Category: Advanced and Experimental 3D computer Animation

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.

This week, we have started a new project: lip syncs.

We have been introduced to the animator Jeff Gabor, and looked at some of his showreels:

In the following week we need to shot our reference for the new project, here are some of my notes:

• my reference: all in one take

• the rig with a face: making sure to think how to make it more alive

• Making sure my animation is following arc

Believable Break

• emotion will be transferred through the face and body
• the actor des the animation describes
• entertaining!
• emphasizing the character through the animation, shifting through the emotion in short period of time

key words: clear, sincerity, simple

• humanizing my character through secondary action

We don’t need sot below medium close shot (chest)!! But we still need the other parts believable, 5-10 seconds.

• remember my dialogue before I start recording any reference

• reference is my best friend, I will be acting in the shot

• 2-3 poses in a 5 seconds shot

• Understanding why I move the character before I move it

Don’t let the character point anything, NO INDICATING, using body movements! No finger pointing!

Planning format:

Make sure I break down the line, writing done the matching feelings and researching the facial expression. Making the character bio, writing done what she has been through. Making thumbnails and the layout.

Don’t put my own audio into the showreel, it could make the quality less better.

Use this link for the sound resources: Movie Sound Clips! – Audio sound clips from movies, tv, video games, people and sound effects.

Eventually here is my planning:

And here is my edited reference:

In this week I have carried on building up my architectures and environment with the materials I built from last week:

And figuring out the most important and difficult part in this interactive project, of how to run my character’s animation blueprint from the third perspective view:

I have viewed several videos online, and I think they are the most useful ones:

• indicating how to use the IK rig to target my character onto the UE5 character
• shows necessary chains during targeting
• demonstrating the way of adding body IK to the matching joint

• indicating a new thought of retargeting the default character blueprint into my own character
• saving time by producing the animation file of my own character

• indicating the function of BlendSpace in UE5
• teaching how I adjust the speed of the character animation
• showing the blueprint I can use for my character to run in this project

Here are some screenshot to show the process:

• Here I retarget my character by adding body IK and chains to her initial skeleton done in MAYA.

• Here I retarget my character through animation blueprint to produce some basic animation files for using.

• Here I use the blend space to combine my character’s animations from standing to running based on the speed.

• Here I run an animation blueprint to control her animation from the third perspective view:

In next week I will be gradually putting all my models into the UE5 project, adding related collision to each of them, and so the player can control my character to go anywhere they want her to explore.

In this week I have made several materials through Substance Designer based upon the main structure of my environment building Siheyuan:

Hence, here is my testing result showing traditional Chinese bricks, red wood, roof tiles:

Here are my pipelines of building up different materials in Substance Designer:

1. Black_Roof_Tile

2. Red_Acrylic_Paint

3. STONE_BRICKS

4. Big_White_Bricks

In the following week, I will be focused on finishing the texturing of the whole building, and import it into my UE5 project. Also, I will be tested out how to customize my Paragon in UE5 based upon the character I have.