Morphing Crown Cage
from A Crown's Fall
Final Product
During the visual development phase of this short film, our director floated the idea of having the main character's crown turn into a cage to trap her. Both my teammates and I knew close to nothing about blend shapes before this project, but the idea was too cool to scrap, so I volunteered to give it my best.
Concept Art
Before modeling, I created a design for the crown based on our director's preliminary sketches (I also included the director's concept art of the main character for scale, although that scale changed slightly during production). I leaned towards sharp angles in the shape to give it an imposing appearance. Then, I designed a cage using the same anatomy I established for the crown.
Building Blocks
I started by modeling each piece of what I named the "Crowncage" individually. To make the transition from crown to cage smoother, I also modeled pieces to an "in between" stage of the morph. Later on I added a fourth stage in between the 'tween and the cage that allowed me better control on the timing for the transformation.
Setting up the morph animation
Once all of the stages of the morph were fully modeled, I used blend shapes to make the movement from one stage to the next possible. These blend shapes could be controlled manually with a slider, or animated and adjusted in the graph editor.
Finishing Touches
Once the modeling and blend shape setup were done, I added flat color and 2D-style outlines using Maya's built-in Toon shaders. This allowed the 3D asset to appear less foreign in the otherwise 2D animated short.
Combining 2D and 3D
I worked back and forth with my team's 2D animators to make sure both the 3D and 2D aspects would fit together, making adjustments to the animation as needed. The Crowncage at its fullest potential is only really shown in this and one other very short shot, but I could not be prouder of the finished product.