A version of Ava of Ex Machina

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A version of Ava of Ex Machina

Postby punkduck » Sat Jan 27, 2018 11:59 pm

I'm a great fan of independent films, so I will try a new project.

I guess, it is time to model a character which some of you might know. I'm speaking of Ava from the film Ex Machina, an artificial "girl" with a robotic body but a human-looking face. The role was played by swedish actrice Alicia Vikander. In the film you only see her face and hands (except in the end), the rest of the body was hidden by a special suit. She was then made transparent using a post-production process, so that you can see the inner robotic features.

At the end, you should be able to download the special "suit", the inner parts and an additional proxy (face-mask) from the user contributed assets.

For all of those, who did not know her, this little YouTube video is better than I ever could describe it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSlW7atT8CY

The next image shows, what I got so far, it is allready imported in MakeHuman: I created a body-suit with a lot of transparency. I also tried the brain and the first parts of a spine.

ava_exmachina1.jpg


Some studies of spine and other parts I did in Blender ...

ava_exmachina2.jpg


I quickly realized that I should make two assets, the inner parts and the suit. I will also do the non-transparent suit (simply the same texture, but not transparent), Alicia was wearing, when they are filming the movie.

I will need a few days for that. :roll:
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Re: A version of Ava of Ex Machina

Postby Freehunter » Sun Jan 28, 2018 3:33 am

Amazing work again. Just watched this a few weeks ago, DVD still in my weekend movie pile, Comparing to some of the special features and very close to the original. It will be interesting to see how you approach the internal skeleton, lights, and 'organs'. Antiqua_Sphinge was looking for an endoskeleton, like the terminator, awhile back http://www.makehumancommunity.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=14563
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Re: A version of Ava of Ex Machina

Postby wolgade » Sun Jan 28, 2018 11:02 am

Looks promising. I know, it's a very first draft, but do want to keep the transition between skin and transparency the way it is?
transition.jpg
transition.jpg (24.27 KiB) Viewed 10113 times

It's quite simple to create a mask with texture painting. This way your transtion wouldn't be limited to real geometry.
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Re: A version of Ava of Ex Machina

Postby punkduck » Sun Jan 28, 2018 2:14 pm

wolgade wrote:Looks promising. I know, it's a very first draft, but do want to keep the transition between skin and transparency the way it is? It's quite simple to create a mask with texture painting. This way your transtion wouldn't be limited to real geometry.


I have the same problem as you have had with the Westernworld character. From the backside she looks scary. I need kind of a proxy. But this will be one of the last steps, I will do.

So before I only used the delete groups to make parts of the skeleton visible. I hope I can do the same as the real artists had done to create this movie. Alicia wears a mask, which enlarges the skin, so that it looks like you can add the other parts of skin on the mesh/suit. If you look at this picture:

http://filmint.nu/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Machina-1.jpg

you can see where this mask starts. Since the mask is wider than the suit, I have to create this as a proxy hopefully using the standard skin, so that you can use a character of your choice.

In reality Alicia wears a suit, which is completely made of the grey fabric with these hexagons-pattern on top:

http://www.cgmeetup.net/home/making-of-ex-machina/

The article is worth reading ... it is more MakeRobot, so it is the opposite of what we are doing.

Freehunter wrote:Amazing work again. Just watched this a few weeks ago, DVD still in my weekend movie pile, Comparing to some of the special features and very close to the original. It will be interesting to see how you approach the internal skeleton, lights, and 'organs'. Antiqua_Sphinge was looking for an endoskeleton, like the terminator, awhile back viewtopic.php?f=20&t=14563


Thank you. Yes, I know this terminator picture and I created the suit for Antiqua_Sphinge, so I was also following the discussion ;)

Well for the lights of the organs you have to use Blender at the end. But I will try to make that as simple as possible for the MH users (e.g. to put the emission parts in one corner of the texture map - or - to supply a special emission map like grinsegold has done for his mars suit). I will add some instructions. I'm not totally sure how I get a result I will be satisfied with, but some tests and "iterations" will be helpful to reach a final state ...

