Category: Advanced and Experimental 3D computer Animation

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:

This week, I received feedback on my blocking key poses from the lecturer and made some adjustments, added more breakdowns, copied pairs, and moved hold frames.

Here are my adjusted key frames:

At frame 1, I try to let my character lean to the left more.

At 46 and 64, by following my reference, I try to keep the pose of the character more straight.

At frame128, I exaggerated my character pose more to show his stunning eyes and facial expression.

At frame146, the end of the shot I rotate his face to create parallel lines which match his body movement.

I created a mask on the camera to block the area where my camera not focus:

Here is my result of the shot after blocking plus:

In this week, I gradually developed the project into an experimental game, and I decided to call it ‘Treasure Seek’, here is how it looks like in Unreal Engine 5:

I firstly figured out the issue of collision, eventually I decided to use ‘use complex collision as simple’ to apply every model my character will be running on top. As the complex collision is more similar to the shape of the model itself.

I add a layer of moss into the main building ‘SIHEYUAN’ to give it a since of times:

Also, I built up the model of my main prop, ‘YUANBAO’ (an old treasure in China), for my player to collect in this game:

And wrote up a ‘picking up’ blue print by following the online tutorial:

Because I added 100 treasures in this project to be collected by the player during the game, I built a ‘pick up counter’ in the project:

And then combined the blueprint of the counter with the prop through a ‘sequence’:

This week, I received feedback from my reference and updated it, as it’s better not to select lines from any animation films. And here is my new reference of the line ‘Little Girl! Don’t touch that squirrel’s nuts!’ from Charlie and the chocolate factory:

And here are myself performed the line with feedback from the lecturer:

Phrasing:

Started with the terminology ‘Phrasing’, it emphasises the important part of the dialogue and the related body pose/ emotion. Normally, there is one pose for a phrasing. Thinking of what my character is thinking, as there body is usually following their mind.

And when we block the line, it’s important to understand what sound it is going to make.

Using key poses in each phrasing to dictate what’s happened in the dialogue after adjusted the timing and spacing–

After that just breaking it down and add details to it.

Phoneme: defining the shape of the character’s mouth when it speaks a specific syllable:

My blocking planning thumbnails:

Learning through online videos:

1.

• not picking a dialogue from any TV, game or animation. My audience will be carried away.
  • Try interviews or different movies with the same actor instead.
• Find clear dialogue, nice to listen to.
  • Need to focus on the animation
  • Searching by ears only, don’t look! So my imagination can start focusing–
  • Finding fun things in a dialogue *weird sound to have some fun with the character
• Breakdown dialogue:
  • writing down the dialogue, breaking it down into phrases and emotional components to show my animation.
  • focusing on the sound and the flow
  • Post-to-post lip sync is to look for a landmark, or a specific moment in the dialogue. Also, the interesting sound can help. Layer passes is to do one part of the body at a time.
• The 4 components of language:

• Corners, Jaw, Lips, Tongue.
• Jaw:
  • Jaw: open, graph editor goes to 1. Vice Versa
  • Jaw is the most important one
  • The graph won’t show entirely smooth curve

• Corners:
  • in and out
  • The biggest part to make a dialogue making sence
  • it should be quick and elastic
  • experimenting with the right speed, only slowing down to see where to push
  • ‘e’ wide, ‘a’ middle, ‘o’ inner
  • however there are ways to speak the same word
• Lip shape:
  • V, F completely rely on it
  • Some words are happening on the side of the mouth

• Tongue:
  • The shape of the tongue can be pushed by syllable

• Polishing:
  • concentrating on the breathing first

2.

• Putting my hand under my jaw while talking helps me to feel the movement –> a layered animation approach
• finding syllable frame to frame.

3.

• making the lip sync shape
• Applying shapes & polishing the animation

4.