Finished Animation!

This week I have finished my animation. So from my previous post where I had just finished my final animation, I then moved onto creating the rendered videos of mine and Lukes rigs. First, here is the final video we produced.

First of all I checked over my current animations. One thing I had neglected was consistency involving the gun which should have been in has back pocket/hand throughout each animation so I first did this before moving on. I also added a tiny bit more detail to facial animations as it was something that I neglected a little at the first. Following this, Luke gave me his animations (named appropriately so I could recognize which file was which) along with a base level to sit the animation in. Whilst simple, it makes the animations easier to place in a real world situation.

The animation work area

Following this I would bring in the rigs I would need for each shot in order that they appeared in the animation. Each time I would setup my camera and then batch render the frames I needed. Following this, I took these into Adobe Premiere and added the new video to the animation. In this way the animation took place. After getting all the video in, Luke provided me with some music that he had collected together whilst I was working on the rendering. I added this into 4 audio tracks within the Premiere editor and exported the video and voila, the animation was done! 

I feel that, whilst I didn't spend as much time as I could have done, the work I produced was good. Animation isn't my forte so I'm happy with what I made and the processes I've learnt within the module.

ALSO here is the animatic which hasn't been posted.

Week 12 - Head turn

This week I started by creating the head turn animation. I was struggling with this previously and I couldn't work out how was best to do this motion. On my previous attempt I though it was best to spin the whole rig around as I found the limbs kept glitching in on themselves when turning them. This time I approached the animation differently. I broke down the movement of the legs using my reference and my mimicking the motion in the mirror. The reason I started with my legs was that if I could get these down, I figured the arms and torso would simply be moving with the bottom of the rig. I focused on using the feet controllers, knee controllers and hip controller to do this section. There was 4 more main steps to get right in this animation. I've taken screenshots of each bit below.

Looks right and takes a step out whilst spinning hips

Returns right foot then does the same motion to the other left

Moves right foot around whilst turning on grounded foot

Plants feet in position

After this, the rest of the animation was quite straightforward. The head twists but this wasn't difficult to do as it acts very independently of the rest of the rig. The shoulders were a little glitch-y however. I sorted out that issue by manually key-framing them at certain points to make sure they continue facing outwards. Overall I was pleased with how this animation came out.

One of the keyframes

Week 11 - Gun shooting animation

This week, I completed the gun shooting animation. Whilst I started the head turn animation last week, I hit a creative block with it and decided to start this one instead. I started by breaking up the animation into smaller chunks. I focused initially on the character pulling the gun out of his back pocket first. I made a basic gun to use for the animation and placed it on his back. When he goes to grab the gun, the one on his back has its visibility turned off whilst a second gun that is placed in his hand and parented to the wrist controller has its visibility turned on. This took a little while to get right as at first you could see a small movement when one appeared and one disappeared. Once I lined the guns up perfectly though, it worked fine. It's quite a sneaky method of animation and I can definitely understand why it is used as this saved me a lot of time. 

I then focused on getting a natural swing from having his arm behind his back up to when he's pointing the gun in front of him. This wasn't too difficult due to my reference that I took last week. I then focused on the shooting stage of the animation. Luckily, I was sitting with a friend who takes part in airsoft quite regularly who gave me great advice on how the recoil would affect the man. After the shot is taken, the wrist quite sharply pulls back, the forearm raises slightly, the shoulders rock back as do the hips. Then getting the gun back into position takes slightly longer than taking the shot does.

After this, I simply smoothed out the animation, added some facial expression etc. Next week I have a lot of work to do still, with 1 animation not being finished and the rendering needing to be done still. However, with my other modules being more or less finished I have a lot more time and as such I think that I will be able to finish the module with work that I'm happy with.

The animation

Close up of the shooting animation

The gun swap - Visibility on

Visibility off

Week 10 - Reference Collection and Head Turn start

This week, I began progress on the last 2 animations, the character turning to face behind him after being called, and the animation of the character pulling out a gun and shooting it. I began by collecting reference using a quick-shutter camera to get multiple pictures in quick succession. I find this more useful than a video as this way I can study each part of the animation in detail and base my keyframes off of them. First up, the head turn.

It seemed reasonably straightforward to me at the time and so I decided to begin this animation first. However, I'm currently struggling with it. The head turn to the right is easy enough, but getting the turn to the left to work well is far more difficult. Because I'm turning the rig 180 degrees, it starts to have errors. I think that I have to rotate the base instead but that could case issues in itself. I plan to get help from classmates or my lecturer on this though so I don't think it will be a big problem.

