Late getting in here due to other commitments, but this is the start of my WIP for the contest.

I really wasn't sure just what to use as a subject for this and after some thought I ended up with the main character from my all time favourite Shakespeare play - Macbeth.

The obvious scene for a "Talking Head" shot is the soliloquy, with the one exception that if done correctly it lasts about 3 minutes. I'm still working on getting just the "right" 30 second cut selected.

For the character I didn't use Headshot, but went for my own creation. The starting point for the face is below:



After some work inside SkinGen he started to look like someone who had spent considerable time in the Scottish Highlands



Hair and beard added from the Hair Builder pack. I had to use the female Side Swept hair as there is no suitable male hair for such a character.



Although the scene calls for Talking head shots I added a full set of clothes:



The clothing consists of a mix of items from Skript and Reallusion, and he now looks like someone who could safely wander around the Highlands commanding respect and obedience from the locals.

Gerry

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System: Win 10 Pro (21H2), Asus X99-E WS, CPU i7-5930K -3,5 GHz, 32 GB DDR4 2666-16 RAM, NVidia GTX 1080 Ti GPU - 11 GB VRAM(Driver Studio-536.99), Samsung 850 Pro 512 GB SSD, 6 TB HD storage.

Next up is the scene.

Again, due to the type of shot required there is no real requirement to fill a scene with assets that will never really be viewed. The basic requirement for this is a room, and I started that in SketchUp.



Nothing complicated, but enough for this scene. It was then taken in to 3DXchange for conversion:



2 things are important here for my this, no "Back Faces" and all surfaces single sided.

Once in iClone materials were applied to the prop:



Next up is adding the character and setting the lighting:



The illumination in the scene consists of 3 torches from the Light Tool set, with the included spot lights turned off, and 3 Light Emitters set as Dummies. One is positioned outside a wall containing 3 window openings, one inside the Fireplace and the last at head height as shown below with them visible: 


This gives the following face lighting:



More to come later.

Gerry

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System: Win 10 Pro (21H2), Asus X99-E WS, CPU i7-5930K -3,5 GHz, 32 GB DDR4 2666-16 RAM, NVidia GTX 1080 Ti GPU - 11 GB VRAM(Driver Studio-536.99), Samsung 850 Pro 512 GB SSD, 6 TB HD storage.

This has been moving along at the speed of a crippled snail, but things are progressing.

Before getting in to the clip, a few notes.

I have attempted to keep as much of the work involved within the RL 3D animation family, and one of the things that I wanted to do was the creation of the titles without resorting to the collection of title tools that I use in my NLE. For the title I used SketchUp 8, 3DXchange and iClone.

First step to create the text in SketchUp:



Once added the component was exploded to separate the text:



Next step was to select each letter and convert them to individual components within the main one:



Once saved the file was opened in 3DXchange and the back faces removed to reduce poly count:



The individual letters were made Sub-props:



The last step was exporting the text as a prop, with sub-props included, to iClone:



Once in iClone the letters were given a PBR texture:



The next step required adding some dripping blood to the Blend channel:



Once that was complete it was necessary to make some adjustments to the UV settings. For each letter minor changes had to be made to the U tiling value.
The U and V offsets were set at frame 1 and the V offset was adjusted to move the "blood" down each letter at the last frame in the scene:



The final work required adding a dagger, placing it over the letter T and turning the material opacity to 0 at frame 1. Moving along the Timeline keyframes were added for the dagger and the letter T to keep their state. Finally 2 more keyframes were added to change the dagger opacity to 100 and the letter T to 0, giving a blend between the 2:



Last but not least I placed a lightning overlay:



The final result in iClone:



More to follow. 




Gerry

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System: Win 10 Pro (21H2), Asus X99-E WS, CPU i7-5930K -3,5 GHz, 32 GB DDR4 2666-16 RAM, NVidia GTX 1080 Ti GPU - 11 GB VRAM(Driver Studio-536.99), Samsung 850 Pro 512 GB SSD, 6 TB HD storage.

The goal of this was to create a 30 second cut from the Macbeth soliloquy, and I'm still working on that.

In the meantime I did a fun clip of the rehearsal. The star of the play has already been introduced in the first post here. It's time to present his arch enemy - the Director:



Mr. D is convinced that the creative juices flowing from him are sufficient to turn the Gobi desert in to a lush savannah. Mr McB, on the other hand, considers him not able to act the idiot when drunk and under the influence of drugs.

I used Replica Studio voices for this but as I mentioned in a mail to Replica, the voices available at the moment are more suitable for action games as opposed to any serious acting scenes. They replied that, having just started, they are working on expanding the collection of voices to cover a wider spectrum. Wait and see.

The perfect dream team:



I was able to keep this to 30 seconds, and I've entered it in the contest.



Gerry

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System: Win 10 Pro (21H2), Asus X99-E WS, CPU i7-5930K -3,5 GHz, 32 GB DDR4 2666-16 RAM, NVidia GTX 1080 Ti GPU - 11 GB VRAM(Driver Studio-536.99), Samsung 850 Pro 512 GB SSD, 6 TB HD storage.

Hi Gerry,
Very nice work😊👍
Greetings Robert

Many thanks, thank you for the comment. 

Gerry

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System: Win 10 Pro (21H2), Asus X99-E WS, CPU i7-5930K -3,5 GHz, 32 GB DDR4 2666-16 RAM, NVidia GTX 1080 Ti GPU - 11 GB VRAM(Driver Studio-536.99), Samsung 850 Pro 512 GB SSD, 6 TB HD storage.