In this week, I have kept polishing the animation from the last few weeks to make them looking better with the notes left from the lecturer and animator from the Siggraph event.
For the walking cycle in the side view, there are still some knee pops happening, therefore by rotating the rotation Z of the walker rig and adjusting its foot roll, I tried to fix them:
I keyed the whole rig for three frames before I adjusted any specific frame on the middle, to make sure the change won’t infect the other two.
For the weight shift I have been given advise of making the walker’s foot hold longer when it’s lifting up on the frame 25 and making a curve for it:
Also to make it more fluent, I keep the hip of the rig moving in the end without too many frames being keyed:
Also, this week we have started planning the animation of the body mechanics, here are some notes I have done in the class:
Here is the reference video I have shot in class with my class mate after editing in premiere pro:
I mainly worked on the planning by using the edited reference video in the Photoshop with drawings on top to analysis its body mechanics, and here is my result:
In addition, I have tried to set up cameras in maya by using my reference and the image plane.
This week, I have concentrated on the music design of my project and received a little feedback from the Siggraph event because no lecturer has been arranged for the week:
Due to the feedback from last week from the course leader saying my narrative structure is not strong enough through the moving image, I have tried to add text directly to the short film:
A rendered version of the text been added:
However, as there are big jumps between the text and the film, I have then been given new feedback on turning the text into subtitles and keeping them at the bottom of the film:
A rendered version of turning text to the subtitle:
For the soundtrack of this film, there are three separate parts of the story:
The dream scene.
The work space.
The fire and the emergency.
Hence when I was searching for music on the website Story Blocks, I was trying to find the emotionally matching one to achieve the synthesis of each scene:
My soundtrack list for finding music:
In the end, I put sound effects in necessary place in the timeline, such as the sound for fire, sound for moving robot, and sound for tattooing:
I also use the audio transition in Premiere Pro to help me make the connection of different music more fluently in the scene:
With my finished draft version on Tuesday, I have brought it to the animation event Siggraph in the night and received some valuable feedback from industrial animators:
For the design and animation of robots in the future, I can refer more to the movie Wall-E (2008). I could either make the robot fully float on the air or walk by using the support of wheels to combat with the basic rigging.
For the dream scene, it’s necessary to check the film Rango (2011), and see how it has been structured in the movie by scaling up and down the mannequin and props:
3. For the process of tattooing in my story, I could check the fixing scene in Toy Story 2 (1999), see how the camera movement has been built between the model and the doctor and apply them to my animation:
4. The shot below in my animation has crossed the 180-degree rule so it needs to be changed and rerendered in the future week:
In this week’s essay class, we have mainly looked at ways of quoting resources reliably, comparing direct quotations with paraphrasing and summarizing in a writing piece.
Here are my notes taken in the class:
As my writing is mostly complete, I will be focusing more on the audio & visual presentation for this unit before the submission date in next month.
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.
