Pre-Vis - Spiderverse

This is a shot I created for a pitch vis sequence in the early development of "Into the Spiderverse".

It was so early, in fact, that we didn't have any idea what our main character would look like, so I had made a very generic version to stand in for our main until we got a better version.

Because of the vast number of characters and variations bid to be created for the production, I made a system to quickly setup and iterate character rigs.

By using various techniques and Python scripting, I was able to cut rigging time down to one hour for a biped character. Model prep was also optimized where possible.

Along with a Unified Rigging system, I also made Maya Human IK an automated and standard part of each rig.

This way, motions from online libraries such as Adobe's Mixamo or motion capture that we recorded ourselves via Xsens suits could quickly and easily be mapped onto any of our characters.

This also meant that poses and animations from any character could be transferred with minimal effort.

This is an example of all of the pieces of the process working together for a sample of a sequence.

Here we can see custom production templates for HUD shot data, rigged characters, and custom FX cards for bold in universe FX Design. Animation in this clip was animated by the amazing artists on the pre-vis team.

All of these tools and workflows were also created to work with remote artists and remote storage as production shifted during Covid-19 lock down.

I wanted to create a tool that allowed pre-vis to utilize the stylized 2D animation FX that were so great in the first Spiderverse. So instead of using generic stock elements, I reached out to Sony Imageworks to use elements they had available from the first movie.

I also added numerous settings and adjustments to allow artists to customize and craft the mood necessary on a shot by shot basis.

To keep track of assets and allow artists to easily find them to build scenes, I created a UI to organize, search, filter, and retrieve assets into their scenes.

In scene assets would always be up to date, and the ability to remove, swap, or unload assets was available.