Supply Chain Management Simulation - Animatics

As part of the hybrid-approach taken for the Supply Chain Management Simulation by CVRI, I planned out and produced a series of rendered animatics in Blender showing the various stages of a Supply Chains Picking Sequence. The idea behind this approach is to have the student explore the Warehouse Environment in the Simulation, and then view recorded footage of a full Picking sequence and make notes on efficiencies and inefficiencies and submit a report to their professor. This experience provided students with a digital experience that creates the same experience as going out in the field and doing the same thing in a live environment - this can be prohibitively more expensive due to impacting time on the participating warehouse's operations and staff, safety concerns, etc.

All work was done inside Blender, making great use of the addon "Dynamic Parent" to handle the various Object Interactions within the sequence. Character was sourced and then rigged and animated to use a series of action animations that were then sequenced along the movement of the character in the space. All props were subsequently keyframed with locations and rotations, along with parenting using the above-mentioned "Dynamic Parent" addon that allowed for clean keyframed Parenting and Unparenting of object in the animation sequence. The Warehouse environment "shell" (Walls, Ceiling, Floor) were from a purchased asset that was then heavily modified and completely retextured using a series of tile Textures from AmbientCG. Shelving, Pallets, Boxes, Pallet Jack, Plastic Wrapper, and desks were created and textured by me for use in the Environment creation - I will have a separate post for a breakdown on those at a later time along with a breakdown of the Unity environment for the Simulation.

The animation sequence itself was created to leverage Blenders action animation system so that the full sequence of picking could be quickly and efficiently laid out in a relatively short time - end to end, the animation sequencing took approximately a month of production time and the approach of utilizing the action animations allowed for an iterative approach to the animation (allowing for revisions as the sequence was built).