The film itself was a low-budget film, but for me it was more impressive than the terminator films. Funny enough, I'm not sure why. Was it Alicia Vikander (who is also ballet dancer) playing the robot with her gracile movements or was it the fascination what you can achieve with postprocessing the pictures ...
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Re: A version of Ava of Ex Machina

Postby punkduck » Sun Jan 28, 2018 7:06 pm

In between I seperated the asset in suit and "internal organs". The suit now uses the delete groups, the "internal organs" do not use delete groups.
The organs need a higher z_depth than the suit in MakeClothes (even that they are inside), otherwise they are also partly deleted by the suit.

I also played around with the material editor and gave the organs a bit emission, but that is only for better visibility, I will not add the material this way.

So here is, what I created so far:

ava_exmachina3.jpg


All you can see inside (besides of the white wrist rings) is built using a rigid group, otherwise it would ugly deform. You can also see, where the yellow and blue light will be emitted in future.

Edit: Here is an example a made with Blender in between:

ava_exmachina4.jpg



A lot of parts are still missing, maybe I will continue with the "bones" for the arms. But not today, I'm too tired ... :?
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Re: A version of Ava of Ex Machina

Postby wolgade » Sun Jan 28, 2018 8:11 pm

punkduck wrote:From the backside she looks scary.

You'll need something to limit visibility. The backside of the face needs to be hidden. I had a similar problem with the backside off the skull.
skull.jpg

For some reason I really didn't want this to be visible.
punkduck wrote:Alicia wears a mask, which enlarges the skin, so that it looks like you can add the other parts of skin on the mesh/suit.

Looks like you need additional edge loops on the head and neck and a rim.
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Re: A version of Ava of Ex Machina

Postby punkduck » Tue Jan 30, 2018 10:46 pm

I created the bones for the arms and legs (using 8 different rigid groups) and some other additional parts. My Ava seems to be able to do the same as the actress Alicia Vikander playing Ava: ballet dancing ...

ava_exmachina7.jpg


In Blender it also looks quite convincing.

ava_exmachina6.jpg


Now I've to start with the wiring ... :?

If you want to model your own Ava, here you get the instructions:

http://d2bhqx49zlo9rr.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/26151306/Films_Ex_Machina_M_014.jpg

from http://territorystudio.com/projects/ex-machina/

But I'm pretty sure, that this will not really work in reality, but it looks pretty cool. :mrgreen:
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Re: A version of Ava of Ex Machina

Postby Mindfront » Thu Feb 01, 2018 12:05 am

A really inspiring and interesting project. It looks great already and I can not wait to see the finished result.
This hexagon pattern seems to be a good idea for futuristic fabric and very welcome inspiration when it comes to making sci-fi clothes.
I have not heard of the movie and will try to see it soon.
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Re: A version of Ava of Ex Machina

Postby punkduck » Thu Feb 01, 2018 7:06 pm

Mindfront wrote:A really inspiring and interesting project. It looks great already and I can not wait to see the finished result.
This hexagon pattern seems to be a good idea for futuristic fabric and very welcome inspiration when it comes to making sci-fi clothes.
I have not heard of the movie and will try to see it soon.


You should, Alicia Vikander is from Sweden (and she will be "Lara Croft" in the Tomb Raider movie this year!) ;)

The movie was allready presented in German state television (I watched it by coincidence). Here is an inspiring image, but as always she is not that detailled in the movie, so this is again a typical movie poster :lol: :

https://www.zdf.de/assets/ex-machina-102~1920x1080?cb=1498636236434
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Re: A version of Ava of Ex Machina

Postby punkduck » Thu Feb 01, 2018 10:21 pm

I just completed the wiring of the arms. A normal- and a gloss map will be used in future to create different effects.

ava_exmachina8.jpg
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