Week 11-12

Animation

i decided to create the animations separately and then fade them together using After Effects.

Part 1: Flip

to create the flip the hands were left in a pose above the head, and the body rotated around them as a pivot. the fingers are closed to show the character holding onto something, a pole for example. to create the landing the character mesh was moved along with the controllers to create a change in position. after he lands the character sways slightly to show him trying to balance, and then stands up tall and proud after completing a good flip. finally he shakes off and relaxes.

Part 2: Tightrope

to create the feeling of balancing in this movement, i made the character move slowly, placing each foot in front of the other and arms out to help balance. he also sways left and right while moving to show the change in weight.

Part 3: Walking

this animation is a simple walk cycle. to add some extra dynamics the character looks around the scene. the main points which i focused on were to move only one foot at a time to avoid sliding, and also to rotate the feet slightly when moving to show the 'heel/toe' motion.

Part 4: Bowing

before the bow the character moves back his arm in anticipation of the swinging movement. he also steps forward and shifts his weight slightly. he then flexes while turning his head to show vanity.

Part 5: Waving

this is the end scene, showing him waving to his fans and then leaving. while waving his arm he turns side to side and looks around, acknowledging everyone in the crowd. he then turns around to leave.

Reflection

Overall a believable character was created by using personality and body language, and also appropriate actions.

the character mesh turned out very well, especially the head, which has a lot of character, with its strong jaw and flamboyant hair. the body also had a good shape to reflect the type of character.

the rig gave good control for animations, and had all the necessary controls for a human character, including hands and elbow and knee directions. the latter had the most effect as it gave the character a much bigger movement range, allowing the most defining poses to be made. one change which could have been made is to make the knees slightly higher to allow better bending poses.

finally the animations were successful in showing a strong character with a believable persona. the characters actions and body movements helped to strengthen this. the animation itself was generally smooth and some animations, especially the tight rope walking, looked very realistic, while still having a cartoony feel. one animation that could use improvement would be the bowing scene, where the arm moves too fast across the body, as well as moving slightly unnaturally. also the face rig could be enhanced with facial animations, for example mouth movements. this could be achieved using the morph modifier if there was more time.

I am very pleased with how most of the animation turned out, and have definitely learned a lot of essential skills in modelling and animation.

Week 10

Storyboards

Below are the storyboards for the characters animation. this will make it easier to animate as all the actions will be planned, and the main poses have been decided on. i decided to show my character doing a variety of actions, including flipping, swinging, walking, tightrope walking and waving.

Audio considerations

The character is a circus gymnast, so the music would probably have to be some sort of fairground style tune. the character himself would have a deep voice, with a french accent. he would speak loudly to show confidence, one of his main characteristics.

Body language

The character is defined more by his actions than his body language, though these two do link together. he has many 'crowd pleasing' moves such as the high flying flips, bowing and flexing, to emphasise his love for performance. he is also very proud and confident, shown by looking around and keeping his head and shoulders high.

Week 9

Skinning

i decided to try using the skin modifier technique which i had tried in class.

the skin modifier assigns all the meshes vertices to the selected bones by using envelopes.

to set up the skin modifier it needs to be added to the stack first. next the add bones button is used to select the bones to follow. i used all the bones as every bone was needed for a fully moving body.

shows all the bones to be selected.

After connecting the bones the mesh follows the bones movement.

under the skin modifier rollout there are options for modifying different areas of the mesh; the most common would be vertices. after selecting vertices the envelopes are shown and vertex weights can be edited.

the screen after applying skin modifier and selecting vertex group. the left forearm envelope is selected.

once a vertex is selected its weight can be changed. this does not have to be done to all the vertices, just the ones which are weighted wrong. to try and find the correct vertices to edit, i placed the model in various poses and found out of place vertices. to edit the weights the weight table is very useful as it shows what bones each vertex is weighted to.

once one side of the model was weighted i used the mirror mode to copy the weighting to the right hand side. this is done by first selecting an envelope and then clicking mirror mode. next select all the vertices on the left hand side and then press either copy blue bones to green bones, or blue verts to green verts. in my case it was vertices.

mirror mode clearly showing the green vertices which would be given the blue (left hand side) weighting information.

the skeleton is now skinned correctly. the image above shows the character in a position where the leg is at an extreme rotation, however there are no longer any errors in the mesh because the weighting is now correct.

Texturing

To texture the model the Unwrap UVW modifier was used. this works by making a UV map, which can be edited for easier texturing.

above is the texture map. the eyes (spheres) have been enlarged and moved to allow for higher resolution on the pupils. the upper body was unwrapped separately using back/front mapping, as the front and back of the characters vest are slightly different.

above is the texture. as the character is simple the painting did not have to be very careful.

the final textured character.