“Roborovski” is a real time animation short film directed by Dev Patel.

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It tells the story of a tiny little hamster in a petshop that constantly gets overlooked for other pets and as a result he develops a Jekyll and Hyde persona and exacts his revenge on all the other animals at night by murdering them in cold bold.

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We combined our experience in UE4, animation, direction, understanding of VR development as well as our unending passion and combined all these elements to create something truly unique...and a world first. 

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We used our motion capture suits to capture all of the human character movements and where possible we used our facial capture system to capture our actors expressions and performances. Our real time pipeline allowed us to see immediate results, which became essential for feedback on performance and direction.

We redefined UE4’s alembic and animation pipeline so we could make use of the real time nature of the game engine which meant no waiting for renders.

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Apart from having a mixture of 3d animation and motion capture we also had a 2D animated sequences which took care of the complicated fight scenes. We had a comic book style aesthetic for these sequences that we then animated in a simpler pipeline that served more of a visually dynamic eye candy storytelling. 

The VR component of this project was split into scenes that you can be in and watch key moments in the short film play out in front of you, offering a different perspective on the story in VR.