As always it’s been a very busy and exciting month. We thought it’d only be right to share with you what our animators and modelers have been doing.
LIFEBOAT 6
We are creating a dramatic re-enactment of the sinking of the titanic. We have faced a number of challenges.
The player will witness the sinking of the Titanic from one of the Titanic's all too few lifeboats; Lifeboat six. We have gone to great pains to faithfully recreate the details from original of Whitestarline designs.
This goes for the passengers of Lifeboat 6 too. Each character is based on the real survivors who escaped on Lifeboat Six. Beyond the challenge of historical accuracy, we have to contend with many technical challenges. The scene is a single uninterrupted 15 min cut, with intense and detailed character performances.
Choreographing the actor’s performances was particularly difficult. In our Story board and animatic, we worked out the timing and interaction of each character. Then recorded actors individually and in pairs in our Motion capture studio. An animatic of the scene was played back for the actor to take their cues from.
The next stage was retargeting the motion to our character models and begin to compile all the moving characters into a single scene.That is when the real challenge began! Our animators had to deal with not only animating the 27 characters squeezed into a confined space, bumping and jostling with each other, but also reacting to an environment that is constantly moving.
The raw performances or our actors provide the emotion and timing we need but the still need to be adapted to fit correctly together. Each of the many subtle gestures and interactions we take for granted must be painstakingly posed and adjusted. Each placement of a hand pose of the fingers and fold or a dress. Finally, with the body motion completed we work on the facial performances for the each character. The actor’s facial performances are tracked and mapped onto the character model.
The volume of character motion was also a great challenge, each main character has a single un-interrupted 24000 frame animation track.
It may seem incredible lengths to go to, but in the end we hope you will agree it is all worth it to transport you back to that fateful night of April 14th 1912.
THE STERN WRECK
We also shared a video of the Stern Wreck. We have gone through extensive research to ensure that this recreation is truly authentic.
https://youtu.be/0QrufcjPZ8Y ( Stern Preview Video )
To get the main details of Titanic accurate, we started with modelling the ship before she sunk. We gathered as many primary sources of ship plans, photographs, survivor accounts as we could, and looked at research from historians who had dedicated decades of their work to analysing her finer details.
This extensive research gave us enough information to model the Titanic before she sunk. We used this model as the skeleton for creating the wreck as well as images, video footage and documentation from divers who have explored the wreck to model what she’d look like in the 80’s, 70 years after she hit the seabed.
Unfortunately, few people have ever explored the Stern of the Titanic, and as such far fewer documents are available detailing its current condition when compared to the bow. Despite this, enough sources are available for us to give a good estimation of its current state, which has deteriorated rapidly due to the extensive damage caused when the Stern rotated on descent and then collided violently with the sea bed. This has left the Stern far more damaged than the bow of the wreck, with numerous sections both torn away and collapsed.
Hopefully this gives you a better insight into the challenges we’ve faced into ensuring this experience is as authentic as possible. The Stern section was the most challenging for us to research and model. We created a teaser video of our model of the Stern wreck for you to watch. We’d also like to give a special mention to Roy Mengot, who’s research into the wreck, particularly the stern, was instrumental in this recreation. Roy unfortunately passed away in November 2015, and we are deeply grateful for his extensive research of Titanic.
