Sketchbook: Fish and Aliens a Colourful Mix

  I was still felling inspired visiting the London Aquarium so while they're not the best studies, I decided to draw some fish, thinking it might help with inspiration over the creature that will appear in the film. Although I was also inspired by watching James Cameron's Aliens on Sunday night (somewhat fitting given Weyland-Yutani's obsession with acquiring a Xenomorph for use as some experimental bioweapon reflects one idea that the creature in the project could be there though some big company looking to use it for commercial purposes.). Halfway though, as demonstrated on the right-hand size of the page, I decided to see what beasties I could fashion out of fish parts. It still feels a little generic at the moment but with time, revision and further inspiration will come something distinct.

There are some truly bizarre creatures that lurk under the surface of our oceans. Not just the classic bizarre creatures like the Angler fish. While at the aquarium I encountered two species of shark in particular: One swam like a manta ray and the other, the aforementioned Nurse Shark, had catfish-like whiskers attached to its nose. Unfortunately I only had my phone camera which takes terrible pictures in low light conditions.

  Still it gave me a few thoughts on how to make a creature that was otherworldly and grotesque. Sketching while watching James Cameron's actionised sequel for Hollywood's most iconic kill-happy alien monsters may have also contributed towards a bit of inspiration. To ad a bit of ferocity maybe adding a touch of shark or eel to the creature is going along the right lines.

Group Project: Wednesday Animation Work

Much of this afternoon was spent creating a basic animation as well as putting together all the assets to show what Forge has so far created.

I ended up making more footage than I needed, so I decided to upload a full video of what I had made. This footage is useful as it shows the total progression of the scales as they grow across the Fish's body.

Before the textures were rendered and before the scales were applied, I took a test recording to see how effective the camera was.

Narrative Project: Animation preview screenshot

  I was able to pull out a screenshot from what was being play-blasted. No time for a proper render but something is better than nothing.

Narrative Project: Occlusion Maps

  With many of our assets completed I looked into a few of the models I had contributed for and looked into creating occlusion sets for them. This helps give an idea of these models in their purest form with no textures, no shiny effects and no animation and a good idea of where things overlap, stand out in terms of geometry and cast shadows.

  I only made the scales of the fish, but part of their creation involved mapping their arrangement on our fish characters.

Narrative Project: Scales

  With other aspects out of the way I felt it was high time that the scales had their own texture maps. I created a somewhat quick but workable texture and created a shader that included a reddish specular light and an ambient occlusion node.

  When rendered the structure does not appear to look too bad. I looked into a render pass that included the figh's body to get an idea of how the body would look with the scales on. This was particularly important as these scales had to look convincing.

Development: Coral and Scales

  The final phases of mapping the coral are done and after a tweak to the shader the quality is solid enough that I can present this as a demonstration video. As well as a sequence showing the coral growing from a bud, I also created a turnaround to show the model as it would look in the final render.

  As well as these tasks, I also took on the task of adding the strange growths to the body of our fish. While my initial plan was to use a lattice, this fell flat when I didn't fully consider the eye, but I compensated, as the manual application turned out to be rather therapeutic and progressed relatively smoothly and promptly.

Narrative Project: The Reacher

  The development of the scales yesterday has given me enthusiasms for the technical side of Maya. The task I looked into today was making the coral/organism that would chase after our fish. Originally the plan was to use coral, but there were a few scenes that involved the coral reaching out. I looked up some source material and found some similarity to the tendrils of sea anemones. Which were a lot more flexible. But the stuff on the storyboard was still distinctly coral.

  First tests however resulted in a few errors that I managed to fix with later models that stemmed from the orientation of the joints. Turns out the joints were orienting themselves differently on occasion due to not being entirely vertical from the last.

  Initial attempts at a cleaner model involved joints at every lateral edge, but I discarded this as a control group would have 30 different joints to manage.

  To cut down the number of joints, instead of one joint per lateral edge I looked into one joint for every two lateral edges, which halved the original number. Still quite a few but now much more manageable.

  Each joint has three controls: X, Y and Twist. One bends the joint forwards, another sideways and the twist helps with curling. It is very flexible with little deformation. Hopefully it is simple enough to be used en masse. And it should also be useful for wrapping around things.

  The final parameter I added was a length control. Unlike the others, this one control affects the entire skeleton, which could really help with any scenes of the construct launching itself at our hapless fish. 

