ABOUT
"The Orbital Drop Shock Troopers (ODST) are a special operations capable organization of the UNSC Marine Corps that specialize in orbital-dropped shock infantry and special warfare tactics."
I owe a lot to the Halo franchise. I started learning Adobe products so I could make Halo Machinimas in the mid 2000s. Which in turn led to a career in the motion design/VFX industry. Even before I owned an Xbox I remember being enthralled by the colorful designs of Halo's world. This CG short is my love-letter to Halo.
PROCESS
The majority of the project was assembled/animated inside Blender and then exported to Cinema4D/Redshift for rendering. I used Blender to model/UV the ODST's armor(Based upon the iconic designs by Isaac Hannaford) and MA5K Assault Rifle (based on a design by Kieren Xiang). The Flood Head was sculpted in Zbrush and based upon Halo 2A concept art. The environment (Hallway, Hangar, Pods) was designed and modeled by Alex Quintin inside Maya.
The blood splatter and arm ripping simulations were done using Houdini 19 using Vellum and Flip. Seiji Anderson created a "goop" setup for the blood tendrils on the tentacles. All the rendering was done utilizing Redshift and then composited with Nuke Non-Commercial, which I learned specifically for this project. The motion graphics for the HUDs and end titles were animated in After Effects. Finally, editing was done inside DaVinci Resolve 18.
CREDITS
DIRECTOR: DAVID WEINSTOCK
ENIVRONMENT MODELER/DESIGN: ALEX QUINTIN
SOUND DESIGN BY: ECHOIC AUDIO
SPECIAL THANKS: Marcos Melco, Cristian "Freespace" Scubli, Seiji Anderson, & Kieren Xiang