Project File: Transforming Pawn

Hello! In my latest video I made a chess pawn that can change its shape when promoted into a queen! I've always wanted to make a transformer type of animation, so this felt like the perfect opportunity!

The transition start at the bottom of the pawn, which is basically two reasons: First I just think this shockwave type of transition looks so intriguing. But secondly, animating it like this made it so much easier to mentally isolate each segment. So even though I worked on this video for over a month, it didn't get overwhelming because it felt more like I was working on smaller segments throughout the project. And then it was so incredibly satisfying putting it all together and seeing the final animation come to life!

The texture I ended up with is a combination of a wood texture from ambientCG and a plastered wall texture from HDRI Haven. For these close-up renders I have increased the brightness of the wood a lot, because in the final video I did VFX compositing to match the chess pieces I had in real life (and they were really dark). Also since I knew the final render would primarily have the camera from the same angle at all times, I could just get away with a simple UV map projected from view. This just saved me so much time with the UV unwrapping, so the consequence of that is that the final 3D model isn't really turntable friendly.

In the video I spent a lot of time making timelapses (I was hoping to have a GIF here, but Patreon is bugged today it seems). For the Blender timelapses in the video I used an addon called TimeLapseTool by Fwiller. It is a really cool addon with a lot of potential, and I think the developer might be working on an update!

Also after I did the final render, I ended up experimenting with some different materials. So if you follow my instagram, I'll be posting an animated version completely made out of glass! This turned out so much cooler than I had thought, so I also redid the sound design for it to have more glass sounds in that version. Almost a bit sad I didn't get to include it in the final video.

Attached to this post you will find the finished project file, with all the animations and textures I ended up using for the final render!

So please download the project file and play around with it. It's so much fun experimenting and assigning different materials to detailed, animated shapes like this. Have fun!

Also I wish to say thank you for supporting me. Because of your support on Patreon, I am able to make projects like these that take a really long time. When I'm writing this it's 76 days since I uploaded my previous youtube video, and it would not have been possible to spend so much time on a single video without you. So thank you for making this possible!

- Asbjørn