My head turn animation so far

Next are the gun shooting reference photos. These were done in the same way. I haven't started this animation yet but it seems fairly simple to me, however I've thought that way about many of my animations and been proven wrong so time will tell. Time is running out in the semester so I shall be increasing my work speed whilst hopefully maintaining the level of quality I'm aiming for.

Week 9 - Sigh Cycle

Last week I did not make animation progress. This was mainly due to the Alpha presentation within the AGAP module which took up much of my schedule. However, I have returned to work this week and plan to work hard in the following weeks to make up for it.

This week I finished the sigh animation. It's pretty simple, consisting of a large breath in (puffing the chest out), followed by a large breath out before he straightens himself out to his beginning position. Initially I was planning to just do the body animation but this was very quick and the animation didn't look like he was sighing without any facial changes.

The animation mainly consists of back movement, shoulder rotation, head rotation and facial expressions. When taking a breath in, I've made the mouth reflect this along with a slight increase in eye size and eyebrow height. I made sure to exaggerate these motions to make them more obvious visually. On the breath out, he furrows his eyebrows, squints his eyes and blows out with large cheeks making for an interesting animation to watch. I actually really enjoyed creating this animation as it was quite amusing to update all the facial animations.

Sigh Animation (Mid-breathing Out)

Next I'm moving onto the run cycle. I've done some research and it's reasonably similar to the walk cycle but with quicker timing and larger steps. Luke is going to show me his as he has already blocked his out. Luke has been working on putting the animatic together in movie maker and he is nearly done now, he was also kept busy with the alpha presentation.

Week 7 - Walk cycle

This week I moved onto the walk cycle. Once again I decided to focus on finishing the animation rather than adding a lot of character into it at this stage. Once again I used the same reference image as my first attempt on the project.

It went much more smoothly this time. I asked for feedback a couple of times from Luke at various landmarks on the project. I first made the legs and hips work. I then refined the timing of the individual keyframes, trying not to use too many so I could make it smooth. I then added a slight rotation to the shoulders along with a natural arm swing. The head also was given a small bob for when each step hits the floor. It took a while, but I'm pleasantly surprised at how decent it looks. I will probably revisit the animation to give it more swagger though at some point.

Walk Cycle

Reference Image

Following this I started creating the bare bones of the sigh animation. I did several image checks in the mirror and found that most of the movement is within the chest and back which require very few keyframes. I got the basic movement of the back and chest in along with some shoulder and head movement too. I plan to finish this animation next time.

Week 6 - New Idle

This week, I began my new project with Luke. I worked on setting up my new rig first. The character was meant to look fairly normal so it was quite similar to the initial rig that you have, just with a different hair style and a little more muscled to give him more of an 'action' feel to him. As for the idle animation itself, it was very similar to my first idle animation except putting into practice my new knowledge of keyframes and smooth animating. It doesn't convey much character and the face has very little done to it at this stage but the body is animated smoothly. I decided that I would focus on adding character at the end once everything is done to a passable extent. 

The New Rig in the Idle pose

Luke this week was focused on creating his own rig and refining the storyboard more. So far the project seems to be going well. Next week, I plan to create the walk cycle though I am a little worried about how smoothly it will go considering my problems on the previous rig. 

Week 5 - Change of Project and Group

This week had some major changes for my animation module. After looking over my groups progress, me and Luke (one of the members in my group) decided that we were worried about the progress of the team. Our other team mates had only really created Idle animations despite being so far into the project and Luke didn't like the project idea we had. After a bit of discussion between us, we spoke to the module leader and decided to pair up and create a new project with just us two.

I was happy with this for a number of reasons. Luke is a hard worker and also a skilled animator, meaning that I can trust him to do his part of the project. He is also a talented traditional artist meaning that creating an animatic and storyboard for a new project would not take long at all. Luke wanted to this for similar reasons (except I'm not known for being a particularly strong animator) and also wanted to swap the project to something a little more interact-able between the rigs.

We discussed what we wanted to create. I wanted to ditch super powers completely and work with basic humans as I didn't feel comfortable going away from this. I also didn't want the rigs to interact physically, like in a fist fight. This was because I felt it would be difficult for two people to work with such closely interact-able characters. We came up with a basic idea (Luke had already been thinking about this). Luke began sketching it quickly and by the end of the session we had a basic storyboard.

The Basic Storyboard 

Following this, we decided that Luke would animate the bad guy whilst I did the good guy. This is because Luke had already created a basic vaulting animation which is one of the key animations so it would save him work. 

We decided to plan it out well this time. Luke volunteered to create the animatic whilst I laid out what animations we would need. The animations I need are: Idle cycle, Walk cycle, Run cycle, Pulling out a gun and shooting, Sigh cycle and a head twist along with a small section of lip sync. Whilst I had to change my rig for this project, I did get to a lot of the same animations as I had previously done so I felt reasonably confident going into it. First I will create the idle before moving onto the walk cycle. 

