Titanus Museum
Producer, 3D animation, modelling, texturing
A 12 months project
8 TB of storage needed
8 TB of storage needed
August 2019
I was finishing a project for a pasta producer (The Pesto Experience) when Eshu Adv. reached me. They were building the artistic team to produce contents for a historical museum in San Marino.
Due to the size of the project I decided to involve my Dugongos Team.
We've been asked to handle the 3D animations of landscapes, cave paintings, and three realistic characters.
The museum has three sequential rooms (Sala in italian), we had to work on the first and the last one.
CGI Team Building
Since Dugongos Creative Studio is composed by few internal artists, we had to enlarge the team
My first task was to understand who to involve in the project.
Talking with the art director (Antonio Buiano) we decided to take seniors profile in order keep quality and time under control.
The budget had already been decided when I've been reached out. I had to divide budget according to the effort requested to every artist.
Taking experienced artists meant to reduce my personal budget. That was a wise choice.
Taking experienced artists meant to reduce my personal budget. That was a wise choice.
I brought into the team a great rigger (Roberto Ciriaco) an FX Artist (Alessandro Cangelosi) and a motion designer (Mauro Mason)
Sala 01
The whole experience begins in this room. In 2x8 mt. double depth projection screen.
Everything was possible thanks to 8 short range projectors.
Everything was possible thanks to 8 short range projectors.
Since the Prehistoric Period, when San Marino was underwater and whales used to swim around the mountain.
In this phase I made the underwater environment, creating school of fish, sea anemones and the Mount Titano.
The mount had to emerge from sea and through thousand of years erode until having today's shape. To achieve this I made two versions of the mount.
First of all I made the Titan Mount with its actual shape. I used many techniques to gain time and having a good result.
Photogrammetry: I took 400 screenshots to the Titan Mount in Google Earth. Then I feed a photogrammetry software with these screenshots in order to have the firt raw model.
First of all I made the Titan Mount with its actual shape. I used many techniques to gain time and having a good result.
Photogrammetry: I took 400 screenshots to the Titan Mount in Google Earth. Then I feed a photogrammetry software with these screenshots in order to have the firt raw model.
Sculpting: Once out from the photogrammetry software the model was useless, so I sculpted it cleaning the mesh and fixing all the little bugs in the topology. I kept using Google Earth as reference for details.
Then it was time to retopo the model and to create all the different detail level in order to extract a displacement and normal map.
Once the mother mount was ready, I made the prehistoric one. Keeping the same poly count I smoothed the shape to achieve a soft hill look. The last stage was to take both model in the same scene and, with the slider of blend-shapes, make a timlapse of milions of years. To be honest, I felt like Thanos.
From cave paintings through the roman Rimini city to Dalmatia
This was one of the most challenging parts of the projects, it was the moment when most artists worked on the same shot:
I started modelling, texturing and animating the wall and the torch light. I was following a storyboard and the voice-over for timing. Then I sent a raw render to the motion designer (Mauro Mason) and the FX Artist (Alessandro Cangelosi)
The it was the turn of the huge environment (Rimini Antica)
While I was preparing the environment and Alessandro made the sea and the smokes on the city.
The it was the turn of the huge environment (Rimini Antica)
While I was preparing the environment and Alessandro made the sea and the smokes on the city.
Once everything was rendered (render resolution 1200x5556, 30fps, GPU render) I composed everything on After Effects
Every step of this project was made in remote. Due to Covid-19 I never met Alessandro or Mauro during this project.
Every step of this project was made in remote. Due to Covid-19 I never met Alessandro or Mauro during this project.
Sala 03
In this part of the project we used Rokoko motion capture (face, and body) to animate this three characters: Napoleon, Garibaldi and the founder of San Marino, Santo Marino.
We have been assisted by Roberto Ciriaco who rigged the characters, handled the mocap data, and simulated the clothing.
Antonio Buiano modeled (blend shapes included) and textured the three charactes.
On this room I worked on the very end of the project. I lighted, rendered and composed the three characters.
Antonio Buiano modeled (blend shapes included) and textured the three charactes.
On this room I worked on the very end of the project. I lighted, rendered and composed the three characters.
