Cave Monster, final version.

I finally finished this project. I brought it to the level where I'm really satisfied with it. Obviously there's a lot of things I'd like to add and improve, but I don't have any more time for that.

All in all - I learned a ton from this project: SSS, Volume lighting, ZBrush, a lot of compositing techniques in Nuke...

My not final final #2

So here's my final not finished project. I have to do quite a bit of fixing yet.

 

Animation

Ok here follows my animation playblast. I must say animating all the stalagmites was a really tedious job... And the rig itself sucks, so I couldn't pull off everything I'd like to put in the animaiton.

Final "God rays"

The light and rays got somewhere to the point where I'm quite happy with what I see, so I will be working on the animation of the monster and after that I'll delve deeper into SSS of the monster...

Test render

The scene is coming to the final look I'm going for. There's still work to be done on the ceiling in terms of modelling. Also  the matte painting will be improved, because right now i have a quick 15 min roughed in background. The "god rays" are still work in progress, because I want to experiment with different versions of shapes, intensity, etc. 

and here's a bright rays version (very quick setup, the contrast will be changed back to normal, but i might use bright rays on the right, because i like how they work with the character)

"God rays" test... work on light and cave is in progress...

Video test

So here's my video test - crude cutout from the green screen and simple composition with one render. Just to check how it works together. Also now I'll be able to make a final decision about composition of
the shot.

Subsurface scattering test

Here's my SSS test. I'm still working on the material, but it's already moving towards the look, I wanted to achieve.

Render test.

Modelling of the monster is almost done. I'll do some more work on the slug's body and that's it.  Those are test renders with high-poly mesh (lower part 500 polygons, inner mouth with teeth - 400k), bump maps and the approximate light setup i'll have. Models don't have any textures, just blinn applied to them. All in all so far it works fine -  renders one frame in 30 seconds.

My personal schedule

Week 2: Shoot the video, rough in monster's body.
              Thursday: Start the body.
              Friday: Shoot the video.
              Saturday-Sunday: Do whatever I haven't done on thursday-friday, start going into details.
Week 3: Finish the body.
               Monday: Work on the mouth area.
               Tuesday: Do the eyes, finish the mouth.
               Wednesday: Do the inner mouth. Gums, teeth, tongue.
               Thursday: Finish the mouth. Model tusks.
               Friday: Finish in the head area whatever needs to be finished. Create tentacles and the present box.
               Sat-Sun: UV the monser.
Week 4: Mudbox the Monster. Texture it.
               Monday: Detail general stuff on the body like dimples and folders. Start on more fine details.
               Tuesday: Continue on the details. Work on the skin.
                Wednesday: Finish mudbox part. Start painting textures.
               Thursday: Continue painting textures (rocks and the slug)
                Saturday: Finish texture painting.
                Sunday: Work with SSS.
Week 5: Blend shapes. Cut myself out of the green screen.
               Monday: Continue fighting with SSS. If I see that it's not going anywhere - drop the idea for now. If I'm getting some nice results - continue my SSS endeavors.
               Tuesday: Create a mouth shut blend shape. Start working on in-between shapes.
               Wednesday: Finish blend shapes.
               Thursday-Friday: Cut myself out of the green screen.
               Sat-Sun: Cut whatever else I need to cut and finish with blend shapes if I need to.
Week 6: Animate the monster. Set up the light.
               Monday: Start animating (no blocking stages)
               Tuesday-Friday: Finish the animation.
               Saturday: Setup the volume light from one of the monster's tentacles.
               Sunday: Setup the rest of the light. Test render.
Week 7: Bring everything in Nuke. Start the comp.
               Monday: Setup render layers. Render everything.
               Tuesday:  Bring all that stuff into Nuke. Build a general comp tree.
               Wednesday:  Do color correction.  Work on DOF.
               Thursday: Finish color correction, DOF.
               Friday-Sunday: Continue working in Nuke. Re-render whatever needs to be re-rendered.
              
Weeks 8: Finish the comp. Do the icing on the cake.

The Cave Monster, or Treasure Hunter's FAIL

I finished the inner part of the mouth, starting on the slug's body.

 Detailing and sculpting in ZBrush takes way more time than I anticipated. But it's coming along.
To be honest, I found sculpting process in ZBrush very addictive. I'm really enjoying it.

Here's finished lower part of the monster's body, the shell with the teeth-stalagmites.

For the modelling part I decided to block in the rough form of the monster and then finish it off in ZBrush.

So here's my rough Maya model.

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After 5 days of working on the cave monster's design I came up with the following drawings:

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The original idea split into two versions: "Indiana Jones" and "Nightmare".
Indiana Jones version works the same way as original, but puts the story on the realistic rails, i.e. the character is a treasure hunter who enters into a cave to get a precious mysterious stone. He approaches the stone and gets eaten by the monster. The majority people voted for the Indiana Jones (or now The Cave Monster) idea, so I started working on the final design for the creature.

The Nightmare version kept the whole idea the same, but I worked out the monster in a little bit different way - I tried to push the monster's design to a weird insane level. Obviously I had some fun with the design :)

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Okay so here's my new project.
My original idea was a story about a guy who got into his nightmare and got eaten by a huge monster, who lured the guy into its mouth.
Here's the concept drawings of my idea:

The idea of the monster came from an angler fish that lures it's prey with the light

My not final final

Still lot's of stuff to fix. But I'm really satisfied with the project for I managed to take under control dynamics which were tricky... and the whole idea worked out as I planned.

Final concept

 Here's my final design concepts of the puppet. I like that I really got the character I've been searching for.

Schedule

Week 8: Model the puppet and the knife. UV and rig the puppet.
Week 9: Apply textures to the puppet, try out 2 variations of the video (with my hand and without), see which works better.
Week 10: If i go with the "real hand" version, then I'll track the hand movement. I'll start working on the proper light in the scene. If the "CG hand" version goes into business, i will start the animation of this hand.
Week 11: Bring everything to Maya, finish the light work. Start animating the puppet.
Week 12: Continue animation. If possible - finish it.
Week 13: Render out whatever need to be rendered. Comp everything to Nuke. Start working with color adjustments, etc.
Week 14-15: Final touch ups, work with light, color.

The story board

My idea is to create a video which looks like those YouTube homemade videos. A person's sitting in front of the camera with a clown puppet in his hand. While the guy's explaining what he's going to do with the puppet, plans get wrong, the puppet slowly turns it's head towards the guy, then jumps from the hand ad stabs poor bastard.

Now my original idea was that the guy's going scare his roommate with the puppet, because his friend is afraid of clowns and especially of this creepy one. But while I was working on this short storyboard I came up with an interesting alternative but similar idea for this story, which I will post later on.

Concepts

 Here are a few of my concept drawings for the puppet. It won't necessarily will have legs though... those drawings represent something I'm aiming at in terms of mood, level of detail. When I finalize my design for the puppet, I'll submit a digital version.

The assignment and ideas.

When I got details of our VFX assignment, I started thinking on the ideas. My goal was to come up with some idea that can be both original and can look cool. In my mind sprung up an image, Tim Burton's work, which I saw a few months ago and it fascinated me.

I remember I found the very idea of a puppet decapitating it's puppeteer very awesome and I thought that it would be very interesting to see this whole thing in action.

So right now I'm working on different ideas of a puppet, that kills either puppeteer or just some random human. When I get more clear picture of how my video is going to look like, I'll shoot a test video of it to see, if it's going to work.