Category: Exploratory practice

In this team project, I was mainly responsible for character design and modeling—from the initial concept sketches to the final 3D models. I also took part in creating visual effects for some of the shots, including scene compositing and adding dynamic elements. These tasks not only helped me improve my modeling and post-production skills, but also gave me a deeper understanding of the importance of each role in team collaboration, providing valuable experience for my future creative work.

Character design

The initial concept focused on the character’s descent into darkness, with an overall style leaning toward the dark and twisted. The plan was to collect and integrate elements such as fragmentation, glitches, and dislocation to create a chaotic and uncontrollable visual effect, enhancing both the emotional tension of the character and the narrative intensity of the piece.

Building on the initial design, the character was further developed to embody more monstrous features. Inspired by the conceptual approach of Silent Hill, the character’s inner negative emotions, trauma, and pain were visualized through a distorted and grotesque appearance, enhancing both psychological depth and visual impact. Unstable body structures, deformed facial features, and other unsettling details were used to create a strong sense of horror and oppression, thereby strengthening the overall expressiveness of the design.

Character modeling

• modeling

• material

Vision effect

During the production process, I used the Vellum Solver in Houdini for physics-based simulations, mainly to create realistic motion for cloth and soft-body objects. By adjusting constraint parameters and collision settings, I was able to achieve more natural and believable results, enhancing the realism and visual impact of the scene. This process not only improved my understanding of the Vellum system but also deepened my hands-on experience with dynamic simulations, laying a solid foundation for more complex effects in future projects.

Reflection

Through this group project, I gained a deeper understanding of the importance of teamwork. Each member was responsible for different tasks—ranging from initial concept development, character design, modeling, and animation, to post-production. Everyone performed their roles well and worked collaboratively. Although we encountered some challenges, such as communication issues and delays in progress, we managed to overcome them by adjusting our plans and redistributing tasks, ultimately completing the project successfully.

In this project, I was mainly responsible for character design and modeling, and I also contributed to some of the visual effects. This not only helped me improve my technical skills but also taught me how to manage time effectively and coordinate with others under tight deadlines. In particular, the process of exchanging ideas with team members made me realize how important it is to think from multiple perspectives and to stay flexible when working on a collaborative creative project.

Overall, this group assignment provided valuable hands-on experience and strengthened my sense of responsibility and teamwork. I believe this experience will be a great asset to my future studies and creative work.

My inspiration comes from the weekly dormitory kitchen inspections I conduct, which are highly frequent and relatively monotonous repetitive tasks. This has led me to ponder that if robots become widely adopted in the future, they could potentially take over such tasks, not only improving efficiency but also freeing up human labor to focus on more creative or complex endeavors.

I plan to design a small aircraft for carrying out dormitory kitchen inspections. To achieve this, I researched a variety of references, with the designs of aircraft in the game StarCraft serving as my primary source of inspiration. I extracted certain design elements and noticed that many of the aircraft resembled insects in appearance, which greatly inspired me. Additionally, the small flying insects commonly seen in the dormitory corridors made this design concept seem even more reasonable. Combining these inspirations, I created my small aircraft design.

Story script

• version_1

This was the first version of my story, but Teacher Clouds pointed out that it lacked plot and twists, making it a bit dull. So, I revised it and developed a second version based on the original.

• version_2

The protagonist bought a smart cleaning robot during a big sale. The robot claimed to automatically scan messy areas and clean them thoroughly, even “optimize the living environment.” At first, it performed impressively, leaving the house spotless. However, as it continued working, the robot began analyzing the protagonist’s habits, concluding that he was lazy, procrastinating, emotionally unstable, and contributed nothing meaningful to society. Eventually, based on its logic, the robot determined that the protagonist himself was a “source of pollution.” Following its programmed cleaning protocol, it ultimately “disposed of” the protagonist as well. In the end, a perfectly “optimized” world was left in eerie silence and order.

• 2.0_Storyboard

Robot model

• modeling

• texture

• animation

• render

Composition

I used Planer Tracker to replace the original pattern with my desired design and made it follow the camera movement naturally, achieving a seamless integration with the footage.

Final effect

Reflection

Through this project, I came to realize that coming up with a complete and engaging story is much more challenging than I had imagined. Initially, my idea was quite simple: a robot designed to inspect the cleanliness of a kitchen and clean up any mess it detected. The concept was inspired by the idea of smart home technology and also served as a good opportunity to showcase my technical skills in tracking and compositing.

