For this dialogue piece, I wanted to create something with a more serious tone, as I felt my previous animations had more lighthearted themes and settings. I also wanted to experiment more with Unreal Engine’s materials and see what could be achieved. Using the same workflow as the diner animation, I built out the scene in Unreal and ensured I could export the models safely from Maya to Unreal.
I wanted to have the “lifeform” on trial really stick out as ‘different’ from flesh and bone characters, so I found a few tutorials on making hologram materials which were interesting to build and got very complicated very quickly. Overall I’m very pleased with how she turned out lookwise.
While blocking out the animation, I went through a few different timing and camera placements. From where I started to what I ended up with was interesting as a problem I had early on when I showed early versions where people thought that the guy was talking to the girl and not an off-screen third person. Originally the girl was only in shot for a few moments but she ended up getting a little more screen time and required extra animation before the final render.
A man argues in court that the Hologram that’s on trial should be considered living.
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