Echos of time
Introduction
The original concept was adapted from Qirui Xuan. It tells the story of a small girl who mistakenly steps into a cave and suddenly ages into an old woman. At first, she struggles with the idea of maturing but after suffering the anxieties of growing older physically she leaves the cave and goes back to being the girl she was when she was younger. Through surreal/slightly horror visual style theme of time, fear and personal growth.
MY ROLE & CONTRIBUTIONS
I played a key role across the whole pipeline, I collaborated in the revision of the storyboard, shooting and camera movement with Raye. These discussions kept the creative ideas technically attainable. I was responsible for:
a. Character retopology.
b. UV unwrapping and material creation (toy elephant).
c. Rigging of the old woman character.
d. Animation & camera movement reference recording
e. Crawling animation
f. Lighting & Rendering
g. Debug & technical help
CHARACTER MODELING
I started with Quad Draw in Maya to create a low-poly model and to plan the way the topology looked. Next, I used the Smooth function to create a high-poly model. The UVs I then unwrapped based on the principles of facial and body topology I have followed. I designated different material regions by mapping out the UV layout to the desired Color IDs after the UV design was complete, after making the new map I colored the zones. I then created these Color IDs with the Vertex Paint tool within Maya. I exported it as an FBX file and imported the model into Substance Painter with the Color ID settings prepared. I applied fabric and other surface details in Substance Painter. This is when we finished our small elephant character modeling and texturing.
RIGGING OF THE OLD WOMAN CHARACTER
Rigging Workflow and Reasoning through Issues. When I got the old woman model, I first cleaned the mesh by deleting history and checking geometry. When I started I used an AutoRig workflow, and my initial design resulted in poor deformation quality. The first approach, Mixamo, improved the weights, but showed little control, especially regarding facial rigging. I created a hybrid workflow to deal with this:
a. Export the model as FBX.
b. Generate skin weights in Mixamo.
c. Import into Maya and retain the weights.
d. Rebuild the rig using Advanced Skeleton.
e. Set up facial rigging based on topology.
f. Manually refine joint placement and weights.
This methodology merged Mixamo’s productivity with Advanced Skeleton’s expertise, yielding a more stable and fully animation-ready rig. This example showcases the importance of testing and adapting workflows rather than relying on a single tool.
ANIMATION & CAMERA MOVEMENT REFERENCE RECORDING
I completed this filming process together with Honghao and Piggy at Honghao’s home.
CRAWLING ANIMATION
Aside from that, I also did all the animation for the crawling sequence inside the cave that included the little girl and the old woman. This section of the animation was the only part presented in Week 7. I filmed my own reference video of myself at home in order to make the motion more realistic. Using the same information, I decided to alter the crawling animation of the elderly woman by slowing down her movements. The young girl’s movement is smooth and fluid while the elderly woman’s is purposely less fluid. It also serves to highlight the physical limitations and reduced mobility that arise from aging.
In addition, I put the pivot point of the elephant on the most prominent vertex on its back. Then I snapped this point to the waist of the young girl. By further adjusting the rotation animation, I made the elephant follow the girl's movement.
LIGHTING & RENDERING
for the final lighting and rendering, I used point lights, spotlights, directional lights, and area lights to give a more dramatic and visually appealing result. Being someone who majored in photography, I was responsible for the lighting design. Not only had I realized that in the bedroom scene I needed to work out how to use soft natural light through the window rather than using a traditional three-point lighting setup, I had decided to create that lighting in a subtler way, making it feel realistic. Unlike the tunnel, on it, I used a strong directional light to convey the intense light source coming out from the exit (such that it guides the viewer’s gaze), adding to the transitions. While with the cave environment I used key light together with point lights and spotlights so that the side lighting on the character was strong. This created high contrast, underscoring the character’s emotions like shock and struggle, but also indicating danger in the surroundings.
The lighting design was thus entirely focused on the effect of contrast and direction for the sake of the storytelling and the heightened dramatic tone of the scene.
DEBUG & TECHNICAL HELP
Over the course of the entire project, I helped the team with several debugging and technical issues. Because of the large number and depth of interaction, I only included a handful of chat snippets, which were automatically translated as proof.
REFLECTIONS
Firstly, I think the feedback was positive on my work, but not great. This restricted growth opportunities elsewhere. In the future, I will proactively seek out more critical evaluation. File Management Issues.
Also, no uniform naming is the second biggest problem. I did that better than others, but it gave me too much extra work on renaming things. Files were disorganised and poorly organised files which resulted in delays in integration and rendering.
Above all, this exercise showed good collaboration and great technical implementation of the team effort. Personally, I found that this project clearly indicated teamwork and execution of good technical work in this project on technical work. It will be helpful for us to build upon that success.
For leadership and coordination skills, problem-solving methods are important as well. With a deeper understanding of production pipelines, I will concentrate into the following areas in future projects: earlier pipeline test, and the file organisation. The encouragement for more rigorous feedback. These are the enhancements and will be a great improvement in my technical practice and teamwork working during future production.
I was one of the technically more skilled members so I stepped very quickly into a leadership role that helped with the organization. I supported technical decisions and worked on troubleshooting problems in support of teammates to approach implementation.
Communication mainly took place through WeChat, which permitted the rapid sharing of images, videos, and feedback. There were no severe conflicts, and decisions were based on reasoned discourse and technical analysis. Problem Solving and Iteration.
Cave modelling problem:
When initial attempts were made during Boolean modelling, I failed so that instead of building a perfect model, lighting and shadows were used to hide the structure.
Rigging issue:
At first, auto rig tool did not work. So, advanced Skeleton was then used as the replacement procedure and workflow was revised.
FINAL OUTCOME
