Ladders _ My First Animation Steps

#1

Hi
I’ve started my first animation project with a friend in about 4 month ago. because I have no experience in animation pipeline I forced to change many things from beginning to now. for example we made our storyboard after modeling and rigging
but by trial and error there’s some stuff that I made and some task that I did so I decide to put my work steps in this thread to learn from you and know your ideas for doing projects.

I used:
Autodesk Maya 2011
Pixologic Zbrush 4
Adobe Photoshop CS3
Nextlimit Realflow 5

let me explain somethings:
The animation name is Ladders.
I will post images in order of time that I made those.
renders are in mentalray and preview setting.
my friend, Hessam, designed and painted all the paintings and drawings and I did everything else.
I will be glad to see your critiques and opinions here.
and sorry for my English

#2

for beginning we (me and my friend) had a basic Idea for an animation, something like this:
there is an empty white space with a flat land, a tired character who that enter a simple park and sit on a chair and eat an apple and leave the park.
so we designed a char like this:

because of my doubt to my abilities we decide to simplify the char:

then I made a model with many tweaks in modelings and design. this is the rigged character:

now you can see the rendered man:

#3

we thought this is a symbolic animation so we need an angel fountain for middle of the park:

the model sheet:

and finally the angel. I made it with maya.

#4

this is the funniest step, I made everything for my work and got ready for animating, but look at this location (park):

we found this cross shape park is not suitable for this work. therefore I modeled another location:

#5

after some days without any advance we decide to do a better work and change everything that need to change. so this is the king chair concept:

after this decision I had to use Zbrush, therefore this is my Zbrush start, I modeled the chair in Maya and used Zbrush for detailing. this is the Zbrush render:

and this is Maya render, you can see the difference, I work for weeks to improve the Maya renders but this is the best
I always have problem with displacement maps

#6

in this step we sacrificed the boy angel to the story need, of course there’s no storyboard yet
I made another angel in Maya and Zbrush, More beautiful and more erotic, this a simple concept:

like before I modeled in Maya and detailed in Zbrush:

I decide to use Nextlimit Realflow for building water for my fountain:

and finally the Maya render without any caustics and global illumination:

#7

after many chat and drawings I had this concept by Hessam to made:

I made this model in Maya too and export to Zbrush, and paint that. that was my first poly paint work, its very cool task, I love painting on mesh instead of texturing:

I was disappointed to fix Maya render, I tried so much to achieve this render, but I know this not good enough:

and about one week web surfing for fluid effects:

#8

without more explain please look these:
an inner shot of the head temple:

a top shot of the head temple:

the entrance of the head temple:

and the torch fire that I made by fluid effects:

#9


finally we decide to arrange an storyboard, anyone who is confused with this posts please watch the the full size photo carefully, you may understand the story.

I should say after this step, there is not any stability in this project yet

#10

after all changes and reviewing the project seems that first character isn’t proportionate with the total animation, therefore we made another. this is the concept:

and the model sheet:

the Zbrush detailing:

and the rigged char:

this is my last work on this project, I made last tweaks and now I have no time for completing this soon, but I will do my best to finish it as soon as possible.

I will post other steps when is done. it may takes months. please write your comments, critiques, ideas and anything else that may help me and others, I want to know my mistakes and my ways for continuing this tasks also.

THANK YOU FOR READING

#11

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