4D PROJECT

Project Brief
Create a motion graphic for a live performance of your band.

Minimum length: 15 seconds
Target Length: 210 seconds

Jump to final outcome

Animation Research

Song Choice
EDM music is very broad, so leaning mostly to the dance side of it. Want something with a beat but not an overwhelming one. Narrowed it down to the following four:
Chosen song: Tiesto ft. Tate McRae - 10:35
Ducks...
Not technically animation, but o2's adverts from a few years ago used ducks at a pool party, which is a theme that would fit in well with the established norm from the previous 2 projects.
Animated Music Videos
Some existing released videos of popular dance songs using animated graphics (though these tend to mostly be lyric videos in this regard).
Live Performance Animations
Creamfields galore. Live performance graphics tend to be more about motion than anything else. there's a lot of flashing but not a lot of flashy.
2019's cream fields backdrop is interesting In particular, because it's predominantly just random pattern vs anything fully animated. The rest rely on a lot of strobing.
3D Animations
Some examples of 3D animation. Not technically related to live performances, but 3D animation is an area I want to explore. A mix of After effects, Maya and blender software used below:

Learning modelling

Decided early on that I want to do something that's not within my current skill set for animation. Stop motion/2D animation with after effects editing would likely fit well with a dance genre animation, but it's not something particularly hard to do in comparison to full 3d animation. 

Hopefully would like combine 3d modelling using blender with possibly editing in after effects if possible. As a fallback option if 3d modelling proves too difficult, will use 2d graphics with after effects instead.

Chose blender as the choice of software, as it allows for 3d modelling and animation within one app.
Beginner Shapes
Having never used blender ever, thought it was best to follow a structured learning path for this (LinkedIn Learning) to learn the very basics. Will mix in other sources once I feel confident enough in navigating the UI.
The beginning of the tutorials are very basic, but they have allowed me to understand how to manipulate shapes (easier than I thought it would be).
Lighting is very important in blender - Final renders don't do this for you, so it has to be planned in whilst modelling using different lighting options to achieve various rays/beams/shadows etc.
Basic House
Breaking out of any tutorials, wanted to try and create a very basic house scene. Knowledge wasn't quite there yet to put a roof on, but otherwise it's ok modelling wise, albeit very basic...
Basic Ring
Broke out again from tutorials and just played about. Used a simple object to allow me to play with lighting and colour shading.
Starship
The next part of the tutorial on LinkedIn Learning. This tutorial related more to manipulating shapes, in particular creating a complex object from just a cube.
The tutorial also played about with lighting and colour, probably more than the previous ones have.
The Blender Classic Donut
Whilst LinkedIn Learning is helping understand the core basics, I don't feel like it's really diving into more complex operations quick enough. Found a series of tutorials on YouTube by Blender Guru, who covers similar content but creates something that's a lot more impressive.
Few example beginner tutorials (4 out of 14 below; total tutorial time approx 5h total)
Basic shape:
Colouring and lighting:
Sugar strands and application:
Scene arrangement backdrop:
Final adjustments and Rendering:
3D Render
Really happy with the end result, though it was literally a clone copy of the tutorial. Did try to adjust it in places so it was slightly different. The next challenge in the development phase is to create something without a tutorial ...
Next up: Animation

Learning animation

Animation is more important than the modelling stage, so want to play around with different types of animation, in particular rigging and physics simulation.
Camera Animation
Part of the previous tutorial, learnt how to use camera panning as an animation tool.
As seen above, the motion is quite blunt in how it starts and stops, so it needed to be adjusted to prevent this (below):
With motion corrected, next played with pan and zoom whilst in motion:
Pre-render check to make sure it's animating properly before final render:
Camera Animation Render
Rigid Body
Rigid body seems to be a vital part of most animation in blender, so sticking with the tutorials from BlenderGuru, as he seems to be the best at explaining processes.
Needed a new model for animating objects using rigid body:
Basic gravity using rigid body:
Chain held within place:
Wrecking ball motion:
Impact timelapse:
Nailed the 3D modelling and cube impact, however the animation appears a bit slow. Need to speed it up slightly so that it look's more real-time.
Rigid body animation in material view:
Rigid Body Animation Render
Deviated a little from the tutorial in regards to materials that impact the end result (putting my own spin on it). Overall, it works really well. Once I begin development, I would like to incorporate this somehow with the tartan dots logo (a destruction entrance of sorts).
Audio Visualisation
A quick mini tutorial I found scrolling TikTok: visualising sound using meshes. Didn't realise this was something that could be done in blender, so it'll be very useful later on in the development stage.
It's not as perfect as I thought it would be (and for some reason the bottom is moving as well), so would maybe need to edit the song file to only isolate the main beat from the rest of it (I assume its the mixing that's causing the problem).

[Sound removed to avoid copyright] 
Fluid Simulation
Probably the worst thing to master, fluid simulation is a nightmare. When it works, it's great, however it's so inconsistent. 
Abandoned exploring fluid simulation further; not sure if I'm doing something wrong or its extremely buggy, but it never seems to do what you tell it to, even when following tutorials.