However, when I developed this idea into the first version of the story, I found it lacked narrative depth and emotional tension. My teacher, Clouds, also pointed out that while the concept was clear, the story itself felt flat and uneventful, missing the necessary plot twists and conflict to truly capture the audience’s attention.

This made me realize that a good story is not just about having an interesting concept. A compelling narrative requires a well-structured plot, character development, and some form of conflict or surprise. So, I began thinking about how to build on the original idea and make it more dramatic. Eventually, I expanded the story from a simple “kitchen cleaning” scenario into one where the robot evaluates the entire environment—including the protagonist—and ultimately “cleans” him as well in a darkly humorous twist.

Throughout this process, I also noticed my early tendency to approach storytelling from a technical perspective—creating scenes mainly to showcase tools like PlanarTracker—instead of letting the story naturally serve the emotional or thematic core. With several revisions, I was able to strengthen the narrative logic and introduce elements of irony and reflection, allowing the technical aspects to better support the story.

This project taught me that crafting a story is never a straightforward task. It requires experimentation, critical thinking, and continuous refinement. This experience has not only improved my storytelling skills but also provided valuable insights that will benefit my future creative work.

The story is presented in the form of a VR game, where the protagonist discovers that the bathroom mirror world has been filled with many gems. By controlling his reflection in the mirror, he can transfer the gems into the real world. Driven by greed, the protagonist continuously moves the gems until the mirror world is emptied. However, this triggers a secret exchange ritual, and the protagonist is replaced by his reflection, losing his freedom.

Idea ＆ Story

At the beginning of the project, each of us created a story based on the concept of causality. My story depicted a conversation between my present and future self, but it was not selected due to a lack of detail.

Art ＆ Scene

I searched for many real-life bathroom references, including both luxurious and ordinary styles. I examined various designs, materials, and layouts to understand their aesthetic and functional differences. These references helped me explore elements like lighting, textures, and spatial arrangements to enhance the realism and atmosphere of my project.

The models for ordinary bathrooms were easy to find, but it was difficult to find suitable assets for luxurious bathrooms. Therefore, we needed to create many luxury bathroom furnishings ourselves. I analyzed and extracted luxurious elements from the references and sketched out the designs.

After that, we began creating the necessary model assets, starting with those that required interaction. I was mainly responsible for creating the following assets.

Then, I created luxurious bathroom furniture, including a bathtub, sink, shower, and cabinet.

At the same time, based on the scene’s needs, I also created a regular cabinet to correspond with the luxurious cabinet.

Model collection

At the same time, I was also responsible for collecting and organizing a wide variety of bathroom assets with different styles on both sides. This included researching and gathering models, textures, and references to ensure a diverse range of design elements, which would help in creating a more dynamic and flexible scene.

Asset link

• https://skfb.ly/6Sstu
• https://skfb.ly/6zDJn
• https://skfb.ly/6YMAZ
• https://skfb.ly/6VEqJ
• Post Soviet Bathroom | Fab
• Post Soviet Toilet and Bathroom | Fab

Motion capture

I imported the motion capture data recorded by my team members into Maya and retargeted the animation data onto the character’s skeleton.

Logo enhancement ＆ Poster design

My team members designed an initial logo draft, and I modified the colors, added textures, and made it look more refined.

At the same time, I also designed the promotional poster for the game.

Design a detailed machine model with complex mechanical structures and realistic material textures. Use Nuke for compositing to seamlessly integrate CG elements into live-action footage, matching lighting, color, and depth of field. Create a high-quality CG composite film with visually stunning sci-fi or industrial-style shots.

• 220125-Matchmove task

Remove lens distortion using LensDistortion (Undistort), track the 3D camera with CameraTracker, and generate a PointCloud. Add 3D objects like Card and Sphere in Scene1, align them using TrackingCone and Axis, and render the final 2D image with ScanlineRender.

• 290125-Clean up_QT ＆ Roto

Use Roto and Blur to add masks and blur specific areas, optimizing image details. Apply Copy and Premult for alpha channel operations to ensure proper element layering, making the composition more natural and enhancing the integration of CG with live-action footage.

• 060225-CG Machine Moodboard

Referencing the mechanical form of Warhammer 40K’s Dreadnought, design heavy armor, powerful weaponry, and intricate mechanical structures.

