Research and Development - Research, Part 1

Research!

I am currently in a research and development unit where I will researching and experimenting with a range of techniques and skills. I will be posting my research and influence every Friday to help reflect on my finding throughout that week.

Godzilla 2014 Games

I was introduced to the 2014 Godzilla game by a friend and they discussed the process on how it was made that really impressed me. 

If you look closely at the designs in the game you'll see that there are seems on all the joints. this is actually because these models were not models in 3D software but instead, 3D scanned. the models are from a series called SH monster arts which deals with creating a series of figures of the monsters in the Godzilla movies. These figures were scanned in and tweaked so they were suitable for the game. the amount of detail put into these figures dramatically helped the graphics of the games as they were realistic and saved the developer's time. 

This is a process that interests me as I have always been passionate about 3D and 3d scanning and printing is always something I have wanted to do and after looking at this I know I need to try these processes out. 

King Kong 

Staying with 3D modeling and the Kiju series I started to look at the most recent move of King Kong. I went to the cinema to watch it and I remember it being visually stunning. I found out that the movie relied heavily on the programs called Maya and ZBrush. I was really excited to hear this as I have previously been creating my models in these programs and see an example like this being done has really inspired me to do more. I found out that they move came across multiple problems including the fact that the movies was shot in in a narrow frame focusing on the humans perspective and they could fit the hole of kong in most scenes so they have to change the storyboard a bit and focus on serious parts of the body in each scene. this helped with the rendering as Kong's full-body contained half a million polygons and half of them where just on his face. 

they came acrosses another issue as when they were doing the motion capture for Kong they soon realized that applying their own movement to a 300tf ape didn't look realistic and instead came across unnatural. they came across a few solutions but eventually realized that keyframing was the way to go.

I am alwasy inspired by behind the scenes in movies and games and I really want to dive into more challenging projects and for this project, I would like to try and created a semi-realistic creature like these influences.