General information:

MATERIA is a 3D short animation project which focused on testing how making such project could be done. It was originally planned to be made completely with OpenSource programs, but that idea later on restricted only to the 3D and 2D parts (Check list on the right). 720p Resolution was chosen because nothing had been before done in over SD (Pal) resolution, but we didnt want to go too far into HD terriotory as Rendering times and Hard disk capacity was running low.

MATERIA also is designated to act as pathfinder and recruiting project for longer 3D animated project of the same theme, and setting. As this first part is in fact, somesort of prologue for that project in story sense too. As it seems in non-commercial world it is so damn hard to convince people that you can pull something off and see what is this thing really going to be, this project is supposed to offer a glimpse of that for the possible recruits.

Design

Design for industry complex was clear from the beginning. It tries to melt together parts of really old and bulky factory like feel with this strange futuristic machines. Lighting was chosen to be dark and menacing to ramp up the mood and to illustrate the condition in which this place really is. Most equipments are broken or malfunctioning.

Danny (the main character) and in his suit and gear is loosely based on mix of Miner and Oil worker gear. Which is basicly what he does in the backstory. His clothes are really dirty as he works in small confined, messy places.

All of the design and story elements were done by Samuli Jomppanen who was the project leader for this project. The Director if you will. Samuli did most of the desing and project managing with some assistance from Toni Majaniemi.

3D Graphics

Samuli Jomppanen handled all of the visual aspects of the project. From modelling to final renderings. Main goal was to achieve the design targets. But in technical sense make managable scenes that use as little computer resources as possible. Meaning no too high definition models or textures were used for memory and rendering speed purposes.

Project uses Blender 2.49 as its main base for modelling and general scene building. However in some cases Blender 2.5 Alpha version was used for rendering, because its way much faster rendering speeds. Generally 2.49 was however the main tool in everything.

Animating Danny

After Danny character was modelled, it was passed to Arto Harju for rigging. This process involves making the logics on how the character moves and can be animated by animator. Once Arto was done with the rigging the model was passed to Dennis James for testing. After few adjustments the rig was ready to go into animation.

Dennis then started working on the animatics from vague instructions provided by Samuli. In the animating he used method where he films himself with webcam doing what the Danny character is supposed to do and then uses it as reference for the animation. After this rough version of the animation is edited, to block out the general movements and see if they look Ok in the Proxy set which has been done previously by Samuli. It usually takes some rework to get it right. But in the end once Samuli thinks its as he wants it, he imports the animation to the real scene and render it out.

Editing

Editing was handled by Toni. At first rough blocky cut was made from really low quality renders and the general outlook of the film was layed out on timeline. From there adjustments were made and additions that were felt missing.

After the so called GL Rendered version was finished and cut, somewhat lengthy and tedious rendering process took place where Toni was suplied with the scenes that would have the Final look of the film. After this another editing process took place where some changes were made in the scenes, timing and tempo of the film. Once this Mid quality cut was finished and the videotrack locked, so no further editing would be made, it was send to Pasi for music.

Music

For musical score, many Finnish composers were aproached, and those who showed interest, the best was picked. Pasi Pitkanen was given example track that consisted samples from other film scores, many of which were from big Hollywood productions. This example track was used as template for the real score.

Pasi then viewed the suplied the locked videotrack and template audiotrack few times to get the feeling of the style the project is after. Next thing was for Pasi, to make few themes and send them for Samuli to hear and to comment. After few such cycles and revisions the final score started to take form. The original length of the score was extented by 30 seconds, by adding a tail in the end for Credits purposes.

Sound

Sound has been troublesome always. This time Tuomas Pitkanen got the job of sound designing. He was given instructions to make dark, rusty and broken feeling to the place.