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Behind the Scenes: Tour de France

13

Hello,

My name is Antoine Formery, I'm a 3D freelancer based in Paris, France.

I've been using Blender for 8 years. I started out on 2.5, with the first versions of Cycles.
At that time I was a graphic designer in a communication agency and I was looking for 3D software to help me in my creations. I haven't left Blender since; I specialize in 3D and I use Blender almost exclusively in all my works.

I've been working for 3 years as a freelancer, and I split my time between my customers' orders and personal creations. I also teach Blender to video game students at a design school in Paris.

This year the Tour de France knew the inconveniences of the epidemic and was postponed in September. The Coronavirus also offered me a lot of free time and gave me the opportunity to create this small animation, in homage to the great era of the Tour de France, with the good smell of the countryside, the Pastis (french anise alcohol), and the warm wind of summer.

 
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Process

I created the cyclist in a simple style I call the "sausage" style. It is made of rounded cylinders for the torso and head, and socks for the limbs. These socks are simple splines, whose handles are hooked on the rig.

Here is another “sausage” dude :)

The characters are made directly in their main pose, no T-pose here! I use a minimum of bones to achieve the movements I need.

The rendering is done entirely in EEVEE. I always try to make it so that the final rendering can be done simply by pressing CTRL F12: no compositing. :)

I tried to give the materials a soft look, using a lot of roughness and subsurface scattering. I use simple shaders, adding just some procedural patterns, and vertex colors. No texture here: I’m too lazy

In short: no compositing, no texture, and a minimum of bones! Keep it simple, stupid, and fun. :)

Bike rig

About the bike rig, which is the part that gave me the most trouble: the feet are hooked on the pedals by constraints, and the splines of the legs are stretched between the pelvis and the feet. For the wheel drive, I had to grope to find a way to make it work and for the bike to be able to swing from right to left so that the cyclist can stand on the pedals "en danseuse", as we say in France.

The spaces of the constraints remain a mystery to me—I tested them one after the other until they work. :p

Take a look at my Instagram @antoineformery to see my other artwork. :) Hope you like it!

About the Author

Antoine Formery, 3D Artist

 

About the Author

Abby Crawford

I've been a part of the BlenderNation team since 2018, producing Behind the Scenes and Meet the Artist features that highlight Blender artists and their work.

13 Comments

  1. Boba Lazarevi? on

    The graphic style is really sweet, but the animation of the torso is completely off sync with pushing the pedals.
    Is it a deliberate choice?

  2. Lovely tutorial, been looking to rig a bike and character for a while so may have to copy some details.
    Laughed at the comments about the torso and bike drive , I guess humans don't really look like cartoons either :)

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