Finished developing a computer game using Tyrano Builder. The game is unusual in its structure because it’s a hybrid of a visual novel and a digital board game. The game allows you to play a quick board game without the cumbersome set up and lengthy rules. It also allows you to read a choose your own adventure novel, but with the interactiveness of a board game. It’s a casual game with the best of both worlds.
During my internship with Mobile Motion Mocap I had to learn how to render a video in unity game engine. The set came from Daz Studio, and the character & mocap were provided by Mobile Motion Mocap. I assembled the scene in Unity, planned my shots using Cinemachine, then added post processing within unity. Post processing included ambient occlusion, color correction, motion blur, & vignette. I did the final compositing in afterfx using a sci-fi font then applied a bad tv fx on the font & at the beginning of the footage. The end result is a crash test dummy that comes to life in a junkyard by way of dancing. What was truly amazing is that the 1 minute footage only took 7 minutes to render in unity.
Finally, finally finally, I found the solution to animating the pearl diver's hair, & it's called N-Cloth. Surprisingly, N-Cloth has hidden features as well, and that is the ability to animate rigid objects such as glass.
The whole process of animating the hair starts in Daz Studio. I used mocap (motion capture) data to animate the diver then chose a hair prop that was long enough so it touched her shoulders.
Now the magic begins. I imported the file in Maya then applied the N-Cloth to the hair prop. I slowed down the animation a bit using the trax editor, so the N-Cloth could be calculated better. I also chose an N-Cloth preset, (denim), which had the best result in the simulation. N-Cloth is surprisingly flexible because it can also animate cloth tears & rigid objects like a glass shatter. To better showcase the scene , I applied a turntable animation using the method taught by Alex Alvarez. Later I added water fx & a volume light to the scene.
Now it's time for Afterfx to put the pieces together. I created a jelly fx to simulate a bubble dancing around to further push the theme of the pearl diver. Later I used an expression to loop the animation then masked out unnecessary areas, and voila, it's done.
Here is my Kinetic Dialog final project for my motion graphics class. It’s the Kobayashi Maru test scene from Star Trek 2: the Wrath of Khan. Text onscreen has to be synced to the dialog from the film, so the story, in theory, can be understood even without the use of sound. The challenge was to distinguish the text from each speaker (9 speakers) and limit the use of color.
The project contains basic solids, masks, & shapes as well as several items listed below:
Star Trek font
3d camera
animated stroke
expressions
audio wave form fx
number fx
radiowave fx
track matte
bad tv fx
keylight fx
auto trace
channel mixer fx
time remap
gradient ramp
radial wipe fx
graph editor
noise
Here's some FYI. All the vector images were created in Afterfx using the pen tool. The Millennium Falcon was a youtube movie of a 3D rendered ship on a green screen. Rolling text for Kobayashi Maru is actually a Kohler order form for a toilet. The same goes for the Klingon ship but with the insertion of the Playboy magazine logo.
Here is my 1st full motion graphics story. It’s Little Red Riding Hood with a twist.
Here’s the process. I got the reference images from Collective Creation. I traced the images in Afterfx, then animated them. I applied a Wiggle expression to Red’s movement. Later I animated her path using a Stroke effect. It’s the same effect for the title as well. The blood splatter came from a photo, & I removed the white background by using a Linear Key effect. The rest was done using basic masks, shapes, solids, & text.
