/ The Assignment
Overview
This self-initiated IFFX project was created as a tribute to Dark Helmet from Spaceballs—a character that has long been one of our all-time favorites. It also became an exploration of a flexible character pipeline, beginning in Character Creator 5 and moving through iClone, Maya, and ZBrush, with Substance Painter used to develop the final textures.
We brought the finished character into Unreal Engine for cinematic lighting, animation, and shot production. Although Unreal powered the final imagery, we designed the project as a rendered cinematic rather than a real-time playback piece, rendering frames from the engine and finishing the final composite in Nuke.