Aztec.exe - A historical 360° experience
polycounter lvl 11
[EDIT] Current Post: Character Art
Hello!
Here is what we have been working on for our 6th semester project.
The basic idea is to create a 360 movie dealing with the conflict between blockbuster marketing and historical accuracy.
In this thread we will post the most important phases of development as well as the final movie once it is finished
Platform:
Experience running on Unreal Engine 4. Currently rendering the whole thing out as a 360° video.
Length:
Roughly 3.5 minutes
The Team:
Carl-Christian Gehl (@DerRazputin here on Polycount): Character Art, Character Concept, Rigging, Animation Setup
https://www.artstation.com/artist/derrazputin
Jakob Jan Steffen: Props, Animatic, Lighting
www.jjsteffen.com
Alexander Helbig: Environment Concept, Environment Art, Initial Story/Writing
Ramon Schauer (@Shyralon on Polycount): Environment Art, Lighting, Character Concept
www.shyralon.weebly.com
Phillip Hagmann & Damiano Picci:
Sound and Music
https://soundcloud.com/mudaze
https://soundcloud.com/phizzymuzziq
Moodboards & Concept
Overall, we knew from the beginning that we are going to have two environments, an aztec temple interior where the whole thing starts out and the top of a temple where a ritual sacrifize is taking place.
As always, everything starts with a moodboard:
As you can see a lot of these reference are really colorful, an aspect we wanted to carry over into the final environment but at the same time make everything look a bit more dark, intimidating and give it a bit of a threatening atmosphere.
For this environment no final concept was done as I created the final design while I was working in 3D.
For the city we took a lot of inspiration from the city of Tenochtitlan, which was build in the middle of a giant sea - an idea we really liked.
We did not want to portray the aztec culture as a primitive, barbaric culture as it is often done in blockbuster movies but rather focus on the highly developed aztec culture they really were.
Based on this moodboard, a final concept was created:
Character Concept:
We only wanted to focus on one real character, the aztec priest performing the ritual on top of the pyramid.
I was responsible for some inital sketches and design explorations:
These were then used by Carl in order to create the final concept he would built later:
That's it for now!
The next post in a couple of days will be about the final environments once we gathered all the images we need
Hello!
Here is what we have been working on for our 6th semester project.
The basic idea is to create a 360 movie dealing with the conflict between blockbuster marketing and historical accuracy.
In this thread we will post the most important phases of development as well as the final movie once it is finished
Platform:
Experience running on Unreal Engine 4. Currently rendering the whole thing out as a 360° video.
Length:
Roughly 3.5 minutes
The Team:
Carl-Christian Gehl (@DerRazputin here on Polycount): Character Art, Character Concept, Rigging, Animation Setup
https://www.artstation.com/artist/derrazputin
Jakob Jan Steffen: Props, Animatic, Lighting
www.jjsteffen.com
Alexander Helbig: Environment Concept, Environment Art, Initial Story/Writing
Ramon Schauer (@Shyralon on Polycount): Environment Art, Lighting, Character Concept
www.shyralon.weebly.com
Phillip Hagmann & Damiano Picci:
Sound and Music
https://soundcloud.com/mudaze
https://soundcloud.com/phizzymuzziq
Moodboards & Concept
Overall, we knew from the beginning that we are going to have two environments, an aztec temple interior where the whole thing starts out and the top of a temple where a ritual sacrifize is taking place.
As always, everything starts with a moodboard:
As you can see a lot of these reference are really colorful, an aspect we wanted to carry over into the final environment but at the same time make everything look a bit more dark, intimidating and give it a bit of a threatening atmosphere.
For this environment no final concept was done as I created the final design while I was working in 3D.
For the city we took a lot of inspiration from the city of Tenochtitlan, which was build in the middle of a giant sea - an idea we really liked.
We did not want to portray the aztec culture as a primitive, barbaric culture as it is often done in blockbuster movies but rather focus on the highly developed aztec culture they really were.
Based on this moodboard, a final concept was created:
Character Concept:
We only wanted to focus on one real character, the aztec priest performing the ritual on top of the pyramid.
I was responsible for some inital sketches and design explorations:
These were then used by Carl in order to create the final concept he would built later:
That's it for now!
The next post in a couple of days will be about the final environments once we gathered all the images we need
Replies
Here is part 1 of the environment.
This part was created by me, the other environment done by my team mates will follow a bit later.
Anyways, let's get to the images:
As always I would love to hear your feedback!
Next up will be Characters. Stay tuned for a couple more days!
Also like the props above - great reflections.
Nice composition!
@radiancef0rge Glad you like it
Glad you guys are enjoying our project so far. Let me add some of my character work to the mix. I was responsible for the whole pipeline from concept to production to rigging to MoCap setup. The rest of the team jumped on to help with animation in the end.
I used ZBrush and MODO for modeling, Substance for texturing and Maya together with Mixamo and Advanced Skeleton for rigging and animation:
Our motion capture setup consisted of 12 PlayStation Eye cameras. Tracking was done with iPi Soft and cleanup and additional animation were handled in Maya:
Faceware was used for facial tracking. I created a blend shape-based face rig using Jason Osipa's Stop Staring book as a reference and set up wrinkle maps inside of Unreal Engine. It was a big help in getting quality results within the very short timeframe we had for our project:
Stay tuned for our second environment post and the final video of the experience!
@Ged Thank you!
Will be interesting to see the final result of this
Meanwhile, my buddy @Shyralon did an interview with 80.lv where he talks about his approach to the temple environment:
https://80.lv/articles/building-and-texturing-aztec-temple-in-3d/
Could you tell me if i can buy your 3D model?
Thanks in advance.