Author: Wendy Wang Wang

In this intense term, I have learned a lot about the animation process. Started with taking the reference, to blocking and blocking plus of the shot, to the final splining and polishing of it, I have tried my best to make my work more reasonable and fluent. However, I still need to rely more on the principles and references instead of imagining of what’s happening in a scenario.

Here is my rendered final animation shots:

The process of producing an a animation shot:

The importance of shooting references and recording key poses:

12 principles of animation to follow & my notes:

The important of copied pairs and moving holds in blocking plus:

The order of polishing the shot after splining:

Always thinking of the curve/arc of the movement:

The important 4 components of the lip sync blockings:

This week, I have finished polishing the shot and added it into my submission, and here is my rendered version:

During the process, I have focused on adjusting some parts of the body to create the curvy movement (especially the nose):

I have added a moving hold when the character is stopped by noticing what the little girl doing based on his line:

I have been told the eye blink of a character normally takes about 2 frames, and so I have shortened it in my shot:

When he step forwards, his body goes down first and then goes up:

Before he starts saying ‘don’t’, his mouth should be in ready position:

In this week, I have adjusted some poses based on the feedback I received on the class and here is my progression:

At frame 1: I turned the head of the character slightly more to its left hand side, therefore audiences could see more detailed of his facial expression.

At frame 20: I added an anticipation before he’s turning his head.

When the line is being said by this character, I keep his mouth down to show his depression and keying the relative controllers.

At frame 98,: I try to keep his arm much closer to the audiences.

At frame 114: I try to keep the character straight when he is warning the little girl.

At frame 128: I try to keep the character’s left arm to hold in the position before he carries further movement by seeing the little girl touching the squirrel’s nut.

At frame 137: I gave the character a break-down pose to make his movement more smoothing.

At frame 142: I exaggerated the character’s reaction and making his face more emotional and worried.

To adjust the detailed shape of the lip, I tried to adjust more controllers at the same time, which helps to match the phonemes.

And for some lip shapes, I tried to exaggerated the shape to make them looking clear and more direct.

Here is my result of splining of this week’s work.

In this week I have done a short recording to demonstrate my simple game:

Overall, I think I accomplished more than I initially expected over the past eight weeks, and I really enjoyed exploring new features in Unreal Engine 5—especially the IK Retargeter, which allowed me to use my own model as a paragon character with seamless animations.

After I shared my demonstrating reel in Linkedin, I think people are more interested on the cultural heritage side of this game design:

It’s undeniable I put lots of effort on researching the architectural structure of the ‘quadrangle courtyard 四合院’, and how could the 3D side work in my game:

I also think that learning to build up the widget blueprint is like magic—it’s what makes a game run properly. I plan to continue improving my skills in this area during my free time, with the help of online tutorials and ChatGPT.

To talk about developing more of the project, I think I could possibly add more assets and elements to it, such as a haunted house and the ghosts which prevent the girl from reaching the treasure…

In this week I start packaging my project with the support of ChatGPT.

Firstly I downloaded Visual studio 2022 with necessary functions ticked on (on the right column):

I then fixed the issue of the water collision/ shader compile worker in my project through adjusting and editing the project scripts & documents.

I have made sure the project setting is matching the one I want for the packaged game:

After numerous tryings I have successfully packaged up my project:

This week, I have worked on some details left over from this project, and I have figured out some issues that happened in the blueprint with the assistance of ChatGPT and online tutorials.

Fist, I have added a background soundtrack for the level:

I built up a widget for the opening menu by studying the tutorial below:

I used my model in Maya to bake a pose and then imported it into Unreal Engine 5 for rendering the cover of the menu:

I updated the UVs, texturing of the stone lion models and displayed them on the front of the architecture:

I noticed that the polycount widget also appeared in my main menu, so I added a few notes under the character blueprint to exclude it:

I also added an opening sequence of extreme long-shot animations to showcase the structure of the first level. Here’s the result:

In this week, I have created a blueprint for the rotating door in my project, and started working on the main game widget such as the one to end the game when the character is accidently drown in the water.

Here is the tutorial I have used for the rotation of the door:

Here is the widget I add to end the game when the character fells into the water:

For the structure of the level and the island, I used the ‘Duplicate Special’ in maya to make it happen:

Some screenshots from the game playing: