Mechanical Arms - how I put it together - PAGE 3
I then started working on the environment for the robot to be in. I wanted the robot arms to interact with a traditional wooden dummy but also make that be able to attack him since the arms would be static in the environment. The robot would be able to rotate 360 degrees and watch the dummy. I wanted the dummy to have a feel like the device Paul Atraides fights in Dune.
I also built another of the devices which would be around the environment - this time a monitor screen bank which features images of various wing chun related media. Images depicting straight line theory and the legendary Ip Chun. I wanted to use this in my first shot so spent some time on it.
another of the monitor banks which I wanted to cut to in another shot - this one uses traditional gauges which I think are more interesting to watch visually.
I then started working on the environment which took quite a bit of time and went through some iteration. This was mainly because halfway through I was torn between following Chris Cunninghams style in Byorks 'all is full of love' video. However I was unable to obtain that pristine whiteness that is in his video... maybe in another project who knows ;)
I put the robot in the environment and played with the lighting. I rendered out some passes and comped them together and came up with the image below. At this point I realised that trying to obtain the Byork video style was actually running away from the moody feel of the Adidas Mechanical Legs video which was my original inspiration so I thought I'd stick to that look and try to obtain it.
So I revised the look and decided to start using Final Gather rendering to get a moodier lighting feel. After looking again at the Adidas video I realised that the back lighting on the legs really made it so I emulated that and built the environment again so if felt more gritty and like it was a hi tech lab in an old abandoned building/warehouse like place. I was far happier with the look and feel of this new direction...
I then added the other machinery I'd modelled into the scene...
At this point everything was pretty much ready to begin animating in the same scene. I made lighting adjustments as I went and added some more detail...