Pete Newman

Creative Coder, Maker, App Developer, Blender Beginner, Course Designer, Teacher in remission, Full-time Science Communicator. Slave to many passions.

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Final Result - Video

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Summary

Blurb

Biz Biz Biz
Author Project Somedays
Title Create with Clint Weekly Challenge 91 - Lone
📅 Started 2025-04-02 10:00
📅 Completed 2025-04-12 10:00
🕒 Taken 11hrs
🖨️ Render 30hrs 😱
🤯 Concept ISS Astronaut accidentally ejects the toilet module
🔎 Focus Cloth sim toilet roll, multiple cameras/shots
🖥️Rig Deets 24GB RAM, 13th Gen Core i9, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080

Created for the weekly Create with Clint/pwnisher community

Check out his awesome YouTube channel or better yet, join the discord community!

🎓Lessons Learned🎓

  • Cloth sims
    • how good (though none made it in the final thing)
  • Timeline Biz
    • Press ‘m’ to make markers in the timeline and then CTRL+B to bind the active camera to the marker
    • Press CTRL+Num 0 to set the selected camera to active
  • Weight Painting Biz
    • Weight Painting = determines how much a bone will influence a vertex
    • Automatic weights struggles a bit with items like straps.
    • Select a vertex in the group
    • In Edit Mode, look at the influence data and set it to zero where it’s being inappropriately controlled
    • With that vertex active, CTRL+Numpad+ to increase selection and hit copy to sever the connections
      • This is SO much easier than Weight painting where it’s too easy to accidentally miss a vertex here and ther
      • Getting into it is confusing. Select mesh THEN select rig so it’s active THEN hit CTRL+TAB to bring up the Weight Painting menu 🤔
  • Overall Workflow Biz
    • Blender slows down significantly on my current rig - I should do all my blocking in clay render mode THEN texture biz later
    • Need a way to see the keyframes in audio in the Video Sequencer. I’ll go digging. Or maybe I’m just supposed to use the Graph view
    • Do lots of little test renders. Not only does it help with the feeling of progress, but it makes for handy socials content as you go.
    • Render as you go - once signed off on a scene, render it for later editing. No need to save that until the end. Especially on my poor old PC 😅

Resources:

Stretch Goals/Extension Ideas

TODO:

  • Sketch
  • Find astronaut model
  • Find earth model
  • Learn how to do cloth sims
  • Cloth sim toilet roll
  • Floating book
  • Block out scenes
    • Scene 1 - Wide
    • Scene 2 -
    • Scene 3
    • Scene 4
  • Buttons
    • Block
    • Texturing
    • Button Press Animation
    • Choosing hand
  • Model ISS
    • Basic Shape
    • Solar Panels
    • Antennae
    • Cargo biz?
  • Model Tunnel to bathroom
    • Hallway Structure
    • Laptops
    • Cameras
    • Cabling
  • Model Bathroom
  • Rig Model

Experimental workflow - planning out the short durations… ended up just timing it to the music

Complete Shot Type Duration Cumulative Frames Description
[x] 1 Wide 150f 150f ISS + Earth
[x] 2 Medium 150f 300f Tunnel to bathroom with cool twisty motion
[x] 3 CU 5s/120f   Astronaut in toilet front on –> Astronaut + Window –> Astronaut + Buttons. Looks from button to button and presses “Eject”
[x] 4 Wide 5s/120f   Toilet module detaches
[x] 5 Over shoulder 5s/120f   Other astronaut watch him float away
[x] 6 CU 5s/120f   Looks Falorn

🪵Dev Log🪵

2025-04-02 First Steps - Story-boarding, gathering ref 🕒4hrs

  • Story-boarding: Storyboard part 1 Storyboard part 2
  • Started learning cloth sims
  • TP and book test done! TP test

2025-04-06 Finish blocking, music and sound effectsd 🕒2hrs

  • Finished block out
  • Established other cameras
  • Made little scenes for other astronauts
  • Made choices about the ending: sad, then reads Farside
  • Retimed for the music

2025-04-07 Rigging the character 🕒2hrs

  • Found an EXCELLENT tutorial (see resources above) to help me with weird rigging issues where his straps would go nuts whenever I lifted the arms that was baffling
  • Set up rig and fixed vertex weightings
  • Practiced with a really simple space man animation to music

2025-04-08 Bringing in the rigged character 🕒 2hrs

  • Fixed some camera motion
  • Learned to append my character from my test footage
  • Made him lean over to wipe his butt
  • Made him look at the buttons at the end of the wipe
  • Learned about the importance of markers for syncing different animations and sounds etc
  • Decided that the astronauts should be holding a sprouting potato and clipboard and measuring tape (which can have a cloth sim on it also) –> headtrack their movement
  • Animated pressing the button
  • Considering tightening the timing on everything but I’ve basically run out of time
  • Leaning into cheating because ultimately it’s about what’s in camera, right?

Render View

What they see

Working View 😅

What I see

2025-04-10 8:00 Clean rigging and posing in another blender file 🕒1hr

  • Rigged and posed in MUCH faster time = very satisfying
  • Now to position them in
  • Tried using a bone constraint to track the path of the toilet module, but gave up on that.
  • Test render: vampire potato

Why you no see the potato in the reflection??

2025-04-10 17:20 Tightening up timeline and bringing elements together –> render time 🕒2hr

  • Tightened up timing and synced action with the music
  • Sorted out issues with the GLTF scene not being able to be appended properly
  • Brought in my measurement bois

I like this view

2025-04-11 22:00 Ooft out of time!

  • Discovered that I had my settings wrong for the outdoor scenes and my poor laptop (with a more powerful GPU) rendered for a good 9 hrs and only go through 100 of the 750 frames I was hoping for
  • Ended up submitting the clay render version so I got something in for the weekly
  • Note to self: render as you go and stitch together later

2025-04-12 Final edit

  • Stitched the two versions together and pushed it out the door!

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