  I didn't forget the coral though, and looked into methods of construction. I've had ideas about making a model like this before and although I had a more advanced version that is now missing, I have developed a fairly sound method of reproduction. My plan is to work in a blendshape that will have the coral branches growing from a point of origin. I might simplify the geometry as the shapes get smaller, but right now the current shape is a hexagon which might make things a little tricky.

Narrative Project: The Scales On The Fish

   My primary task this afternoon was to get a working system for having a set of alien scales grow from the body of Ravine's main fish characters. To do this it was suggested to me to use blend-shapes, which I spent the afternoon working on in order to get the transformation right

  The core idea was to create a layer that would go within the skin. This layer would fit to the body by being wrapped around using a lattice deformer. At the time a model was unavailable, so I made do with a sphere contorted into a rough shape to represent the fish's body. The final setup would need more precise positioning as the the idea is that the scales would grow from around the eyes and sweep towards the tail as they spread.

   Because I was using blendshapes, I could not simply use the duplicate tool, as that would only duplicate the geometry of each scale and not the blendshape.

  Another possible change to the final model is perhaps something less formally arranged. This is supposed to be a parasite, something alien to the fish so sharing the aesthetic of the environment it should be distorted and strange.

  The idea was that the spread would progress along the side of the body. But to give it a natural feel the scales should ideally look like they're growing independantly. This was achieved by giving variance as to when the scales would start and how quickly they would stop growing.

 We may be able to simplify the visual appearance but this is the UV map of the scale. Structurally however I think I have stripped what I can without losing perceptual quality. Though I do wonder if smaller, lower-polygon versions would be useful at any point.

Narrative Project: Sound Refinement

I had been meaning lately to get this out of the door to progress with other elements due to an approaching deadline. However so far I think there is a marked improvement. Some sounds could do with further improvement but the key ones such as the sound of the fish swimming and struggling in the water were the priority.

Narrative Project: Ravine Development Part 3

  Some further work done on the ravine. As was suggested some further depth was added (and as it turns out we need the ravien floor) and the ravine mouth was openined up more. The next step will be to add some ledges and make the rock more jagged. But so far I think we're making steps in the right direction. I also give ends to the ravine as it would be surrounded by a seabed in the final production.

    The sphere represents our fish. As can be seen this ravine is pretty large, which should give us plenty of time for the fish to travel upwards. It was suggested that there could be a sharp turn to encourage the fish to swim up but that proved slightly difficult to insert without tearing the lower sections of the ravine which would make moving the camera more difficult as we would have less space to work with.

  

  Some defenition was added to the ridge to make the mouth look sharp. But further polygons will be needed to give the ledges a degree of jaggedness. Which should be easily doable.

  To add ease to contruction and animation I have divided the ravine into three sections that can be switched on and off in the layer view depending on on what angle we need to look at. One for the left-hand side, one for the right-hand side and one for the floor. I suppose it also makes seeing the floor a little easier in the wireframe view. In theory these can all be stitched together for the final model. But for east there could be be a construction layer set and a final polygon set with all the lines connected. Currently the join between the rock and the ground looks rather artificial when smoothed out due to the sharp line. Being presumably sand or part of the rock shelf, it looks too neat.

  Although thinking about it, the join could do with some unevenness to it anyway as it currently all joins on the same level which is unrealistic.

Narrative Project: Development of the Ravine

  Today I looked into some progress with the ravine, the main location for the events in the narrative animation. This went though a couple of iterations as it initially got very complex, so I looked into some advice into how I could simplify the design. For this I went largely back to basics with the shape. Speaking with a first-year the thought occurred of giving the ravine more space in the middle, in order to give the camera and the fish room to move about without an ever-present opening above.

  There is still a little more work to do with this. As I might give the ravine floor more depth and see what I can do with the ravine mouth. But the important part right now is the bowels of the ravine, as that will be where the second fish spends most of its time.

   The concept art I am working from included rocky outcrops, another thing that could be added to give us room to work. It would also give a platform for plant life as the thing about a ravine is it is a very steep drop to the bottom and there might be little place for plants to settle and grow. Developing this will be my next step. The other thought was closing off the ends, especially as that is what the ravine does on the surface, and right now it seems a little jarring that where the crack is closing, the tunnel is just as wide as it is in the middle.

  To get a sense of scale I brought in some of the blocked out plants of the last version of the model and set them somewhere. The fish will be smaller than these so the camera could find itself very close to the walls.