COLLAB.03 | Peacemaker Protocol

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Collab 03: Peacemaker Protocol

  • 2024
  • 34 collaborators
  • bazillions of polygons
  • Made with Blender
140 years IN the future, the people of Earth have enjoyed a century of peace and global disarmament. Yet the dark side of human nature still lingers. Threats of physical conflict are stirring once again. War is inevitable.

In a secret underground hangar, a backup plan is triggered by the tremors of nuclear weapon testing. With respect to the global disarmament, a top secret contingent abandoned their military mech manufacturing facility with one directive left behind: If peace is ever threatened again, one final mech will be constructed, capable of restoring peace at any cost.

Returning to Our Roots

Collab.02 was a bit challenging and hectic so for 03 Kent wanted to relive the glory of Collab.01: complex hard-surface modeling. This focus came so natural to us back in 2020 and carried that sense of "awesome CG" that we wanted to tap into once again.

Also we continued the theme of being inspired by toys / collectibles. This project was inspired by the bEXM-15 Portanova gunpla kit by Bandai.

***This project was independently created and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Bandai. All trademarks mentioned belong to their respective owners.

Harder Better Faster Stronger

Though this project was inspired by Collab.01, our goals were bigger in every way: More models, more details, more realistic eye candy packed into every frame, new skills executed as a team, more impact, more awesome!

The final short turned out better than we expected and shaped the collab format into a more effective pipeline.

A Course on the Way

This collab experience was exhaustively documented across 50 hours of raw footage. For the first time, Kent is editing an in-depth course about the entire pipeline: From brainstorming the earliest ideas to rendering final frames.

Read more about the coming Course and join the newsletter for updates!

Project Files

As with every Collab, we will make our project files available ASAP! This project is deep and wide with .blends. As soon we can organize and package them, we'll make them available on the Downloads page.

More about the project

Two-Month production schedule

One month of production time wasn't enough time with the previous collab. Two months proved to be a good time frame. It was urgent enough to keep the pace moving while not generating too much pressure.

2 months will likely be the standard going forward but may change depending on the scope of future collabs.

All Skill Levels Welcome

Perpetuation what we learned from Collab.02, we aim to structure a project for all skill levels to participate. We're happy to report that the credits feature low and high level contributors! Frankly, it's amazing to see those lines blur when everyone works together and helps each other.

Without a doubt one of our favorite aspects of the Collab format.

Expanding Skills

Several key new skills were executed by contributors during this project: Design, Rigging, Animation, Lighting, and VFX.

DESIGN: Apart from the robot, we had no artwork or explicit reference to source from. Supervisors had to collect various unrelated artwork and photography, develop a cohesive design bible, and effectively disseminate to contributors. A first in collab history and a big step forward for future projects.

RIGGING: Robotic equipment had to be design, modeled and rigged from scratch. Rigging is always a technical challenge, not for the faint of heart. Yet the machinery department banded together and pulled it off beautifully.

ANIMATION: Robotic equipment also had to be animated constructing the robot. While robotic movement is inherently linear and stiff, making animation simpler in some ways, the animation on this project serves as a significant development in our pipeline.

LIGHTING: Kent takes lighting pretty seriously and admits that he has trouble trusting someone else with it. However, hangar supervisor Omar Domenech played a huge role in the lighting of this project. Yet another important step toward a self-sufficient pipeline!

VFX: This is the first collab to tackle realistic visual effects like sparks and smoke simulation. That's another major skillset added to our utility belt.

(mostly) Maintaining DIY-friendly pipeline tools

The biggest pain-point from Collab.01-02 was asynchronous communication. We utilized community forum threads which were not designed for this task; not even a little bit.

This time we utilized a paid general project management platform called Basecamp. We use it for company project management as well. While it's not specifically designed for animation production, it worked incomparably better for task organization, scheduling, and async communication.

We still want to be as DIY-friendly as possible and are looking into FOSS alternatives. We continued using Google Docs and Google Drive for this project.

Contributors

  • Adrian Bellworthy
  • amblender
  • Austin Dunham
  • Carlo Schat
  • Chuck Linsley
  • Dani Tufeld
  • Darryl Dias
  • Dave Hudson
  • Dolph Kawalec
  • Ingmar Franz
  • ironsoul
  • Jake Korosi
  • John Sanderson
  • Kent Trammell
  • Khai Van LHOMME
  • Kyle Blaine
  • Martin Aversa
  • Martin Bergwerf
  • Matt Dickun
  • Matthew Halls
  • Matthew Ullrey
  • Mo Abdulhamid
  • Omar Domenech
  • Patrick Pacini
  • Peter Varga
  • Phil Osterbauer
  • Robin Hammond
  • Sébastien Lenaerts
  • Shawn Blanch
  • Sheila Francl
  • Tanya
  • Thibault Caradec
  • Timonthy Ngo
  • Wendy Robinson