Recording the learning process of the Houdini course series, including software fundamentals, procedural modeling, VFX creation, and node-based workflows. Organizing notes, practicing with case studies, and summarizing key techniques and insights to enhance understanding and application of Houdini.

02-03-2025

Grassroots Procedural Modeling

Create a grid and scatter some points on it. Use the N attribute to control the orientation of the lines copied to the points.

Create two attributes:

• pscale (a float attribute)
• benddir (a vector attribute)

Create a sphere and add animation. Set up object collisions to interact with the grass, simulating the effect of grass being flattened, with natural bending and elastic recovery.

The sphere’s position should not be too low—slightly above the grid. Its size should not be too large to avoid errors during collision calculations.

Use polywire to convert the spline into polygons. Extract pscale from curveu, then invert the curveu values by subtracting them from 1. Finally, apply the modified pscale to polywire.

Rain object collision

In Houdini, use the pop network to create a particle system that simulates raindrops. Set attributes like particle speed, size, and lifespan to ensure the raindrops fall naturally. Adjust gravity, wind, and other physical parameters to optimize the raindrop motion. Import a static mesh and enable the pop collision node to make the raindrops collide realistically with the mesh. By tweaking bounce, stick, or slide collision behaviors, ensure the interaction between the raindrops and the surface follows real-world physics, enhancing the overall realism and detail of the effect.

Vine Procedural Modeling

Issue log: While entering code, I encountered a problem where the Attribute Wrangle didn’t work. After thorough checking, I found that it was due to issues with the capitalization of attributes. Therefore, it’s important to note that if the Wrangle node doesn’t show any errors, you should check for attribute and spelling issues.

My inspiration comes from the weekly dormitory kitchen inspections I conduct, which are highly frequent and relatively monotonous repetitive tasks. This has led me to ponder that if robots become widely adopted in the future, they could potentially take over such tasks, not only improving efficiency but also freeing up human labor to focus on more creative or complex endeavors.

Concept art

• My inspiration and the actual scene

I plan to design a small aircraft for carrying out dormitory kitchen inspections. To achieve this, I researched a variety of references, with the designs of aircraft in the game StarCraft serving as my primary source of inspiration. I extracted certain design elements and noticed that many of the aircraft resembled insects in appearance, which greatly inspired me. Additionally, the small flying insects commonly seen in the dormitory corridors made this design concept seem even more reasonable. Combining these inspirations, I created my small aircraft design.

At the same time, I want the appearance of the aircraft to feel more technologically advanced, rather than simply flying in and out. Therefore, I plan to design some cool particle effects, allowing the aircraft to gradually materialize out of thin air, enhancing its futuristic vibe and visual impact.

• The draft overall effect

Story script

Title: Dormitory Kitchen Drone Inspection
Scene: Dormitory communal kitchen, night, well-lit.
Characters:
Gallio: A dormitory resident, cooking instant noodles at night.
Drone: An intelligent inspection drone responsible for checking the cleanliness and usage of the kitchen.

Story Development:
The scene fades in, the kitchen is quiet, morning sunlight filters through the windows, and the air is fresh with a hint of breakfast aroma.
The drone slowly flies into the kitchen from the dormitory hallway, its four rotors emitting a faint buzzing sound, its camera flashing a red light as it begins its inspection.
The drone flies along the ceiling, scanning every corner with its camera, checking the trash bin, stove, and sink for cleanliness.
Suddenly, the camera shifts and notices a figure moving in the corner of the kitchen.
Gallio is concentrating on making a bowl of instant noodles, the water in the pot bubbling and steaming under the dim light.
The drone adjusts its posture and slowly approaches Gallio, its camera locking onto him, emitting a low “beep beep” scanning sound, intensifying the atmosphere.
Gallio senses the pressure, slowly lifts his head, his eyes filled with unease, staring at the hovering drone in front of him.
The drone scans again, confirming that the countertop is clean, the trash is properly disposed of, and Gallio is following the rules. Then, with a soft “beep,” a green check mark appears on its screen.
The inspection complete, the drone slightly tilts its rotors and turns to leave the kitchen.
Gallio lets out a sigh of relief and continues making his noodles. The kitchen returns to its quiet state, with only the bubbling of instant noodles breaking the silence.
(The scene fades to black, story ends.)

• 1.0_Storyboard