R&D
Concept
Design
Rig
Hyperrealism. Technical. Explorative.
No BS!
Technical Challenge
Can we save money and use only Cinema 4D to create hyper realistic animations and rendering of these fantastical worlds and creatures? No Houdini, no fancy plugins like Greyscale Gorilla, just good old Cinema and me : )
Fun fact!
The abdomen of dragonflies is made up of 10 parts so they technically have a 10-pack--talk about being fit... Sadly these epic little guys only live up around 6 months :'(
01
RESEARCH
Anatomy of Dragonfly
Specifically its lovely face :)
- iridescent and metallic colors
- hairs along the face in specific areas
- short antennas
- hexagonal pattern on eyes
- made up of three main parts: head, thorax, abdomen.
- incredibly thin wings--corrugated structure with veins showing through
- three pairs of legs
- 2 pairs wings (individually controlled)
02
Flight References
How do their wings actually function individually?
My focus is the dragonfly face but if I did research on the motion of dragonflies either way so that when time permits I can animate the full beast.
They're wings have a tiny little portion called the stigma that acts as a teeny tiny weight for stabilized flight and just the right amount of mass-crazy!!
DEVELOPMENT
Topology / Modelling
The wings were what excited me but scared me the most. I attempted to bring in an svg file from illustrator by image tracing a wing photo--but that was too heavy for C4D.
Instead, I modelled the wings all by hand.
maybe 2.5 hours for the little wing and.. the big wing.... :')
I really spent 90% of this project on my model because I reaallly wanted the rig and the texturing process to work smoothly.
Rigging :D
I was SO excited to FINALLY get to rig. I had never properly rigged except for a tiny baby hand that was never used.
I set up my wing rigs in a very organized fashion (look at the layer structure!!)
And the wing joints were coming together!!
.
.
... But my mesh was too heavy to bind to.
Little Wins!
Setting up controllers, working with expresso and setting up the user data for "animators", and "rigging" my little antenna were definite wins.
Look at that little guy <3
