Week 1 - Studio 3 start

During this week our Studio 3 started and we were introduced with a new subject for our final project, VFX. Amit briefed the class about how we will be creating our own short film with 3D modeling, 3D animation and visual effects implemented in this project.

It is our first time ever touching the field of VFX and Film making, it is going to be a very exciting trimester.

We were also introduced to Helgi who will be our VFX instructor for this trimester. During our class break I had a short meeting with my group (Jamie and Natasha), we started brainstorming which ideas can we go for with the story, we chose the plot of a deserted protagonist in Dubai, it is in a post apocalyptic state and the protagonist will be planning out a map to where she will be scavenging for supplies, we also decided that she will be having robotic arm and leg to follow the story of our project which will be set in the future and for our 3D modeling and animation aspects to be implemented in the film, and in the last scene we will be doing a map painting of Dubai overthrown with sand, we chose Burj Khalifah to be the main subject for this scene because it is an iconic structure in the U.A.E.

Natasha is our team lead and she assigned our tasks for this project. She will be working on the robotic arm, I will be working on the robotic leg, and Jamie will be working on the Animations for the models and the Matte Painting.

After our meeting we consulted our Amit and Helgi with our plot for our short film and what 3D model, animation, and VFX will be implented in the film and they approved of our idea.

During the weekend me and my team started working on our animatic for our pitch presentation this Wednesday, I was assigned to model a rough 3D structure of the Burj Khalifah and to work on the environment as well.

I started researching how the Burj Khalifah was built, I watched a couple of YouTube video tutorials on how to model the Burj Khalifah, sadly I could not find any tutorials with 3Ds Max as the software that is being used but I did find one tutorial and Maya was being used, I used this tutorial and followed how the publisher modeled the Burj Khalifah.

Here is the video by 3D Stuff published on Dec, 1 2017:

I found this tutorial very helpful, it took me back to the days where I was still studying architecture and learning about the basic fundamentals of a buildings structure, even though it was created in Maya, I was able to implement it in 3Ds max with how it was constructed, I'm glad with how the model that I created turned out from achieving a great silhouette of the Burj Khalifa. Here is the rough model I did of the Burj Khalifa for our animatic: