3D ANIMATIONS
CHEATERMINATOR
T-800 here for a shock!
Fun quick little project which took about 3 weeks start to finish, Wanted a challenge for how close I could make the CGI look a like the original in terms of look and cinematography.
Had this idea for a while, A tribute to one of my most favourite franchises ever.
Credits:
Ramtin Ahmadi - Art Direction, Execution and Sound
2017
Technical Overview
From the get go I knew the rigging of this character was going to bring a few challenges.
The shoulder rig in particular, for it was made of three mechanical pieces which needed precise rotation for each of its individual axes. So a complex network of aim constrains solved that problem.
I also ended up building an additional rig with body proportion adjustments to represent as the female counter part of the story!
It was my early days of playing around with Houdini, So I decided to add a bit of CHOPS jiggle to the wires and send it back to maya. It turned out ok and for sure a very welcome addition in my box of tools!
Texture painting was done in Mudbox, It was one of the best 3D texture painting solutions at the time. The roughness pass was also painted seperately.
Most of the background elements were nothing but a super high resolution image purchased online. It was further enhanced and adjusted to fit more in each shot. IT helped quite a lot filling much of the screen, leaving me room to spend most of my time on the characters instead.
The lighting and rendering were done using Maya and Arnold and Nuke for compositing.