CGI development

After enjoying the physical creation of my stop-motion set it was time to create the CGI counterpart. exactly the same pre-production material was used to acquire measurements needed to achieve the same aesthetic. the process is very different using 3D software such as Maya which I will talk you through.

Similar to the physical set, the first port of call was the bones of the shop, the base model. the difference with this medium is very apparent, no materials, no drying times of adhesive, no cutting, no restricted space and no tools needed. this reduced the time needed to create the model greatly as there was unlimited space and material to work with.

Like the painting stage of the physical set the next stage for the CGI set was to texture the shop. I started by grabbing the UV map of the shop which gave me the chance to use photos taken of the physical set to use as the texture for the CGI set.

Here is the re-painted UV. as you can see the physical set was used to re-map onto the model which would achieve a very similar aesthetic, this also makes texturing a less time consuming process as I didn't have to create the textures myself, this is contradictory to what Barry Purves said in his seminar "you have to make all the textures from scratch" when he was stating his reason for preferring stop-motion. this may be true but if you hybridise the process which is what I have done here then the two mediums go hand in hand.

Here is the applied UV on the shop as well as extra assets that needed creating where the UV map looked flat such as the extruded shop window and window boards.

I also needed to create the signs to map onto the windows at the front of the shop, this was done in Photoshop working from the concept designs created in pre-production. 

I applied the same technique of UV mapping to achieve the right aesthetic and here is the results

As you can see the ability to create as much as you want without needing extra materials or space like you would with a physical set shows the advantages of CGI animation. I also was able to add a surface shader to the windows in the form of a blinn where I could add reflectivity to the windows where they would behave and look more like actual windows which would have required real glass or something similar for the physical set but anything other than glass would run the risk of looking tacky and face, also the precaution of bearing in mind anything that might be reflecting off the glass and showing up on the camera. But this demonstrates how (when you are aware of the processes) one can appreciate how much consideration has gone into a stop-motion animation to achieve these life-like effects instead of that underlying theory that anything is possible with CGI that takes away some of the magic.

Now the set is created the next stage is the sheep. I decided to use one sheep for this experiment so I could spend more time getting the right motion right and focusing on the rig inside which I didn't have much experience with.

Due to the renderer I was using the black I chose looked very washed out so had to tinker with the settings to get the desired look. this goes to show the differences between the mediums as well, in stop-motion the lighting isn't generated so you see the effect in real time whereas CGI needs to be rendered to see the outcome. 

At this stage the synthesis between my question and my practical is apparent as the two techniques were very much different, especially the character. the tangibility is 100% with the stop-motion whereas the CGI is almost at 0%. this can easily show the appeal of stop-motion to the craftsman, when you create something yourself with raw materials you get the feeling of accomplishment rather than feeling you have told the computer what to do and sat back to watch it generate this world that you have told it to create. but the appearance is one of the main driving forces of animation and clearly it is much easier to create more photo-realistic results in a shorter amount of time and with no materials. but when we think about more dark and macabre animations then we start to lean towards preferring stop-motion as a medium of animation as CGI runs the risk of falling down the uncanny valley which invokes a negative response from the audience.