just a tool. But what a nice one to have :slight_smile:

rouhol9ods - thanks! You’ll get there, just keep on working, adn don’t give in. Your videos already have some little fans as I could see on YT… :slight_smile:

looking good…