Alberto Méndez Rojas
My name is Alberto Méndez Rojas. I am 25 years old. I am a professional cinematic artist based in Costa Rica. I graduated as a 3D Artist from Véritas University with a short film called Rebus. This opened opportunities for me due to my precious skills. I participated in the production of Sausage Party: Foodtopia for Amazon Prime.
Since a young age, I developed a love for cinematics. I am especially fond of fantasy ones where there is a whole world to explore. These worlds have their own mechanics and story. They are often shrouded by a social or political problem that escalates. These stories teach us about the human condition. They show how subjective and abstract the values and morals of civilizations are. They also show how history shapes the environment.
Rebus is a short film centered around world building as the main focus of the project. It tells a story about a dystopian civilization. This civilization is trying to endure the harsh world they live in, surrounded by magical creatures and unexplainable natural disasters.
For this project we had the opportunity to use Character Creator to make many characters. They represent the civilians, like merchants, slaves, commoners, and much more. We also implemented ActorCore motion library to animate our characters. We made good use of the library of motion capture provided for us.
Additionally, the store of Reallusion was of great help. There were many assets for the characters like hair, skin, clothing, and full fledged characters.
“If you want to create a movie or short film, you shouldn’t waste resources by creating each character individually. Using tools like those provided by Reallusion is crucial. They represent, for me, the future of digital cinema for small and large teams.”
Alberto Méndez Rojas – Film Director / Cinematic Artist
University project REBUS: 8 month challenge
The animation career of Véritas University has a length of 4 years plus the final project. One option is another short film. We had the chance to develop the skills and tools learnt through this film. From the very beginning, I wanted my final project to be the culmination of my vision. I had a vision for my story. This vision began to be written 7 years prior to this point in my life.
With this vision in mind, I had a foundation. My friend, Adrián Sánchez Albán, and I decided to create this project from that foundation. We envisioned a new world from the ground up. Thus, Rebus came into existence. In these 8 months, the main challenges were at a conceptual level. We already had the necessary skills to create anything we saw in our minds. But it is useless to create things that look cool but lack meaning and deep value.
Once this section was completed, we now had to deal with another challenge but on a more technical level. We had to learn new tools. We tried to manage a team of 6 people as best we could. This was challenging because we were students.
The most important part of Rebus was trying to make the viewer feel that this world was real. We wanted to show that people lived there and had their own stories. Due to the lack of a large team, we couldn’t afford to create people and animations from scratch. This is why we decided to use Reallusion tools. They helped us complete this crucial segment in our project in a quick and effective way.
“Due to the lack of a large team, we couldn’t afford to create people and animations from scratch. This is why we decided to use Reallusion tools. They helped us complete this crucial segment in our project in a quick and effective way”
Alberto Méndez Rojas – Film Director / Cinematic Artist
Vision, Pre-production, Production
The preproduction phase was very hard and tiring, because we created a world with its own rules and mechanics. From religion and economy, to fantasy aspects such as magic and rituals, education system and more. A lot of research had to be done about civilizations and some philosophical points of war. Along with the human condition, in order to give more realism to our world.
We thought that the best way to complete this project was to create all the environments of high value/demand. And then fill them with the help of Reallusion assets. On some occasions, we did not have time to create our environments. That is why we also incorporated Kitbash3D assets. These assets are highly optimized just like the ones from Character Creator. This is because the focus of both Kitbash3D and Reallusion is to develop tools. They can be used in a large production setting. And these tools come at a low cost for the user. An example of this is shown in a market with a high number of civilians.
Creating a World of Characters
We used something around 20+ characters created just with the tools of Reallusion. Then we arranged that scene with only Kitbash3D assets. This created a full shot fairly easily. It helped us further push this idea of a rich world with people and a social structure. These assets were taken from the Kitbash3D Dark Fantasy library. These assets fit perfectly with the aesthetics we were looking for. We also used the character pack from the Medieval Reallusion library.
Full Compatibility with Blender
We succeeded wonderfully thanks to how flexible Blender is. All of these different factors and sources could be compiled into one file. They could be played with each other without much problem. One very important thing to note is that the assets from Character Creator and Kitbash3D can be used. They come with high quality textures. However, if it is too much for your hardware, there is a setting inside of Blender. It can take all of the textures used and reduce them to a certain texture size, like 1k or 2k. This helps a lot to save ram memory and keep building a larger scene.
Obviously certain problems had to be resolved on the fly, but it wasn’t a big deal
Advantages of Character Creator
The advantages of using Character Creator are the ability to create a character very quickly, something around 10-20 minutes. This is due to the different types of packages available in the store, such as hair, skin or even clothing. The optimization processes such as texturing and adding assets to the characters is very good and stable. This makes everything else easier.
“The advantages of using Character Creator are the ability to create a character very quickly, something around 10-20 minutes. This is due to the different types of packages available in the store, such as hair, skin or even clothing.”
Alberto Méndez Rojas – Film Director / Cinematic Artist
For Character Creator’s Ai plugin Headshot, we used a photograph of a person. We added the photograph into the program. Then we made the Character Creator tool use the reference image. This created facial proportions in the 3D model similar to that of the photograph. In addition to this, the same photograph could be used as a texture in the model. This makes the similarity even greater.
Key factors: iClone, ActorCore, Blender
The core difference between live action movies and animated movies is movement. In digital film, we have to make sure to make it as it seems to be alive. Examples of this are like subtle details like the wind moving a flag or some flowers. A flag or flowers are easy to animate. However, characters are a completely different challenge.
To animate characters, we first need a good topology. We also need a functional rig, and good, clean motion capture animations. These are available with the iClone and ActorCore tools.
After working on our character in Character Creator, we can send it directly to iClone and ActorCore. There, we work on the character’s movements in a procedural way. This involves moving a certain number of keys.
If we do not want to use the animations provided by the Reallusion library, we can export the characters. Once exported, we can work on their animations in Blender. This process also works the other way around. We can export the animation from the library. With a tool called Auto Rig Pro, we can select the Rig chain brought from Reallusion. We can then retarget the animation to the bones of a native Blender character. This allows us to use that same animation on different characters if necessary.
Advice to other directors
There is no need to reinvent the wheel. Nowadays we can’t afford to have our egos affected by using tools that make production processes simpler. These tools make production processes faster, which for AAA companies are a daily occurrence. The important thing should be to express these ideas and concepts. We want to expose them to the world. We can bring this to reality.
“Nowadays we can’t afford to have our egos affected by using tools that make production processes simpler. These tools make production processes faster, which for AAA companies are a daily occurrence. The important thing should be to express these ideas and concepts.”
Alberto Méndez Rojas – Film Director / Cinematic Artist
If you want to create a movie or short film, you shouldn’t waste resources by creating each character individually. We can’t use our resources of money and time to create/animate the characters one by one. Using tools like those provided by Reallusion is crucial. They represent, for me, the future of digital cinema for small and large teams.
“In the end, these tools and the company gave us crucial help. Without them, we would not have been able to finish the graduation project. We left the university with a strong portfolio piece to start a professional career on the right foot.”
Alberto Méndez Rojas – Film Director / Cinematic Artist
Follow Alberto
http://www.instagram.com/betomzr
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The original article was written by Alberto Rojas and is also featured on Creative Boom.
