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Suburban Circuit
Senior Thesis Film
This film was created entirely by me, Nick Alloca
under the advisement of Jim McCampbell and the Ringling College Computer Animation Staff.
Process
This project was completed over the course of my final three semesters at Ringling College of Art and Design and encompassed all aspects of the Animation pipeline.
Animatic
In the first semester working on this film, I created storyboards and a rough animatic out lining the story and shots of the film. It went through a variety of versions, changing based on story and scope until ready to be put into production.
Visual Development
While creating the animatic for the story, I also collected reference for developed concepts for the characters, trucks and set. They went through a variety of iterations and evolved side by side with the animatic.
Modelling the Characters
At the beginning of the second semester, I began modeling my characters and vehicles. The characters where originally modelled in Zbrush, retopoed in 3DCoat and brought into Maya to be rigged. The Trucks were created entirely in Maya and continued to evolve with the film.
Rigging
The next step in the process was quickly rigging my characters and trucks, then creating a layout pass of the film. The lizards and trucks were rigged using Advanced Skeleton in Maya. I made a blend test (in the section above) to ensure the lizards were rigged and skinned properly. The lizards, though having slight variations in their models, only use one rig. The trucks also share a rig, having wheels with attributes that allow them to rotate as the main controller is translated as well as a steering system controlled by the joint connected to the steering wheel.
Layout
After the characters were rigged and ready to be animated, I began the layout pass of my film. There wasn't much time for this and my layout turned out... rougher than others in my class. There were still sections of my film that needed a lot of clarification and the physics of the trucks needed to be figured out.
Animation
I had just about two months to get from the layout phase to having having the animation process 85% complete with at least two of my longest shots with the final animations. This was the biggest milestone of the project, and the faculty determined whether the film would continue production or if it wasn't up to the standards of the school.
The process of animation itself was fairly straight forward, and somewhat overwhelming. I worked on numerous shots at a time, starting with just keys, then adding breakdowns in stepped and later spline. Most of the lizard shots were fairly straight forward, waist up animation. The trucks served as more of a challenge. It took time to bring a realistic feel to them.
At the beginning of the third semester, I had another month to polish my animations and bring them to the point you see them at in the completed film.
Vehicle Physics and Animation
Getting the vehicle animation down was rough. I ended up resorting to Bullet in Maya to simulate the effects of gravity on the trucks. I ran simple geometric shapes through bullet simulations over ramps and impacting walls and other simple shapes. Once I got these simulations to a point I liked, I baked the simulations and copied them over to the roots of the trucks. I also copied those same animations, but offset, to chassis of the trucks to emphasis the impacts. Through this I was able to create more realistic movements for the trucks as they progress through the race.
VFX and Particle Simulation
The dust that is meant to trail the trucks posed a particular problem in the later stages of the film. Initially I had planned to use Maya Fluids to create the dust, going through the process of creating emulators connected to special rigs for the trucks. I had them working well enough to begin simulations in multiple shots just for the cache files to be far to large to send to the school's render farm. With the original method that I had spent so much time on no longer an option, I turn to the particle effects offered in Nuke. After bringing the trucks, emulators and cameras from every scene that required it into Nuke I was able to simulate the dust and fire that you see in the final film.
Maya Fluids
Nuke Particles
Lighting and Rendering
After the animations were complete, it was time to light every scene. This was something I really struggled with, often having scenes that were blown out or extremely oversaturated. Eventually I was able to get it to a point that was presentable and consistent throughout the film. It took dozens, if not hundreds of hours to render and re-render every shot on the school's render farm.
Compositing
As the rendered shots came in, I brought them into Nuke. I altered the color, saturation and focus and depth (through blurring certain objects) through the use of cryptomattes. Then I implemented the particles mentioned earlier and exported the scenes to tga files. I brought them into premiere, added sound and exported the final film.
Character and Vehicle Models
Character Turnarounds
Truck Turnarounds
Character Blendshape Tests
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