I’ve been posting scattered about my slow work on creating the trailer for an Alien-style movie (yes, I hope to later make the movie), but I think I will keep a single thread for it from now on. This is it.
The process I am experimenting with involves the “minimal viable product” concept, i.e. getting something useful in as short time as possible, then later upgrading it into another, more useful ‘product’. I posted the second version here, although I call it a first draft because the first is not worth showing publicly. I am now working on version 3. Here are a few shots of the ongoing work:
Very basic modular kits for hallways and city streets:
Finally, a shot of the megastructure interior, and a guy with a flamethrower. The latter is still in a very early form, but I like the material and glow:
The new character rigs are slowly being shaped, and I just tested an early version out on a very demanding scene. It clearly looks incomplete, but it is starting to feel more atmospheric…
The rig was updated, mainly to deal with hip-thigh animation issues. The scene is not the same as yesterday’s, obviously, and shows none of the hip improvements, but it does start to look more like a ‘real’ work-in-progress, and not just slapped together polygons!
Doing a character generator for a large scene, just crude stuff, hopefully the code can help build the basis of other tools. Picked a few favorite results:
Tried the character generator in the scene. Still hand placing them, but the script made it A LOT easier! And yes, everyone is still in T pose, it is a WIP…
Did an overhaul of the modular hallway and a quick test with the scene. Still rather cringe, but improving…
(No, hands are not yet gripping the gun, I sadly still work too slowly)
Aaand the first shot (pun unintended) of the two soldiers firing is rendered! It took more work than expected, because I wanted to use drivers and a few other tricks to make the gun motion more interesting. It was a good learning experience. And the result is not all bad, either, although the only thing the images here add is muzzle flash glow:
I upgraded the hands and I’m now working on an upgrade to the face, all to get prepped to do version 4 of the “morphed victim eating” shot (watch the version 3 trailer, it’ll make sense). The test of the jaw just made me laugh. Not sure why, but the current and DEFINITELY not good face reminds me of an elderly Asian man… in this case, screaming…
Doing the ‘morph victim eating raw meat’ shot, lots of playing with data copy features, Blender has a lot more of them than expected, but finding them is often a meeeess… Still, the outcome is okay, although human models still need a ton of work!
