Reflection for Project 2

I really learnt a lot about Character Animation. Although I have done something similar in my previous modules, this time the exercises and projects are more in depth and the things I always do this time is not really easy. I have to do a lot of research and manipulated a lot of the graph editors. To make things look more smooth, I have to manipulate the graphs carefully, which to me is not an easy thing because there are too many graphs to change and it make looks messy if one graph is accidentally manipulated wrongly.

I am really satisfied of all the things I have done for character animation. It really makes me think that those people who do animation, such as cartoon movies, are really incredible as animation do require a lot of time and patience, and passion for it to make one incredible animation.

Character animation is really one of the interesting modules that I ever had and although I believe that character animation is not just all these that me and my classmates have learnt, but I hope if there are opportunities like this, I would like to learn more about character animation. Overall, I think that character animation is quite tough but still, I managed to do it. Thumbs up!

3DPF Project 2, Component 2 - Angry Walk

I chose the option 2 and animated an angry walk using the Mani rig.

It look like this:

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eXqXDs7NB8

I referenced from an angry walk picture and animated my mani rig.

To make it look angry, i animated the wrists and made it clench its fists. Also, the posture of an angry person is not straight, so I made it bent for every frame, but bent at different angles for each frame, but the first and the last frame is the same. The shoulders and elbows are always bent too. The legs are always wide apart, to show that it is stomping on the ground instead of a stroll. And the final product is shown in the video above.

3DPF Project 2 Component 1 - Basic Mani Walk Cycle

I selected the cog and open the Graph Editor, and transform Y
in an up & down motion. I  selected Keys > Break Tangents>Free Tangents.
I clicked Tangents > Linear, and then flatten the curve.
I then selected the front foot on frame 1 and transform Z like the above picture.

I selected all keys and click Tangents > Linear. 

I did the same for the other foot.

Selected Transform Y and curved it like the above picture.

Did the same for the other foot.

Selected the cog again and transform X. On the pass positions, I moved the keys up or down.
I flatten the high and low tangents.

I selected the spine controllers and open the Graph Editor.
I select all the Rotate X tangents/keys and flatten them.
Select the curves and click Tangents > Flat.

I then select  the Rotate Z channels for both controllers.

.

Rotated Y for both controllers to make it look like this.

Rotated X channel of both controllers and flattened them.

Shifted all keys 4 frames to the right. Selected the whole curve. Click Curves > Pre Infinity > Cycle.
Clicked Curves > Post Infinity > Cycle.

On frame 1, 15 and 30, I keyed the head to look in front.
The final animation looks like this.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dl6oJI_0PJQ

BASIC WALK CYCLE

In this lesson, we made a basic animation of a basic walk cycle.

I used this as reference for my basic walk cycle animation. It is found in the PDF provided on Olive.

At frame 1.

At frame 18.

At frame 36.

The final basic walk cycle looks like this:

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83AIJnh2Gog

Reflection:

The basic walk cycle to me is quite interesting because it is my very first time animating a walk cycle and it makes me think like "so this is how one walk". In daily life, we walk a lot but we can't see ourselves walk so this exercise to me makes me realise that a walk cycle has a certain pattern to it.

Research - What is Character Animation?

What exactly is Character Animation?

"Character animation is a specialized area of the animation process, which involves bringing animated characters to life. The role of a Character Animator is analogous to that of a film or stage actor, and character animators are often said to be "actors with a pencil" (or a mouse). Character animators breathe life in their characters, creating the illusion of thought, emotion and personality. Character animation is often distinguished from creature animation, which involves bringing photo-realistic animals and creatures to life"

In my opinion, Character Animation is animating the character's movements and also make them look real and making them move like the way they supposed to be. For example, if one is angry, you wouldn't look like you are happy, jumping around. Instead, you will be stomping on the ground and with clenched fists.

EXAMPLE:
They say that Winsor McCay's Gertie the Dinosaur (1914) is often considered the very first example of true character animation. The video looks like this:

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UY40DHs9vc4

Posing - Spider Man Poses

I made spiderman poses in this lesson.

In this case, I posed spiderman upside down. We all know that Spiderman has a very unique pose, such that in one glance we all know he is spiderman.

Spiderman hanging upside down

The side view of Spiderman posing upside down.

Reflection:
Posing is very important to me because we do not want to always look at a character's face expressions to know what is he thinking or feel like at that moment. For example, without looking at one's face but the person is crossing his arms, means he is not very happy at the moment. In this lesson, I referenced from the powerpoint slides for tips for these spiderman poses. Although it is quite tedious, I managed to do it.

WEEK 6, LAB 3 - Exercise 1 Questions & Answers

Exercise 1:

i)                    If engineered or programmed badly, BigDog would fall over. Watch the full video again, and describe how BigDog’s legs move while walking– ie. what is the sequence of leg movements for one complete step? Use the terms BL, BR, FL, and FR for the back-left, back-right, front-left and front-right legs.

Answer: Firstly, the Big Dog's right front leg crossed over to it's left front leg. And then, the Big Dog's left front leg separate away from it's right front leg, and the back right  leg cross over to its back left leg. Moving on, the Big Dog's right front leg cross over to its left front leg again, and the back left leg separates away from its back right leg. Lastly,  it returns to a similar pose as the first action when it was first kicked. This allows the Big Dog to return to a balanced pose.

ii) Explain how this sequence of movements manages to balance BigDog’s body weight.

