Newton’s Workshop

This animated short was developed based on the given prompt: pick a famous inventor and create a short film of their workshop.

Newton himself was created using Adobe Fuse CC and animated using a wide variety of software. Two Xbox 360 Kinect Sensors along with iPiSoft’s Motion Capture software to record raw Mocap data for each of Newton’s actions. The animations were cleaned up and had keyframe animations added in using Autodesk MotionBuilder.

Unity was chosen as the render engine since it’s been widely used beyond the gaming industry by many film professionals. Camera animations were done with Cinemachine while other animations such as the apple falling and the explosion were purely physics based and simulated in realtime through the engine. Newton’s workshop, along with the props, was created in 3DS Max and textured using Substance Painter and Photoshop.

This animation won first place at the NC Western Regional competition, first place at the NC State level competition, and second place at the National level in Atlanta in 2018.