Since the plan is for Lunatics! to be a series, rather than a one-off film, we
have somewhat more ambitious requirements for making our models reusable
for the long term. If we can invest a little more in a better rig or design something to
use physics simulation rather than manually animating it, this is a good
idea, because there will be a payback every time we reuse that model in
a later episode.
That’s why we want to take special care in
rigging and simulation tasks for Blender. We’re hoping to engage Gorka
Mendieta for these tasks, because he has particularly good skills at
these as well as in modeling and “retopologizing” (which means altering
the geometric structure of the mesh of a model — usually to make it
deform better for animation).
Ideally, we’d like to bring parts of
our production up to the same level of automation that you find in
“machinima” — animation made using game engines. Blender has a built-in
game engine and the “Bullet Physics” engine for doing basic rigid-body
physics simulations (as well other tools for “soft body”, “particles”,
and “cloth” simulations).
We think Gorka is the one for that job,
and fortunately, he’s been pretty interested in our project, especially
because it’s an open movie being made with Blender.
In fact, Gorka was in the group that worked on our first test project — the
“teaser” demo that we created of the Soyuz launch from Georgiana’s point-of-view.
He modeled and rigged the standard Kazbek acceleration couches for that set.
Gorka Mendieta is a 30-year-old Blender artist from Spain. He
has studied Computer Science and Computer Graphics, as well as taking a
number of master classes through Animum 3D including general 3D work and
rigging. Since then, he has worked on several high-level 3D projects in the industry:
- Modeling and programming for a Blender Game Engine based virtual tour software for the city of Cáceres, Spain – Cáceres 3D.
- Rigging and scripting for the Decadence game project.
- Currently a Senior Programmer at Indra, working on C++ and MEL (Maya) scripts for Defense projects.
You can see why we’d like to have his help!
