Category: Advanced and Experimental 3D computer Animation

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.

In this week, I keep focusing on the modelling of my architecture and gradually moving on to UV wrapping & adding subdivision level. Below are screenshots showing my progression:

I make sure the topology of each building is clean and looking right:

I make sure the inside of the building having a space and looking right in its topology:

The courtyard has a group of stone furniture as a decoration based on my reference:

I make sure there is no triangles or N-gons in my scene:

I started the UV wrapping of my model before adding their subdivision level, and I used the UDIM to organize them as several groups to be imported into UE5:

Here are my other UDIM groups based on my models:

In next week I will be finishing cleaning up the scene, finishing the UV wrapping and UDIMS, started building materials to be used of my architectures, and then starting doing textures.

Between weeks 4 and 5, I received some feedback on the splining of my animation, and here are my notes on progressing it into the polishing stage.

Firstly, I have reviewed the walking cycle and the running cycle by reviewing my old work and the animator’s survival kit:

Secondly I have reviewed the bouncing ball principle for the mushroom:

Here are some of my other tweaks:

• character should toward the camera more

• the head controller controls more of rotating left and right, both neck and head go up and down together
• when the character runs away, keeping her in a line, run to the left

• She stays less time in her jump

• Remember to keep the waving of characters arms

I have also watched some videos talking about polishing an animation:

1.

• ‘Get all those details in’.
• Considering taking out and adding frame in
• Last time to do the timing
• Write done checklist, starting from the most important part
• Making sure the camera is working
• Be careful with the curve & nodes in the graph editor, do not water my animation down. Always checking the arc in my animation.
• The face animation polishing should start from the jaw.

2.

• A final touch to make things organic
• ‘Adding a little bit extra on top’
• Maya grid helps to check the spacing and arcs, it is a way of reference and tells which part of my character stops moving

• The wireframe mode of the character could also point out the ‘died’ part of my character, especially on their face.

• To double check things:
  • Line of action
  • asymmetry
  • silhouette
  • energy
• Avoid over polishing, keep our character simple

3.

• Polishing is the last 10% of the animation
• Helping strengthen the acting ideas
• Making the physical movement become more believable to the audience
• About adding and selling details—>
  • breaking my shot into frames
  • breaking my shot into phrases
• Making things more organic
• Adjusting frames to adjust the timing to make poses more relaxing

4.

• Splitting the pressure through joints
• Polishing is about pushing the pose
• One part of the body movement can influence the other parts
• Adding geometry to show the interaction between the character and the environment

In this week I have been focused on adjusting the blocking of my animation with the weekly feedback, and gradually moving onto making my animation SPLINED. Here are some notes I have done below.

A few adjustments I have done based on the feedback:

1. Giving time for my character to observe the mushroom
2. Rotating the root when she is doing the jump
3. Try to avoid the overlapping poses

Cleaning up order:

Tips for Splining: How to avoid “Spline Depression” – YouTube

• Breaking down shots into manageable chunks
  o Bring things under-control
  o Working in frame chunks, or body chunks
• Using the arc tracker
  o The action should please the vision
• Don’t allow the computer to decide things which I can decide
  o Working with the Graphic Editor
• Sometimes the best way forward is to delete keys
  o Re-blocking or re-animating some shots if they look confusing
• Auto/Linear Tangents can prevent unnecessary overshoot
  o Manually checking the graphic editor

Splining Tutorial 1: Make Curves Pretty : Splining 101

• Selecting everything first
  o Key every two frames
  o Working with setting showing ‘AUTO &AUTO’, turning blocking to AUTO as well–> it’s splined

– Starting from the transformation and rotation of the root

o Picking a nice section and make it digestible
o Work section by section with all controllers
o 30-40 frames each time?
o Thinking what my character is thinking
o Looking for whooshing motion, tightening everything
o Do nice clean shape of the graph

Splining Tutorial 2: Animation Tutorial with Pro Animator – Part 3: Splining

• Converting all keys into AUTO-TANGENT
• No need of my reference
• Translate X: Moving towards the camera
  • Deleting unimportant keys
• Translate Y: It shows the weigh of the character which is the most important one

• Do nice smooth curve & movement by deleting keys
• Go through each curve but only for this mover is the most important one, which drives everything
• Polishing on more important parts, like head, instead of unimportant area like knees.

In this week’s class, we mainly experienced the Vcam function in UE5, which is a way to use the phone to control the camera in our project and then progress the shooting. It focuses a lot on the environment, therefore it has also inspired the brief assignment I want to do for this unit.

Plugins for VP:

Livelink/ Remote Sessions/ Take Recorder/ Cirtual Camera/ VIrtual Production Utilities/ AppleAr Kit/ AppleAR facekit

Here is one of the clips our group recorded in the class:

When doing it, it’s necessary to check the IPconfig through RUN on the computer in use and type the same code into the phone app ‘Unreal Vcam’ to control it.

character rig progression: I have finished my character’s rig in maya by using Advanced Skeleton, and thinking I could import it into UE5 project as a paragon for my audience to be played with.

