In this week, I have kept working on polishing the weight shift and the walk cycle.
First of all, for the walk cycle, I have made the movement of the body looking more fluent, by following the note given by the lecturer:
I then add toe roll to one of the feet in this walking cycle:
To achieve the fluent knee bend of the animation, I have decrease and increase the rotation X between the down pose and the up pose:
By adjusting the foot position, I try to let the movement to build up curves:
I will wait to receive more feedback from this Friday.
For the weight shift I have mainly checked the starting point of the hip to follow the movement of the feet and the distance of them, I tried to adjust the graph editor to make the movement more fluent:
In Tuesday night, I have also went to the event of Siggraph and receiving feedback from other industrial animators, have noticed I shouldn’t let the movement of it suddenly stopped at the middle, but keep the curve fluent in the graph editor:
This week, I have concentrated on receiving feedback from the lecturer about my draft essay and working on the reference list of YouTube videos.
Here is the feedback given by the lecturer:
Change the subtitle of my essay.
Put all my illustrative images into an image list.
Changing the space to 1.5.
My initial subtitle, ‘From last century’s work to the present day,’ is too long for this 1500-word essay. Although I have used examples from different centuries, I am concentrating more on the film language side of the differences between orthodox and experimental animation.
Therefore instead of saying the time of the work I will be researching, I changed to say the expression ways of film languages applied into 2 kinds of animations.
About the illustrative images by putting them into an image list to make my essay looking more organizing:
Also, I have checked the way of referring YouTube videos in my essay:
Here is my result:
And this list includes all the examples I have added to the essay:
This week I have focused on the progression of the UE5 assignment and its feedback session, I have finished most of its editing and will be start adding sound design in following weeks:
Within the project, I have built up the opening dream scene this week to indicate the robot’s ambition of being rich, I started working on the scene by modeling cash and coins in Maya and building up their texture in Substance painter:
I have used the reference photos to work on the icon of the money and through the re-topology it brings me a clean topology:
I have also tried to work on the icon in Zbrush, however, I found the result is not ideal and the model is too heavy:
As I was designing the own cash to appear in the robot’s dream, here is what I made and projected:
I prepared the animation of the money in Maya and imported it into UE5 through the baked FBX file and Alembic file separately. Due to the cash having a non-linear bend applied I learnt from the video below, that I couldn’t bake the deformer in to the game engine.
After I had imported everything into a new level of my project in UE5, I decided to give the robot a purple background to indicate its luxurious dream:
However, in the feedback session on Friday morning, my lecturer pointed out that the background built up in UE5 is too protruding therefore she wanted me to build up a proper box as a set, and also add some light spots to make audiences concentrate on the character more. I agreed with her idea, and said it should be more creative:
I used the low poly to work on this box by considering time limitations, due to the robot being a tattoo machine, I experimentally added a layer of skin texture and tattoos on top and related back to the fake skin in its room. To represent its dream and ambition are building up by its reality and ‘function’.
I key the colours and size of the spotlights & skylight in the dream animation sequence to ultimately achieve the desired effect. I keep the purple tone through the lighting:
I have also given the coins some added light through having another light channel 1, therefore they can be more shinning in front of the camera:
In the editing software Premiere Pro, I cut the dream scene with the reality scene at the beginning when the robot sleeps. And because it is a dream, I added an extra layer of effect on top to increase its blurriness and exposure by following an online tutorial below, to build up the dream-like feeling:
During editing, I have also cut off some problematic frames naturally happened in UE5 due to the light changing through shots or camera movement:
In addition, in this week I was also working on the 2D effect of tattoo done by the robot in this animation:
I worked on this specific shot in photoshop by combing the 2D layers with the video document:
I learnt the function from scratch through following this video below:
Overall it’s an intensive week for me, however I do enjoy the progression and always do my backup of files.
In this week’s session, we have mainly focused on correcting the walk cycle blocking, and then polishing it, and correcting a few poses left from the polished side weightshift.
Here is the polished animation graph editor:
From this week’s notes left by the lecturer, I have noticed when the ball is walking, its body part should always not be in the middle except all the contact poses.
Hence here is what I have corrected for mainly the front view:
From there is no value on transform X of the main body in its up pose:
To give itself a slightly move by following the last pose:
Which allows its body part to build up loops in its animation blocking and polishing one:
I have also corrected the weight shift from week6, I noticed from the lecturer’s notes, when the foot is reaching the ground, we should keep it flat (with no foot roll or toe roll):
And when the foot is lifting up, we can hold it for longer:
I also tried to add more movements onto its body to build up curves when it’s doing its jobs:
The lecturer’s notes of pushing its body more through the force of the movement:
By following my plan, I have polished my animation blocking under the narrative of my UE5 assignment. Also, I have learnt how to build up the fire Niagara effect in the scene.