Storyboard

Song Lyrics
With 10:35 having a full array of lyrics to work with, I want to break them up into "scenes" to make it more manageable, and allow me to better construct a storyboard. With the decision to go with visuals over music video, there will be less of a story, but I still want to make it fit within parts of the song.
Essentially there are 15 scenes (excluding repeated verses 7, 8 and 9, as these are minor edits of others). Some are a lot more complicated than others, so the priority is to concentrate on the more effective ones first (likely the ones in the mid section of the song). 
Scenes
1 to 3:
4 - 8:
9 to 21:
22 to 23:

Asset development

Duck
Wasn't really sure how to begin creating a duck, so followed the tutorial below. I did however heavily change the design whilst following (as the duck he creates is very odd looking).
The worst part to model on a rubber duck is the eyes. They have a slight indent that isn't that easy to achieve neatly. ended up sculpting and smoothing to get to an acceptable look.
Duck Render:
Tartan Dots Logo
With the project being a continuation of 2D and 3D, want to include the logo somewhere in the animation, but ideally integrated into it rather than an overlay.
Easy enough to model. Used the same grid that was used to create the 2D logo in illustrator. Bevelled off the edges to get the curved shape.
Logo Render:
Record Player
Wanted a clean looking minimalistic record deck, so chose this Sony one below. Wont be modelling the lid as it's not needed (and would likely interfere with the animation).
The hardest part to model was definitely the tonearm. Getting a curve and a straight end required some clever sculpting to achieve a bent pipe look.
Render:
Champagne Glass
Didn't use any particular glass imagery to create the glass (all from memory). Wanted a cocktail style glass. attempted to play again with fluid simulation but for some reason it 9 times out of 10 ends up falling through the glass. no more fluid simulation from this point.
Render:

Animation Development

Scene 1: Spinning Ducks
For this scene, it's all about rotation and lighting, along with a bit of transparency effects.
Font: Archivo Black
Initially wanted the ducks to use the rigid body structure so that they could act independently from the spinning record, but for some reason the collision was causing them to jiggle and bounce off the record. Instead they're joined to the spinning record. Little bit less flexibility with regards to the scene but it works ok.
Scene 2: Falling Ducks
Falling ducks is all about motion and randomisation.
First attempt: Rain simulation
Thought that creating a rain simulation would be the easiest way to achieve falling ducks, along with allowing me to reuse the scene for ducks landing into puddles. The simulation however doesn't work as intended. the ducks fall successfully, however lighting doesn't penetrate the area correctly, and the puddle below the rain has issues rendering.
2nd more successful attempt: Repurposed Rigid body
Getting around the issue, I've repurposed part of the champagne ducks scene to look like falling ducks. They're a little bit clumped in some parts, however they do have a more natural fall compared to the rain sim.
Scene 10: Champagne Ducks
Champagne ducks taps into falling objects and realism.
Probably the easiest so far to create, as the rigid body simulation does most of the work. It is however a bit overloaded with ducks.

Progress...

Animating and 3D modelling has proved to be very time consuming, especially for the limited time for this project. With this in mind, creating animations for the full song is unachievable, especially with the time it takes to render each scene (1m per frame avg). The 'story' has also proved to be a hinderance, as some scenes have been difficult to implement, slowing down the process.

Instead of doing the full song, will concentrate on animating for the chorus instead. Having already made the first scene for the intro, this will need to be edited slightly to slot into the chorus. thankfully the chorus uses the same wording as the intro.

New animation target time: 50 seconds

Not sure if there is enough animation currently to fill this, so planning to create an additional scene of a fully lit glass quartz duck statue. 

Animation development (Continued)

Quartz Duck
Not part of the original draft storyboard, Quartz ducks is mostly lighting driven against reflective surface. Basically a scene that gives a bit of pizazz.
It took a fair bit of work getting the duck to glow brightly. Unknown from the outside, there is actually two area lights positioned inside the duck to help project the light further.
Bouncing Ducks
Going back to playing with sound, I thought about recreating a speaker for ducks to bounce off. 
Using sound visualisation proved to be extremely difficult. I thought that rigid body objects (The duck) would react to movement generated from the sound, but this isnt the case. They violently bounce off and slide about for some unknown reason (friction was at full).
Abandoned sound visualisation in the end, as it was taking too long to try and solve the issues.
Tartan Smash
Another new idea, Psycho ducks leans on logo explosions, gravity and speed.
This was originally going to be a scene of the logo crumbling when a duck is launched at the front face. However when creating, The logo randomly kept exploding into shards, which I actually thought looked a lot better. Ducks added later to provide a mix between the shards of glass.

Video rendering

As time is tight, I chose to remain using blender to video edit, rather than swapping to after effects. I know nothing of after effects, and is probably overkill as I only need basic stitching and some minimal basic effects added.
Editing in action:

Final outcome

Tartan Dots Animation