My new idea: due to this project being heavy in interaction and immersive world building, I am thinking of focusing on the Chinese architecture ‘Siheyuan’, which I am quite familiar with. And setting up a scene showing the Chinese New Year elements inside UE5 to allow my audience to interact with things.

Here is my reference:

Here is my draft blocking of the building built in Maya, I will be refine it in the next week:

texture file: I started my character texturing with a few changes due to the newly added Chinese elements.

Through the feedback session this week, I changed my plan to keep the animation more reasonable and simple. I get rid of the confusing frog character and instead focus on the interaction between the mushroom and the main character. Here are my new reference:

And here is my new recorded thumbnails of the key poses in the shot:

Here are my notes of how to start the blocking of the shot in Maya:

Key poses to convey the story, set up the foundations of the shot.
Steps:

• Rough blocks (three poses, camera composition)
• Regular blockings (5-15 blocks)
  -take my time
  -Choices need to be good
  -set poses
  -Think of lines of action: draw a line through my pose and see where my line is taking me. One clear C shape is an example that clarifies the movement and creates a dynamic pose. Arcing my body to tell the audience where to look -thinking of the rule of the third (if we have two points of interest, especially)

FK V.S IK:

FK: more predictable, starting from the top to the below, each joint can be rotated.
IK: all about positioning the end of the chain, e.g. using it for punching.

Blending them during the movement makes the animation stronger; the character’s movement is made of mechanics and emotional expression. Ik could work when it raises the shoulder in the movement without raising the whole arm.

• Blocking plus (every 2-5 frames is going to have a key)
• Hit spline, s-blocking

Blocking Plus:
（Do not hit the spline!）

‘allowing the animator to approach the shot as a series of step-keyed poses right up until final tweaking’
Adding moving holds and copied pairs!

Breakdown:

• Breakdowns are different to Extreme Poses, extreme poses are showing the extreme movement in an animation, while breakdowns are showing the fluency of the transition between breakdown and key poses.
• Breakdowns are after extreme poses, they appear in blocking pass or splining
• Breakdowns are before moving hold and copied pairs!!!
• There are 3 types of breakdowns: 1. Classic breakdowns, 2. antics/overshoots, 3. Spaces
• Classic Breakdown = middle transition pose. It’s basically about what arcs we want and describing the arc motion.
• Anticipation and overshoots define the motions and arc further, and the weight of the character.

• Spaces help to define the gap (it favours the last pose generated by the computer, slowing down). Like what type of ease in and out we want.
• Resting to a move-> we need ease out
• A move to a resting state -> we need ease in
• Overshoot can be a change in direction, which needs an ease-in to the pose. Instead, we need an ease in to connect to a resting pose; the spacer pose would help.

Moving holds and copied pairs：
Copied pair: a technique creating those moving holds and making sure how long you want a key pose to be.

• Always used in the blocking stage of my animation.
• How long do I want my character to hold for a pose? (My pose then transfers to the next one)
• I can use Plateau tangents instead of the stepped ones in this stage to visualise the movement
• It helps to avoid floatiness
  

Moving hold: giving a slight change to a pose after several frames to make the character more vivid, basically to avoid the character looking dead.

• Characters hold a key pose to prevent them from looking dead
• Preventing a floaty animation in transition
• Each part balances the weight of the character
• We can add a moving hold on top of the copied pair
• When a character comes to a stop, body parts will counteract  
• Moving hold is different from easing in & out; we could add easing in and out through Spline when the movement is being conveyed
• Secondary movement can be added through a moving hold to show the emotion
• Considering the character before adding the moving hold, do not do mechanical things in the scene!!
• Focusing on my emotions if I do this realistic movement—

Pipeline：
（开始）Start ➡ Key Pose （关键姿势）➡ Extreme Pose （极限姿势）➡ Breakdown （过渡姿势）➡ Moving Hold & Copied Pairs （移动保持 & 拷贝对称）【归在3D Blocking阶段】➡ Spline （曲线润色） ➡ adjusting In-Between （中间补帧）➡ Polish （打磨）➡ （结束）End

Animation & 12 Principles:

