HEIST HAZARD

Heist Hazard is a 3D animation created by a team of four in SIAT’s Animation course. My role in the team was to edit the 3D render footages and sounds into one complete short film, and also took part in modeling, animating, and texturing specific 3D characters/ assets from scratch through iterations. The objective of this project was to demonstrate our skills in 3D animating, modeling, cinematography, storytelling and working as a team.

Summary

Heist Hazard takes place in space where three bandits gathered together to rob a space cargo ship. During their heist, however, they were surrounded by powerful security drones, which forced them to land on a nearby planet.

Video Editing

After all the 3D footages were rendered in Maya from five different computers to speed up the process, I gathered, labeled, and grouped them into different folders in order of the scenes. Then I imported them along with selected sound effects into Adobe Premiere Pro for video and sound editing.

During video editing, I discovered there were footages with unnecessary long moments, such as waiting for the spaceships to travel from a distance and into the camera. I later cut out those prolonged moments to make the scene a lot smoother. There were times that when I put the scene together following the sequential order that we planned in the storyboard, it didn’t feel right. Therefore, I consulted with my teammates to adjust the order of the footage that enhanced the overall narrative.

During sound editing, I added royalty-free sound effects to different actions and moments throughout the video and added voice recordings when the character speaks. All sounds were edited and trimmed to accommodate the duration of the actions and shots.

Character & Asset Designing

During the early stage, I designed Bandit “C”, its helmet, the space cargo ship, and cargo crate through sketches. Bandit “C” was initially designed to appear like a human being, but I later discovered that it looked too ordinary so I changed him into an alien race, which made him more stand out as one of the main characters and also suit the space theme of the narrative. Through iterations, I also managed to design a better and more suitable looking helmet for Bandit “C”.

As for the design of the cargo ship, I took inspiration from the artist Subin Kim and modified it to fit in with the narrative. Furthermore, I designed a mechanism that allows the cargo ship to grab individual cargo crates around the “ring” of the ship.

3D Modeling

Once I finalized the designs, I drew reference sketches of the helmet and the character with front and side views in Photoshop so I can model them with the correct sizes and shapes from the original designs. On the other hand, I used Subin Kim’s concept art as a reference for the space cargo ship model.

In the first iteration of the Bandit “C” model, I initially modeled it in a simpler and less defined form so I could have more time to work on the other models. But then I realized this character took the most screen time than any other thing, so I had to make him more stand out by adding more details in the shape of the armor in the second iteration. At the same time, I also made him taller and muscular to display the toughness characteristic better.

After I completed the model of Bandit “C”, I received feedback that the character didn’t fit in with the other two bandits because of the color choice and looked way too clean since they all had elements in red color. Therefore, I changed the texture that will suit the overall aesthetic of the bandit team by adding new colors, worn-out layers to the textures, and even a cape that resembles a real-life bandit.

3D Animating

After finalized all the models, I rigged bandit “C” with Maya’s built-in humanIK feature for animating later on. In order to get the model to be animated correctly, I had to carefully paint the weight of the “skin”, which was the most difficult part. This was because there were hidden parts with the incorrect weight that I didn’t discover and caused some parts of the skin to deform when I moved the corresponding body parts. Luckily I was able to solve that by being more patient, I checked every single individual body parts and painted every surface areas with the right skin weight.

Once I perfected the character rigging part, I imported bandit “C” into a new scene with the environment of an alien planet that I created. I started animating the character from there. As for the space cargo ship, I passed it to other teammates who mainly worked on the space scene for animation work while I focused on the planet scene.

In the first iteration of the animation, there weren’t any facial expressions from bandit “C” which made the overall narrative emotionless. To improve that in the final iteration, I created eight different kinds of facial expressions and blended them with the blend shape feature. I animated the facial expressions by adjusting the blending of each expression.

Takeaways

Overall, I successfully met the objective of demonstrating my skills in 3D animating, modeling, cinematography, storytelling and working as a team. Our team presented the video to the whole class on the last day of the course. In the end, we received an “A” letter grade and the highest of the class out of other teams for this project from our instructor.

From this project, I learned the importance of orientation and communication in a team, as we often passed materials (3D models, texture files, etc.) to each other throughout the entire process of the project, we had to make sure everyone was on the same page. I realized the efficiency of work when there were clear communications and goals, especially when it comes to picking up each other’s work.

Moving forward from this project, my technical skills with Maya and video editing had improved drastically after I put numerous hours into the project. Moreover, I learned how to collaborate with other teammates much effectively.