Baba Yaga

Since I have been given more time to work on the project, I decided to add some more props to the House to add something to the storytelling part. The sides of the House are a bit empty, so I created container, bucket, cauldron and a metal cage to give the viewer some clues of what Baba Yaga might do when she's not flying on her broomstick. A cauldron is a typical Baba Yaga equipment, so I wanted to include an old rusty one, but there is also a metal cage where she can detain people. Props are attached to the House with ropes, so they don't move when the House is walking. I started by making a low poly version of each prop, and I unwrapped them keeping everything on one UV map. Knowing that these props will not be in the centre of attention, I decided to sculpt only the wooden parts in Zbrush while adding the normal details to the metal in Substance Painter later on. Using metal and wood smart materials mixed with some smart masks to make the models look old and used. prop...

I decided to use the Unreal Engine for the purpose of this project. I found it very easy to use, and the post-processing effects applied by default helps to make the textures and colours looks more define and pleasing to the eye. In terms of the style I was going for realism mixed with stylization, so I went for a PBR based material to make the model look a bit cartoony. I think that Unreal does a better job than Unity in terms of PBR based textures and realistic look of them, so for me, it was an obvious choice. I exported Baba Yaga and the House as separate models since Baba Yaga's animation is a bit longer than the House. There was nothing complicated while exporting the models to the Unreal, I had no errors, but there were still things to be done in the engine to make it all look spot on. The first part was to create all materials and assembly them correctly. Because of the different properties of some parts of the model, I had to make separate materials for each par...

Baba Yaga is a secondary part of the project. She is an additional part, I wanted to show the occupant of the house as well. I wanted her to work as a satellite for the house, so she flies around on the broomstick. Her animation is less complicated than the house, so as the rig. I created a very simple human rig with additional bones for the hair and skirt, because I wanted the whole body to move slightly while flying. I did quick skinning because in this case, it was not crucial for me to deform all parts of the body correctly. I focused mostly on head, arms and legs since these deforms the most. The main part of the animation was to create a path that Baba Yaga can follow. I was trying to use a spline method where I can attach the model to the spline and make it follow the desired direction, however, I had a problem to make it with the skinned object that has bones inside. It was working perfectly fine for the model itself, but it did no...

I decided to create the texture for Baba Yaga in Substance Painter. I was thinking to use Zbrush polypaint method, but Substance allows me to quickly add some normal details to the clothing. I wanted to achieve old, worn-out clothing with frayed edges. Baba Yaga is a very old witch, so I decided to keep an unhealthy, aged look of her skin. Textures are not very detailed, because she is not the main point of the project, and she will continuously be flying around, so it would be hard to spot fancy details. To exaggerate the fact that she is a witch, I made her eyes black, with no iris. However, I am not entirely convinced with the look of it, so I may change her eyes to look blind. In Substance Painter, I added an opacity channel to be able to work with opacity maps and add jagged edges. For the skin and clothing, I mostly used a variety of smart material, with major adjustments. Baba Yaga texture layers  Details Baba Yaga textures UV unwrap For the hair a...

The whole story of a chicken leg house starts with Baba Yaga. She cast a spell on a house, so he grew legs and can walk now. Creating Baba Yaga was somewhere on my wishlist for this project. She can fly around a house on a broomstick while he walks. She is a devil creation and has all sorts of dark powers, so to make her more sinister and out of this world, I gave her horns and black eyes. Since I nearly finished house animation and I have a time left, I can begin to sculpt a high poly version of Baba Yaga in ZBrush. I started with the head. With the horns and pointy nose, I tried to incorporate some triangles to her design, so when the viewer sees her silhouette, he can notice that she is evil and dangerous. I wanted her to look like a grumpy, old lady, but with features, that will give her more personality. I didn't want to spend too much time sculpting this model since it will be tiny comparing to the house. I treat it as an additional thing which can add a little more ...

It took me a week to get the main movement of the house ready. There was a lot of tweaking and playing with curves to make it look right and smooth. I still see an issue when the animation loops. There is a bit of a jump when it reaches the end however, I will smooth it out in the engine. Now I will have a look into animating the props. All of the hanging objects have to swing while the house moves. There was an idea to make the sway animation in the engine with a rope physics, however I would have to keep all of the props separate and I would also have to create separate rigs for each object. In this case, while I had my rig already created, I choose to make the animation in 3Ds Max manually. I started with windows. Since the house is bent forward, I want to keep the front window shutters open and sway from one side to another. At the back window, shutters are closed because the house doesn't bend to the back. However, whenever the leg touches the ground, each shutter will jump ...

My model is finally rigged, skinned and ready for animation. I would like to animate a basic walk cycle; however, since there are a lot of hanging objects, this process will be time-consuming. By creating this animation, I want to add a lot of character and personality to the house. I think that the key is to show the heaviness and instability of the building, by making the whole building swing from one side to another and placing foot heavily on the ground. There are many ways to create animation. I could use the Unreal animation system; however, I am familiar with 3Ds Max, this is why I choose this software. I started by making a basic leg movement. I searched plenty of websites and found multiple videos of a chicken walking, I also spent some time observing how birds walk in real life. I found one video with an animated chicken model in side view, so I was able to pick up the key poses. At first, I established key poses where the hips are at the highest and lowest point. Ther is o...