Project Case Study
Bal Seal Engineering
Robot Seals Animation
The client wanted an animation to showcase two of their industrial robot joint and end effector seals which are approved for resistance to water, soap, fuels, etc. This animation will be highlighted in an upcoming event as well as used for their website and sourced for promotional prints.
Production Process Breakdown
Client Storyboard
They already had a detailed and thorough storyboard which greatly helped to jump start the project:
CAD Files Import
But before any real production work could begin, I needed to import and convert the CAD files of the seals in to Maya.
They converted fairly well, but the geometry tesselation was a bit off so had to rebuild the rings and separate the pieces needed for animation later:
They converted fairly well, but the geometry tesselation was a bit off so had to rebuild the rings and separate the pieces needed for animation later:
LookDev
Next step was to explore some options for the overall look and style of the animations, called "LookDev." I provided these test renders to help decide what worked best for their needs:
Animatic
This early animatic served as a rough visual for what the final animation would become. Using screen playblasts from Maya with no materials or lighting to be able to quickly iterate through changes - this helped to block out the scenes and overall pacing. The final animation ended up being quite different for some shots as we worked out cuts and camera moves in this early phase:
Simulation
Next was to complete the liquid simulations. This project included three main simulations which were done in simplified versions of each scene, cached to disk, then imported in to the main project files for each scene. All simulations were done using Bifrost in Maya - a very powerful node-based 3D animation programming framework:
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Maya Bifrost node graph for one of the simulations:
Early splash test:
Validation Render
Every shot is rendered in multiple layers - such as background, factory equipment, robot, seals, liquid, etc. This validation render is run at very low quality settings so that it can be rendered quickly - but then composited all together as a technical checkpoint to make sure all the render layers are set up as I'll need them for the final composite:
Additional Water Effects
The water tank scene needed to show interaction between the robot and the water - so additional elements were added in to the final composite such as a splash, bubbles, and dripping water:
Final Render
Finally - its time for the final render once everything up to this point had been reviewed and approved by the client. The final animation had some camera pauses to allow for on-screen graphics to be added later, I have edited those out here for brevity: