Final 3D Shots

We finished all of the 3D animation for Butter. I did shots 1-3 while Michelle C. did shots 4-6. For the lighting, I made sure that the shadow of butter can be seen clarly to indicate that he is indeed sitting in the plate. I did this by adding a directional light above him and on his left side.

Shot 1

We had problems with shot 2 which we dubbed the butt slap shot. The problem we had with it was that the butt slap was, although it was humorous,  kinda rudimentary. We had to give a purpose to this shot that balances both humour and character.

Shot 3

I also made sure that shots 4 and 5 are consistent regarding the position of the collar.

Shot 4

Shot 5

Shot 6

3D Animation

This is the my animation process for shots 1, 2 and 3. 

For shot 1, nothing really changed much from the block. I started experimenting with the lighting on this shot to spotlight on butter since this is when he is introduced.

Shot 2 was the most problematic shot. At first it was just a butt clench but Keat told us to make Butter slap his butt for show. It also needed more refinement to show a shift in weight. 

For shot 3, I refined the arc to make it snappier and smoother to fit the animation style we're going for. I also made his face point forward a bit in a profile rather than a side view so that his 2D face can be seen clearly. 

I also corrected the lighting for the plate to make it blend more nicely with the background. 

This is an example of it on shot 2. 

Rigging

I rigged our character during the term break. Butter is mostly just a spine skeleton extending up to the hair with extra joints for the collar and the butt.

For the controls, it's mostly just a spine control with aim controls for the butt and the collar. 

I weight painted the butter to have cream folds. During our research with the butter, we realized that when bent, the butter tends to have big chunks of folds both solid and mushy. This is because butter is made of butterfat but it is solid when frozen.

I used corrective blend shapes for the wrapper because it messes up whenever I bend the butter which it bends with. Here's an example for when the butter bends right.

Mudbox

I modelled the textures of the butter and the wrapper in mudbox. The normal maps for the wrapper and the butter are also included.

Wrapper

I've finished modelling the wrapper. I made the UV even so that the wrinkles would deform the texts.













I'll do the wrinkles and textures in mudbox. Jonathan has the PSD file for the butter wrapper. I'll use that for the diff elements in the wrapper such as the logo and the bar code.

This is a print of the UV map.

3D Modelling

Some screenshots of the butter while I'm modelling it in 3D. I did a basic UV map of it to make things easier then I just built up on that basic mapping. 

Character Gestures and Colour Test

I did some body gesture drawings of Butter to see how his movements and poses work along with the faces we're planning to use. 

I also did colour tests for Butter. 

Character Development- Wrapper Rsearch

I'm doing research for the butter wrapper for our character. I'm doing this because I'm the head of 3D and this is going to help us when it comes to modelling and texturing the character. The possible materials we're looking for are butter paper or aluminum foil. But we're currently leaning towards the aluminum foil. We think it would work better because it can actually be bent into a certain shape ( a wrapped towel or a bathrobe for this instance) and it looks shiny which suits our greasy character.

Feedback: Dane and Keat suggested that we should look at high collar fashion used by Elvis Presley and John Travolta. We could look at whole disco scene of Saturday Night Fever (1977).

Butter Research