3D Production Pipeline – Pirates Gold Project

3D Production Pipeline – Pirates Gold Project

Pre-Production

For this project, the task was to create an Ad for the Pirates Gold Board Game, at the start we were given a storyboard as well as most of the completed assets which were going to be used in the scene. One asset which we needed to create in over to complete the project scope was a pirate chest which would be the main asset in the scene.

3D Modelling

With all of the other assets already modeled and textured for us, the only asset needed to be left was the pirate chest. For the chest, we were given an example tutorial to follow to create a chest that would fit the scene and theme of the Ad. We were given some freedom in creating our own version of the chest however the other chest didn’t fit the style and theme. The chest was created in 3ds Max using a few of the basic tools Max has to offer, like extruding faces, chamfer edges as well as looping.

Mapping

Once the pirate chest had been modeled, the next set was to UV Unwrap the model for texturing as placing a texture onto this model without a UV Map would look bad. The UV unwrapping took the longest time to complete as creating a high-quality map takes time if you are just starting to learn it and having a high-quality map helps a lot when texturing later onward.

Texturing

After the UV Map had been created and render out to a targa file we then moved it into Photoshop to begin texturing. For the texturing of this pirate chest, we were also given a tutorial as well as a color palette to help paint the chest in order to fit the style and theme of the other assets.

For this project I added in a cartoon wood texture to give it a different look from the one in the video tutorial.

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/a1/92/17/a19217cf19b94ba46e6aadc28140279c.jpg

Rigging

For this project rigging wasn’t needed for the assets, everything had a low animation list so adding rigs would have taken too much time for something that wasn’t needed. Instead, the animation on the assets was done by linking the models together, doing this didn’t join the model into one, instead made it that if something was linked to another model both of them would move together. This helped a lot with the crab so we didn’t have to move each piece separately. Other assets like the chest had their pivot point moved to make the chest top rotate from the end instead of the center.

Animation

With there being on rigging animation was simple but it still took time, having a rig although more complicated makes animating easier as each part would work together. For this, the animation was mainly moving object around or into the scene and then using the curve editor in Max to make the animation look more smooth. In addition to that, I also using a modifier like a bend, stretch and twist to make the other animation/effect on the chest as well as the background assets.

Scene Assembly

This was simple as we were given a storyboard to show us how the scene would look. We were given some freedom in how some of the scenes would look but the key points still had to be the same like the chest beginning in the center. The camera was also something we had more freedom on, the storyboard the camera would just zoom in onto the chest. I had made my camera start with a top view, rotate and then stop in the center, pan and zoom for each crab, then finally zoom into the chest in the center.

Lighting

After the scene had been created all assets placed, textured and animated along with the camera, a simple Omni light was added to light up the scene as well as give shadows to the assets.

Rendering

Once all completed and look over to make sure everything worked, was in place and nothing was missing I started rendering. Making sure everything is correct before rendering is a big set as rendering can take a lot of time and finding out you missed something after the render is complete can be hell.

For this project, we had to render it out into separate frames as a .png before moving into Premiere for compositing and editing. This render took 03:17:37 to complete.

Compositing and Editing Video

Once all the images had been rendered out I moved everything into Adobe Premiere to add the final touch like sound, credits and transition effects before exporting it out into the final .mp4 video.