Here is a quick screenshot of the fire from my project:
By learning how to build up the fire, I have checked these two main tutorials online:
Due to the first video needs a specific software called ‘Amber Gen’ to create the effect, hence I moved to the second video which used mainly the started resources included in the game engine:
As the video is about 10 minutes, here I am going to display my notes through study it:
Here is the interface of the flame. To explain more, the flame has three parts: fire, smoke, and debris dropping down. Only the fire and its debris have colour information added to them. As I know my flame starts from frame 1015 in the story and ends up in frame 1350– which is 336 frames and 14 seconds in total, I have changed their lifetime into 14 seconds for adding into the scene.
In the process of making the fire, I found it important to test out the level of the spawn rate and the sprite size to make sure the effect was achieving my expectations. Also, it’s important to add them casting the light by adding a light renderer under the fire part.
Due to I need to add the fire into the scene under a specific frame, and making the animation working, here I have followed this tutorial:
By following the tutorial, I understood how to add life time to my Niagara effect after I have dragged them into my animation sequence:
And so I have used a similar method and built up the animation of each flame on its own in my scene, and here is what shown in my sequence:
As I have noticed I can also key the size of the fire, I let each of them get larger by following the time moving. Also I have added layers of flame effect in my scene by following the time passes, therefore we can see the level of the fire is getting bigger and worse on my cyberpunk human:
Frame 1069:
Frame 1121:
Frame 1278:
Frame 1349:
Moving from building up the fire to the animation part of this week, I have added all those details to the robot:
I have created different quick selections to control different part of the robot:
Here is the graph editor of the camera at the same time in Maya:
Due to I have to add the focal length of the camera manually in UE5 here is my progression:
In some shots I tried to make the background more blurry therefore audiences could focus on the foreground more, although the difference might not be that obvious:
I have also debugged a texture problem of the opacity pass of the robot, for now, audiences are be able to see its empty ink bottles around and the ink materials I put inside:
Next week, I will be focusing on the animation of the robot’s dream at the beginning of the story and doing some explanation by adding music and sentences to the story, the latter will be mainly inspired by old silent films (some examples I am thinking below):
In this session’s session we have concentrated on the editing and narrative structure of creating a story, here are the notes I have taken:
Talking about the transition of films animation, the editing software such as Premiere pro normally has some default ones in it:
Here is the way of creating narrative structure in my animation project:
After the class I have filled the template for my research essay, in my writing piece there will be more detailed examples with images been pointed out:
In this week’s session, we concentrated on improving last week’s sidewalk, making it polished, and started blocking a walking cycle by using the same rig. In the sidewalk correction, I have noticed the main body of the rig would lean on the straight leg side when it plans to move, otherwise, it will fall down without the natural support.
Here are my notes taken for planning out the blocking of the walk cycle by following the lecturer recording and the tutorial below:
In my notes, I have emphasized a few main points through keying the walk cycle blocking, such as the rotation direction of the main body in different stages and how the foot moves when it’s stepping forward. By combining the assignment given by the lecturer, here is my plan:
It is also important to know that the foot break should always be 100 throughout the entire animation, and instead of touching the toe roll, we should key the foot roll directly.
Due to this walk cycle having a lot of mirroring poses, the lecturer in the recording has introduced the plug-in called Animbot, by adding it to my Maya, it speeds up my workflow:
Foot swing in my blocking animation:
In the passing pose, feet are way further out, therefore to increase the number in transformation X.
In this week’s session, we have touched on some basic domains of mise-en-scene. Generally, mise-en-scene means things that are included on the screen but also related to sound, camera, and editing skills.
Here is my notes from the class:
From my opinion of views, we not only see mise-en-scene from the animation and films but also other media such as posters and music videos, they help audiences to received the meanings behind characters through several elements:
Setting
Props
Costumes, hair, make-up
Facial expressions, body language
Lighting, colours
Positions of characters/objects within the screen.
The poster below is from the film Brave (2012) by Pixar Animation Studio, it follows the general trend of showing the main characters with their featured mise-en-scene in the film: costumes, facial expressions, positions and props made from computer graphics.