Week 4 - Problems and Walk Cycle

This week I've been having a fair few problems. Initially, I planned to finish the extended idle. However, I hit a wall with that animation. Because of the way I twisted the arm to get him to flex his bicep, when refining the arm the shoulder started twisting in on itself in an unnatural way. I tried several ways to get around this. I found that I could get around it by using more keyframes with smaller movements but this would involve restarting my work. This frustrated me a little so I decided to keep the work I had for reference and move on to a different animation for now. I decided on the walk cycle as we had gone over it in class so I understood the basics of the animation.

I began by trying to transition him into the first step. This stumped me. I couldn't seem to get a natural looking transition between the idle and first step. After being blocked by this for a while, I decided to simple do the walk cycle separately and creation the transition another time. Whilst creating the walk cycle, I worked using the following image for reference.

Walk Cycle Reference

Initially, I planned to give him some swagger in his walk but I decided later that it would be easier to make the base walk cycle and then edit it later to give it more character. Overall, the walk cycle is nearly done, It loops and works reasonably well but needs a few changes still. The arms seem a little robotic and the footsteps need to be larger. Also, I feel that the head needs to bob to an extent for emphasis. Despite this, I feel I'm making steady progress.

The Walking Man

Week 3 - Extended Idle Start

This week, I started work on an extended idle pose after finishing clean up on the normal idle animation. This would be used in a game if you stood still for a little while and needs to flow in and out of the standard idle pose. As the super strength super hero, he's naturally going to flex his biceps. 

Super Cocky Pose - Flex Them Guns

I started with my base pose file and moved from there. I first focused on getting the fist into position. I had a couple of issues with this regarding how his arm turns to get it up there. I ended up flexing in the mirror repeatedly until I understood the motions. First I had the arm raise to the outside whilst bringing his hand out in front of him before turning the arm outwards and raising the forearm. I then added in a few other rough movements such as puffing his chest out and adding a cheeky grin for good measure.

It's still very rough but if it works, I feel that this animation will add a lot of character to the superhero and make the animation more successful. This week I'll be working on this animation for the majority most likely. 

Week 2 - Idle/Breathing Pose

Following from week 1, I got critique on my idle pose. I found I had made a few mistakes with the animation. I added in many keyframes to the animation when in reality it only needs 4 or 5 keyframes to get a smooth animation. This meant that it actually became harder to get a smooth animation. They also commented on the timing of the animation. Whilst it was semi-realistic compared to a real human, I got given the advice of exaggerating the animation, to make it more interesting and obvious as to what he was doing. I also decided that if it was going to be a super strong superhero, he needed more character, to give off the feeling of cockiness to the audience.

Because of all these points, I decided to start fresh. First thing I did was make the base pose for him more interesting and cocky. I ended up giving him a bit more swagger by making him put his weight on one side of his body and resting his hand on his hip. This gives him the appearance of someone holding them self very confidently.

The Cocky Pose

From here, I started working on the animation. I was more specific with where I put my keyframes this time around. I also decided to look at the model itself to see what I actually needed to animate for this. I decided to animate his hips, shoulders and head. These three were the only areas that needed animating due to the nature of the hips and shoulders moving the majority of the body from their controllers. Keyframes were put in only 3 places, the start, middle and end. He starts in a breathing out pose, breaths in for half the animation, then breaths out. I need to sort the specifics out but it's nearly done and coming together well.

Week 1 - Idle/Breathing

This week we started our 3D animation for games module. Initially we went over the brief. In groups we are to produce a video showcasing animations that we have created. Everyone must create 6 animations and have 4 of these placed in the video. The animations must use a human rig of some kind.

Following this we did some recapping of what we have learnt in previous animation modules including some of the basic principles of animation. I then began to form a group with people I trust to get the work done to a high standard. I ended up within a group of Gabby, Luke and Matt which I was happy with.

Next we worked on what we thought our videos theme should be as random animations wouldn't mesh together interestingly. We ended up deciding on creating superheros. The reason for this is that each creators animations can then over-exaggerate certain animations making them more interesting and giving them a character if you would. I got the role of creating the super strong character which I was happy with, it's reasonably straightforward and I can act out the animations in real life for reference.

My first animation I have attempted is an idle/breathing animation. I began by getting the rig into a pose before animating the shoulders, the chest and the hips one by one. For reference I looked at the following video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmtFvEed0cs. For the most part it's quite easy, the body simply straightens when breathing in before sinking down when breathing out. I think my animation is okay but I can't quite get it to repeat smoothly and want to get my groups opinions on it tomorrow. The next animation I will do will be either a walk cycle or an extended idle animation.