Animation Pipeline

With six artists working on one project, it can be tricky to keep track of who is doing what and making sure style stays consistent. One way we managed this here at Divining Rods was through our 3D modeling pipeline. Ideally, this would be something to establish early on within the process to ensure everyone is on the same page. Without further ado, allow me to walk you through our system!

Up first is the concept art stage, developing the ideas and working out final designs. Once our ideas were concrete and the concept artists had created a front, side, and back view of their ideas, the idea was handed over to the 3D modelers. In the case of our main character, I was tasked with creating the model while someone else had already made the mask. I worked carefully off of Bailey’s design, doing my best to keep in line with her art while making small adjustments here and there to better fit a 3D space, and UVing each part along the way.

From here, we would pass the model off to another 3D artist to glance over, check the poly count, look for n-gons, and to be sure the model exports properly. Once the model has had its poly’s reduced, cleaned up, and the UV’s checked over, it would be passed off to another one of our artists for texturing. Rigging and skinning took place by another artist while the models were being textured and animation could begin once we knew the models exported properly to the engine.

Having a plan like this in mind from the beginning can help production run smoother and quicker, but sometimes it takes some adjusting along the way. Here at Divining Rods, we developed this system as we went through production, so earlier models were handled slightly differently than later models. It’s a delicate balance of finding out what works best for your team, but as we wrap up this semester, we’ve settled into a workflow that works for us.

-Chloe Ferguson, Art Lead from the Divining Rods dev team