Rachael Wooding

Portfolio

I'm passionate about all things 3D, but with a special love for character creation and rigging, I love bringing characters, environments, and stories to life!
I've worked in many teams on various projects, and am adaptable in many roles.

Characters & Rigging

Unreal Engine Coursework

Gimmick & Bolt
Capstone

Roles
Project Lead
Character & Technical Artist
(3D Models, Rigging, Animation, Maya > Unreal Pipeline)

Year
September 2023 - December 2023
Purpose
University Capstone
Software
Maya, Unreal Engine 5.2

Gimmick & Bolt is a short animated trailer about two characters attempting to escape a prison in the depths of space- but they have more than one shot at this.
This trailer was created with the use of Maya and UE5. Maya was used for rigging, character creation & animation, while UE5 was used for visual effects and rendering in our cel-shaded style.

I was the project lead of this Capstone project, and alongside that, responsible for character modelling, the rigging of Bolt (robot character) and other background assets/characters, some animation shots & cleaning animation from my team, and importing the finished animations into Unreal.
We utilised sourcing assets to allow us to focus more on animation, one of which were the Guard models, which I was responsible for tweaking the models and rigs of. Originally sourced from [SketchFab] (https://skfb.ly/6WY79).

Mr Yakkerboo
Short

Roles
Character & Technical Artist
(Concept, 3D Model, Rigging & Animation)

Year
February 2023 - May 2023
Purpose
University Project
Software
Maya

Inspired by Pakenham's Local Yakkerboo Festival and the Statue Created by Julia Squires that resides in the Main Street of Pakenham, Victoria.
Mr Yakkerboo is a short animation about discovering Australia, that was developed around a brief regarding the Australian environment, and surrealism.

Riley concept art & character sheet. In this project I was responsible mainly for the development, modelling, and rigging of our character Riley, and animating them the initial shots of the short animation.

Modern Witch House
UE Coursework

Roles
Assembler, Renderer, Asset Artist
(Fridge, Dragon)

Year
December 2022
Purpose
University Project
Software
Maya, Unreal Engine 4.27, Nomad Sculpt, Substance Painter

This was a group project, where we were to develop an environment in Unreal Engine (4.27), based upon a character we created (which did not have to be included in the environment.) We were able to source assets externally, but had to make at least 1 ourselves.

Our character was a modern day witch who worked as a healer in her seaside house, alongside her dragon familiar.
My role in this project was sourcing and testing assets, assembling the environment and rendering, and creating our additional dragon character.

Hard Surface
UE Coursework

Roles
Solo Project
Conceptualising, Modelling, Texturing, Environment Assembly, Rendering

Year
February 2023 - May 2023
Purpose
University Project
Software
Maya, Unreal Engine 4.27, Substance Painter

For this project, I was required to create a hard surface model around the theme of 'light', of which I could incorporate however I wanted. I was marked on topology, UV's, textures, and presentation. For this project I came up with a futuristic desert vehicle, and created an environment in UE (4.27) using Quixel assets to populate the scene, in order to showcase my model in a sensible environment.

On Ice
Collaboration

Roles
Lead Rigging Artist, Character Animator

Year
February 2024 - April 2024
Purpose
Collaborative
Software
Maya, Unreal Engine 5.3.2

I also assisted in animating Lola, one of their Metahuman characters, in order to become more familiar with how Unreal's animation and rigging system worked, as well as metahumans themselves.

On Ice's website.
On Ice is sci-fi short film, animated in a combination of Maya & Unreal Engine (5.3) and rendered in Unreal. I was responsible for rigging Kla-Ra, the robot nurse and antagonist of the short, and had to ensure that translating animation from Maya to Unreal Engine was seamless and easy for the On Ice team!

Kla-Ra's face is 2D, something I have a lot of experience working with, as a lot of the character's I'd rigged during my course had 2D faces! Thanks to my previous capstone project especially, Gimmick and Bolt, I knew a lot more about how to make a 2D animated face that was compatible with Unreal Engine.

The facial animation is driven by joint rotation, as Unreal Engine can read this and scroll through the texture.

For visualisation in Maya, the UV simply offsets. UV offsetting isn't great for Unreal Engine, so I utilised two separate pieces of geometry for Maya and Unreal Engine, so animating in Maya and importing animation into Unreal is as smooth as possible. Best of both worlds!

Kla-Ra's shoulder movement, being a robot, was slightly different to what I'd encountered previously. FK was simple, making different coloured controllers corresponding to the axis.
IK was a little different though, as each axis was separated along the shoulder. Jeff, our assistant technical artist on this project, helped me develop a MEL script to determine how each of the bones should rotate. I translated this into Maya's node system to make tweaks easier.

Kla-Ra's wheel automatically rotates when the wheel control is moved forward, allowing for easy animation. It also comes with a manual rotation, an 'in-air' controller that stops rotation for shots where the wheel is off the ground, and a multiplier for the automatic rotation so that the speed can be fine-tuned to match perfectly.

Rachael Wooding

My name is Rachael, and I've recently completed my Bachelor of Animation with SAE Melbourne!

During my studies at SAE I specialised in 3D character rigging and modelling, and experimented with many different aspects of 3D (and 2D!) through coursework and self-directed learning. I love almost every part of the 3D pipeline and I love learning new things, whether they be purely creative or technical!

During my studies, I had the opportunity to complete real-world work experience with Deakin's Institute for Intelligent Systems Research and Innovation (IISRI.) There, I acted as an in-house animator, and even created my own node-based logic in Unreal to integrate people into their simulations, something I was able to do thanks to the proficiency I'd developed at SAE!

Work Experience
Deakin IISRI
2024 | Jan - April
Education
Bachelor of Animation
2022-2024

Tools
Maya
Blender
Unreal Engine
Substance Painter
Nomad Sculpt
Procreate