• Squash and stretch. The more you squash and stretch, the softer the character; the volume shouldn’t change.
• Anticipation: preparing the energetic action.
• Staging: control what audiences are looking at in my shot, either the rules of the third or the middle. Thinking of Mise-en-Scene.
• Straight Ahead & Pose to Pose: animating frame to frame or adding the middle frame later. Pose to pose can fix a lot of work, catching problems early on. (Keys 1, extremes 2, how far my character would go, breakdowns 3, how my extremes will connect 4 in between) 1-3 added in the blocking stage, 4 added in the polishing stage. extreme poses 通常指主动作本身的最极端时刻，比如跳跃的最高点、落地时最压缩的瞬间。Breaksdowns就是纯过渡
• ✅ Key poses是讲故事的”重要姿势”，
• ✅ Extreme poses是讲动作”物理极限”的姿势。
• Flow through & Overlapping actions, and drag*: the appendage will follow and then come back to the main body
• Slow in & slow out (add it during the polishing stage): Use the spline to change the frequency of the character, the object gets slow, fast and slow
• Arcs*: adding slow in & out through the spline (polishing stage), body moving to shape an arc
• Secondary action: Gesture that supports the main action!! It’s not the overlapping animation. E.g. facial expression
• Timing: The speed of the action will be defined by the number of frames between two key actions.
• Exaggeration: making the expression more dramatic and bigger, stronger. When the motion is quick, the exaggeration needs to be bigger to be noticed, otherwise, it makes the exaggerated pose longer.
• Solid Drawing: 3d dimensional drawing, draw perspective lines on the floor. Avoiding symmetry lines. Avoid Twinning, avoid symmetrical poses. Characters need to be balanced in the 3d environment.
• Appeal: characters need to be appealing, interesting to look at. A dynamic design. 1. Using a variety of shapes. 2. Playing with Proportions. Magnifying things we find interesting, shrinking things we find ugly or boring. 3. Keep it simple.

By reviewing the session’s demonstration, here are my notes:

Here is how we should parent constrain the body part to the prepared locator with baked information:

IN this week we are planning out the animation to show the advanced body mechanics for the following five weeks by following the workflow below:

Here are a few of my notes:

Pantomime

-Mr Bean

-expressive bodily or facial movements of the performers

We want the character to be acting with the body:

(creating clear full body expression)

• Keep the animation clear and simple, use rules of third, composition and colours
• Lock the camera

Idea:

• If there is no primary idea, looking at YouTube
• Draw thumbnails
• Capturing the essence in my shot
• Pushing the pose, no tracing on my reference
• Needing a desire. Point a&b, what happened to both of them…
• About 5 seconds
• Showing the personality of the character
• No pure body mechanic
• adding more narrative, creating some anticipation, showing the contrast of the character
• entertaining

Here are my initial idea between the character, frog he wants to reach, and the mushroom as a problem between them.

Here are my combined reference video shot during in the class:

Here are my thumbnails and sketches created for the planning of it:

In this unit, I decided to visualize a world which metaphors the perspective of autistic people, from how they creatively seeing artistic things, to their fright caused by noise and flashing lights. Due to I am also developing the world for my FMP project ‘Pocket Fantasy’, I decided to keep similar assets but restructured their features and tell a different story through different movements to deliver the thought.

Here are some shots I developed in the previs for my final major project. This set is mainly an imaginary world constructed from the perspective of our female protagonist:

Here is a concept of my twisted world-building: –> What if my female protagonist has autism, and she lives in this virtual pocket world appearing in my FMP in her imagination?

• Props in this set could be anthropomorphic characters to reflect her inner world, sensory experiences, and emotional navigation.
• The girl sits curled up on a stool, arms around herself—a posture that might suggest self-soothing, anxiety, or feeling overwhelmed.
• The candy, utensils, paper and other animated objects floating around her could represent how everyday stimuli feel amplified—even normal things like candy wrappers or utensils may hold a heightened sensory impact or symbolic meaning.
• These objects have faces, hinting at personification—perhaps a nod to pareidolia or the way some autistic people assign deep emotional connection to objects.
• The bright glowing pink and red hues might reflect sensory intensity—colors, lights, and feelings can often feel more vivid or even overstimulating.
• The lighting may also represent the girl’s focus of attention—autistic perception often zeroes in on specific stimuli in a world that may feel chaotic.
• The golden retriever appears calm and affectionate—perhaps a symbol of comfort or a support animal.
• Many autistic people find solace in animals, who offer non-judgmental companionship and are easier to connect with than people.

Also, I have looked at a few animations talk about autism in YouTube, which inspired me to have this idea

This video represents a few traits of artistic people, which include their fear of unknown things, sensitivity to light and imagination, which protects them from difference.

Other references on the visual side I have used before I started structuring the concept:

Technical side, I develop the female character from turning her 2D design into a 3D sculpture in Zbrush, and then I started doing the retopology in Maya:

I used this course below to support my study of retopology in Udemy:

I will be doing the UV wrapping and rigging in next week, and soon starting to construct the world.

Here is the final outcome of my 3D previs after 10 weeks development, through creating gags in this animation to explore the meanings behind our daily item ‘underwear’— it has hopefully created a romantic story between a male and a female character.

In this week I have focused on a few little details of my 3D previs left to be adjusted. Here are what I have changed by following the feedback:

I exaggerated the movement of my male character when he lied on the ground and wanting his underwear back from the female character under a high angle shot.

I adjusted the time of the cut in the mind world, to ensure they are not looking so interruptive.

I make sure the male character turns onto its left during the moment he feels embarrassed, and so his face could easily face the camera. And linking to his shit in the next shot.