I started working on CSI Vegas the day I started at Modern Motion in 2021. I entered around halfway through season 1's production and worked on the entirety of seasons 2 and 3. The show had many different computer screens, tablets, and phones that we did work for. When a shot required a graphic playing on Windows or Mac I was in charge of wrapping whatever graphic that was needed into a Unity app for playback. The graphics consisted of analyzing DNA, elements, surveying maps, exploring websites, tapping & dragging between different crime scene photos, etc.
The level of interaction from the user or actor varied per graphic. 70% of the graphics consisted of me being given a video for the actor to simply step through. I would then gather timestamps down to the millisecond and create cues at each timestamp. The other 30% of graphics consisted of me being given individual UI assets to hook up and animate in Unity. Many reusable scripts had been developed before I joined to help with this process, but I developed many while working on the show as well as maintained and added functionality to the already pre-existing scripts. For each graphic I deliver both a Windows and Mac build regardless of the target device so I and others on the team can test it, regardless of which system they use personally.
I have put together a reel of some of the gags/apps/graphics that I am most proud of below! (Unless stated in the “Work” description of a shot I did not contribute to the rest of the work in that shot.)
Since CSI is so screen heavy, this show was the most demanding (so far) out of any of the shows I have worked on. I was given between 5 to 20 graphics to work on per week with a short turnaround (To clarify short turnarounds more often applied to the gags where an actor is just stepping through a video) while also working on other shows at the same time. While some days were crazy, it was an extremely fulfilling project to work on. For one, seeing the show and the sheer amount of shots that I had a hand in in some form is really cool. And every once and a while I got to work on a more involved graphic that would push me out of my comfort zone.
I got the opportunity to do a really cool graphic for season 3, episode 1. I was tasked with animating a man who was tied down, struggling to escape from a chair. While I had touched basically every other part of the 3D pipeline before I had never hand animated a model. So, I first made a video of myself “struggling” to escape from a chair. I wasn't really tied down, but it was enough reference to get started. I was given the Maya project with the already rigged wireframe looking body to animate.
I refreshed myself with a couple tutorials on how to animate in Maya and got started. I animated the body in exaggerated poses, much more exaggerated than in my reference as the man struggling to escape was supposed to be in serious pain. I animated the more extreme frames of struggle with the legs kicked out, arms stretched as far as they could, and the torso snapped to different angles. I added anticipation to each flinch in an attempt to make the animation more natural. The biggest challenge was keeping the arms within the restraints, and animating the restraints along with the arms.
There were multiple rounds of feedback within the three weeks I worked on it and the feedback was mostly about making the struggling more exaggerated. Ultimately the animation was used for two scenes in the final episode!
Lastly I was also tasked with animating another character from season 3. It was a Robot that shows up in episode 5 that is possibly responsible for killing another character. The CSI team is testing if the Robot's punch strength is strong enough to kill. I was given the 3D model and was tasked with animating it to mimic the physical Robot in the background. This ended up being the Robot warming up and then punching.
I ended up doing the work for these shots in Blender. I first had to rig the model to a skeleton so I could animate it. Since the model was a robot this ended up being relatively straightforward as parts of the robot are obviously not supposed to bend; there was no variable weight assignment for each bone. Once I had it all rigged up I first animated the two requested punches, matching the movement to the reference footage I was given as close as I could. I ended up not animating the lower body wiggle, since what the characters were viewing on the screen was supposed to be like a “simulation of output”. I was then tasked with animating the Robot warming up.
I was also requested to animate the fingers warming up along with the arms after the first revision to match the moves on screen more exactly. At first I was a bit worried about this request as animating fingers seemed daunting, but once again since it was a robot and the joints were easily separated up this ended up being a fun task. I animated each finger bending, starting the next fingers bend halfway through the previous fingers bend. I then made renders and handed it off to our artist to composite!