Wendy's Animation Blog

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.

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.