Well this is week 5, though on the class syllabus it says Week 7, this is because we didn’t start process blogging until week 2.
More and more lessons learned, I spent the last few weeks trying to make the Studio13 logo animate as if it were made of Jell-O. There are many ways to get this done. Deformers, Cloth Simulation, Cloth and Particle Simulation and Soft Body physics approaches. Last time I blogged, I mentioned that I had tried this in a number of tools. I settled on Maya and plowed ahead.
What I found was that 1) I needed to learn more about getting Maya animations into UE and 2) that the animations would be static, in that they will not respond to the physics in the UE world.
I really wanted the logo to be “live” in the world, so if someone bumped into it, it would jiggle. So, I went down the rabbit hole of trying to get that sort behavior by building it directly in UE. So, I played around with simple meshes and a variety of techniques. Where I ended up, was that Physics Materials in UE should be the way to do it, but there is simply not enough attributes to make it happen. That is not to say that they can’t be done, just that it was very much a fringe thing. This is counter to my main objective of building a fun exhibit and Virtual Production set to showcase what I have learned.
The big decision at this point was to simplify! Why try to learn 2 or 3 or 6 different applications (UE, Maya, Blender, Cinema 4D, nVidia Omniverse and Creator etc.) when what I really need is fluency in one. As I will never be a technical artist, it is just not my skill set, I can be a director and producer. In those roles I need to curate and guide the work of others to meet the overall goal. I am planning on using premade assets where possible, so it was time to focus on the tool that will get me where I want to be.. Unreal Engine.
So, I left a ton of work behind. I also learned some valuable things about myself and my process. Interoperability between applications is a key thing for me – building that sort of collaboration-optimized workflow. To that end, I was trying to use as many tools as possible and noodle through the interop issues. At the end of the day this is too ambitious.
With my pride a little bruised, I accept my limitations and am excited to try a new approach. Next time I will have a new location in the City scouted and begin to bring in more assets. Until then…
