Steppin' into Action (2022)

[KamauKianjahe (Kamau)]

[MT-202 “Eve” Character Rig by Oliver Simonnet]

This is an animation I made at the very start of 2022 as part of a One-hour Animation Challenge. After the one-hour, I tidied up the walk cycle to practice some dramatic camera animation. Imagine all of tall default cubes as gargantuan foreboding scenery that the protagonist is braving into.

To animate this, I layered three NLA strips: one with the static walk cycle, one with the movement along the Y axis (synced to the footsteps), and another with the UI transition. For the camera, I roughly keyed the shot then smoothed it all out in the graph editor to get used to using it and for a smooth arc.

[resutls after one-hour ]

[polished walk-cycle]

Non-blender related: Over a months ago, I was getting into sound design for video editing, using Vital and Waveform. Since was looking to post this video again, I tried my hand at sound designing for animations with this. You can hear the results in the first video.
If you’re interested in any of that or want to see more behind the scenes stuff in Blender then you can watch this video - https://youtu.be/9IGePyJXXLU

Crazy that a year ago a project like this made my whole computer chugg, hence why it’s only rendered in 720p, and now going back to it on my new PC causes zero issues. Having this much power now feels illegal.

[KamauKianjahe (Kamau)]

I’ve been meaning to revisit this animation for a long time. I recently got the perfect excuse to do so when putting together my showreel.

Steppin' into Action (2022) - Walk Cycle [Re-rendered]

Here’s a simpler render that I was going to use for a now scrapped part of the reel:

Changes:
I wanted to go all in with the Sci-fi vibe and avoid the grey background. All of the drivers in these mats are #frame/10000 or some other very big denominator for subtle motion.

World Material:
A deep nebulous night sky

Floor Material:
A simple reflective grid with some colorful noise on top

Rift:
It’s just a big refractive glass ball. I only recently found out refractions in eevee are possible with the right settings lol

Lighting:
There’s a massive area light at the end of the pillars that points toward the character and there’s a sun lamp that does the same but from a higher angle. Lastly, a very dim sun lamp to light the back of the character.

Compositing:
I tried to keep it simple. Basic things like ambient occlusion and adding the glare to the character’s LEDs. The part that was finicky was deciding how much mist to add. I wanted to give the scene a good sense of depth without taking away the contrast of the image. In the end, the fog ended up very subtle to compromise.

Thats all, thanks for readin’ (again lol)