Dodo automata
1/4
Pizza Margherita
2/4
Worker's Cottage ...
3/4
Observatory
4/4
This piece recreates the physical Dodo Automata by artist and toymaker Matt Smith: the aim was to match the movement of the original through procedural animation and modeling in Houdini.
From reference footage of the mechanism, I rebuilt the dodo’s foot paths using follow-path setups and normal orientation in wrangle nodes, and tuned CHOP network formulas so the bird’s motion stayed locked to the gearbox rotation. The dodo and gearbox were poly-modeled and textured in Substance 3D Painter; a USD-based workflow helped resolve layer issues for reliable render-farm output.
Physical reference: Matt Smith, Fourteen Balls Toy Co.
Fig. 1
Dodo automata.
A blog post about this project is available on my art station blog: https://www.artstation.com/blogs/toadstl/jBwaw/rendering-a-pizza-with-subsurface-scattering
Model Attribution
A blog post about this project is available on my art station blog: https://www.artstation.com/toadstl/blog/Z4rrz/rendering-a-corner-of-a-worker-s-cottage
Model Attribution
The observatory is a virtual space designed to be the environment for a game. Reference images were gathered and components of the scene were chosen.
Fig. 1
Image showing highligting of modular components within an environment.
Some of the components were designed to be modular. A hero asset was also included in the scene. Meshes were created in Maya for the modular components and for the hero asset.
Fig. 2
Line-up of modular componenents within Maya.
Design elements were imported into the Unreal Engine. Structural modular components for the walls, ceiling, floor, pillars, railings and bookshelves were created initially. A large telescope was designed as the hero asset.
Fig. 3
An early block out in Unreal.
Textures were created for each scene component, including a stone wall texture which was composited from textures.com and wood textures for the ceilings and floors which were created using Substance 3D Designer.
Fig. 4
Substance designer graph for wood material.
Blueprints for the elements of the project and for the structure itself were created. Bookshelves, for example, were produced in the blueprint construction script from three meshes. Blueprints for various arrangements of books and for a candle were created as well. The candle flame was a particle effect done by animating an alpha image with noise in the material blueprint in the UE editor.
Fig. 6
Image showing highligting of modular components within an environment.
The moon was created using a blueprint that includes a dome to reflect white light to increase the moonglow within the scene. The moon model uses a texture provided by NASA.
Fig. 7
Telescope Hero asset.
After finalizing the scene and setting up lighting the scene was rendered in the Unreal Engine by using cameras in the scene which showed desired images and which were then animated to create clips using sequencer. UE was used to render images and media encoder was used to compile the rendered images into a video.
Dodo automata
1/4
Pizza Margherita
2/4
Worker's Cottage ...
3/4
Observatory
4/4