Here I have done a small analysis based on its main elements:
The castles and trees in the background of this poster point out that the main set is remote from the centre of the country, which makes the audience feel expectant about the construction inside the building. However, the glaucous green mist builds an odd atmosphere, which connotes the unknown danger and the mystery in the story. The regional identity which corresponds to the medieval costume and weapons these characters are wearing conveys their masculine characteristics are used to resist danger and guard the family in the place,
Two feminine characters in this poster are wearing blue and green skirts respectively, the girl in the front shows a head of messy orange hair which represents her energy and passion but the woman behind her looks more gentle and mature with her tied black hair at the back, the binary opposite of them connotes a contradiction might be presented between them in the story. The leather coats worn by masculine characters are much stronger and more supportive in their life. Three young characters who wear identical clothes connote that they are of the same age and gender. Their make-up is not obviously shown because of the distance and the lack of straight light.
Within the frame, two separated parts of characters they have connote a break between them. The character in the front is more likely to show her weapon and facial expression to the audience, by contrast, the people behind her are showing a less powerful status with their smaller figures, which makes the audience more likely to trust the story is mainly about the girl in front of the camera. Although the construction of this poster shows these six characters are positioned in the same environment the distance between the main character Merida and 5 characters behind her connotes that Merida needs to face her own destiny and the test of her life.
In the progression of my essay this week, it’s also easy to find that orthodox animation concentrates more on the mise-en-scene and how the camera or sound applied to display them:
The above is a short textual analysis of the camera and characters’ poses from a performance scene in Snow White (1983):
Also, the hyper-realistic poses have been applied to creatures in the Disney film Bambi (1942), in the snowy set their characteristics have been amplified with their movements and soundtrack:
Here is a short textual analysis based on the scene which I added onto my essay this week:
There are different camera angles, movements or compositions related to things in the frame. It’s important to understand them either for structuring my film or writing my essay:
The photo below shows the main camera angles we can see from animation or films, a few of them can structure the opposite binary of characters such as low angle and high angle shots.
The photo below visually explains different camera movements, from my opinion, I think panning and tilting are mostly been used in structuring the narrative of a film or animation.
The photo below shows some compositions that can be applied to a shot, they have mainly been structured or drafted through shapes and lines.
When we build up camera movements in a scene, it’s also important to know there should be an invisible line to prevent the camera from crossing 180 degrees, otherwise, audiences won’t be able to identify two exactly the same objects/characters in the shot.
In this week’s session, we have mainly looked at the control rig in UE5 and the blue print of changing or building up a character’s rig. First of all, we have downloaded the FAB to Ue5 and added its plug-in into our project:
By quickly downloading a paragon from the FAB, we were experimenting with adding UE5’s rig to its mesh.
After that, we were trying to learn the process of editing an existing skeletal in UE5 through the plug-in below, and the control rig added to the project.
Within the control rig, we could change the transformation of different joints, such as changing the root joint to three 0 in its transformation.
Within the control rig, we could also adjust the rig by deleting and adding new rigs within its hierarchy.
As the added rig tends to appear on the middle of the mesh, we can use the transform tool to drag it one by one.
After adjusting the rig, it’s also important to bind skin and check the skin weights in UE5.
After that, we downloaded a control rig pack from the FAB, it has some already rigged characters for us to play and study:
We looked at their blueprints and played with the control rig by setting and controlling the bone and controller, through following the tutorial:
It’s also important to learn the way to change the shape, and side of controllers as different characters are having different shapes:
Always remember to ‘GET THE BONE, and SET THE CONTROLLER’.
After the lesson, my lecturer gave me quick feedback on my assignment. She pointed out some shots in my animation that needed to zoom out a bit, and I needed to review the camera movement after I finished the robot animation.
Also I found some online tutorials might be helpful for me to build fire in my scene:
In this week, I start leaning knowledges of the weight shifting in animation. Here are some notes I have taken after reading the Animator Survival Kit:
To structure my blocking of the Weight Shift animation, I have followed the tutorial in the Youtube and the tutorial recorded by the lecturer.
There are some notes I have taken through learning the video:
At the beginning of the progression, I have built up a MEL bottom for my rig:
The peeling off pose I tried to learn with the rig:
I noticed it’s always to check the pose of the rig through the side view:
The foot shifting pose I tried to learn:
I have been taught the importance of looking at the arc of each joint of the rig in the animation:
Here is my first practice through learning the Weight Shift from George’s tutorial:
By noticing I want to learn more details of building the blocking, I started learning the video below:
In this video I have noticed a few important points:
The squash and stretch can be applied when the ball is moving down and up.
The position of the ball in this rig is moving drastically during the weight shift.
There should be an invisible line formed of each part of the rig in my animation.
when the foot is landing, the Y axis is reaching 0.
I can add foot roll and toe roll in specific time in my animation.
Playing the delay of some specific frames can create some specific effect in my animation.
After my two attempts of blocking the animation, here is my final result of this week:
Eventually I have also made some poses through using the character rig by following the walking reference online:
