BOTRO'S ERRAND- MAYA AND BLENDER ANIMATION
This project was developed as part of the Animated Worlds class in Washington University in St. Louis. The project started with character modelling and animation in Maya and was moved to Blender for final set dressing and rendering.
INITIAL CONCEPT
Given the limitation of time for the development of the animation, a shorter format with simple character design was chosen. The final character design drew inspiration from Wall-e and Claptrap.
Claptrap from Borderlands series
Wall-e
CHARACTER MODELLING
To simplify the animation and rigging of the character, the character was constructed using multiple hard surface objects with simple join, slide, rotator components. The body shape largely borrows from the structure of Claptrap whilst using the head of Wall-e to allow for better expression and animation stylization. The modelling and rigging process was completed in Maya
Character model in Maya
Character model with full rigging
SET BUILDING AND MATERIALS
After animating in Maya, the character model and animation was exported to Blender. Materials for the character was subsequently made for the character in Maya using shader nodes. The final materials used were basic metallic shaders with basic noise for coloration variation and bump mapping. The set dressing was done using external asset packs, mainly Blenderkit. Assets were used from Blenderkit and were occasionally modified for props
Blender Scene examples
After rendering the animation, audio and video editing was done in premier.