The centre of gravity depends on height of the object and the surface area.

WEEk 6, LAB 3 – Animating the Big Dog

In this exercise, we learnt how to animate the Big Dog’s movements after it is being kicked. The Big Dog will try to balance itself after being kicked. So we learnt to observe the Big Dog’s legs and animate them.

At Frame 1, it looks like this. Actually this is the original look when the file was first opened.

At Frame 12, the Big Dog's right front leg crossed over to it's left front leg.

At Frame 24, the Big Dog's left front leg separate away from it's right front leg,
and the back right  leg cross over to its back left leg.

At Frame 36, the Big Dog's right front leg cross over to its left front leg again,
and the back left leg separates away from its back right leg.

At Frame 48, it returns to a similar pose as in Frame 1; a balanced pose.

       This is the video that i referenced from, and also observe the Big Dog's legs movements carefully:

WEEK 6, LAB 1 – POSING, SPIDERMAN RELAX POSE

In this exercise, we learnt how to move the Foreign Kinematics Handlers(FK) and the Inverse Kinematics Handlers(IK) to make the Spiderman model pose comfortably and relaxingly.

 

This is the original file, we are supposed to make Spiderman relax.

A relaxed Spiderman pose

After orientating and positioning, I managed to make Spiderman have a relaxed and comfortable pose.

Reflection on the video production process

Final video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoppjEHFZaA



I really learnt a lot of things throughout the video production process. Actually, I do not know many things about Adobe After Effects and after this process, I realised that this program can do wonders. I think if i were to go out to work such industry next time, I will definitely use Adobe After Effects to animate my videos.

I must say that this is my very first video, although last time I did animate videos for other modules, that I am satisfied with. As I have grouped with members who I have been in the same class for 2 years, coming 3, I can communicate with them easily and hence, things were able to process fast.

At first, to me the splitting of who is to do what effects for the video is quite difficult because we have 5 people in a group and the video is only about 45 seconds to 1 minute. The video to me is quite short, so we need to organise properly and split the roles. In the end, luckily, we each have something to do. Besides, I think for most of us, it is quite rush for us because this is our first time experiencing having to animate within 5-6 weeks as it is a term mode. But in the end, we managed to finish up our video, which is something that I was shocked. Overall, I am pretty satisfied with our video. Two thumbs up!! :)

Project 1

Project 1

Our group project story is about Qingsheng the businessman who is about to clinch a multi-million dollar deal in his stock market but is oblivious to the viruses in his laptop which may prevent him from clinching the deal.

The viruses were about to attack his laptop when suddenly a force-field approaches them. The force-field actually comes from the anti-virus software that is installed in his laptop. The force-field then defeated the viruses and hence, Qingsheng is able to clinch the multi-million dollar deal successfully without obstructions.

These are what I have done for the project:

1. Anti-virus software called 'Tackle' 
I modelled the anti-virus software object using Autodesk Maya. Besides that, I edited a picture for the box using Adobe Photoshop . This object was modeled to show viewers that they need to install anti-virus software to tackle viruses in their computers.

Original Norton Anitvirus image file
(http://www.a4team.hu/data/upload/picture/norton_antivirus_2013_hun_1_user_upg_-_21247533.jpg)

After editing, it becomes like this.

Steps to model the box:

1. Create a polygon. Hold right click and select face. Select the front face and hold right click it..
Select 'Assign New Material...' and this(above image) window will appear. Select 'Lambert'

2. After selecting 'Lambert', this window will appear.  Select the checkered box beside colour.

3. After selecting the checkered box, this window will appear. Select 'File' and choose the image file.
In this case, I edited the image for the box, so I chose it.

4. And the anti-virus software model is made!

For the rest of the faces, I choose a similar colour as the image to make it look like a real product.

2. Message Alert window 
I did the message window to show that the businessman has $1m deducted from his bank account.

Steps:

1. I created a solid. Layer > New Solid. And then, I created a mask for it. 

I head over to the second mask and use the 'Subtract' option and played with the 

'Mask Feather' option to make something like a 'window' (the above image)

2. As you can see in the image, the words start to come in from a corner, starting small.

I typed the words in, and zoom the words in slowly. This is to make like an alert-message effect.

3. For the words, I applied the 'Glow' effect to it. This is to make the words look like

it is some important message to the person.

Final output: Message Alert window

Effects used in this part:

1. Glow Effect on the words

2. Zoom in by using simple scaling
3. Mask feather for the border to make it look like a window

Video Reference:
I did not entirely follow this video, but it inspires me to do something like that.

3. Credits for the video

Director: Qingsheng
Actor: Qingsheng
Cameraman: Zhenghou
Animators: Ayuni, Marc, Me, Qingsheng and Zhenghou
Sound Effects: Marc and Qinngsheng
3D Modellers: Me and Zhenghou

Steps:

1. In the video, you can see some blocks behind the words. I created those by applying Mosaic effect.
In the Mosaic effect, you can see squares, so generated the Grid effect to separate the squares away from each other.

2. In the final credits video, you realise that the blocks are not in a square form.
As I do not want my blocks to be just a solid square shape, I masked out some of the squares away.

3. In the final credits video, you also can see that the blocks kind of change colour from time to time.
This is because of the Fractal Noise effect applied on the blocks. I adjusted the Brightness, Opacity and Complexity
in this effect to give the blocks a different look.

4. In a close-up view, you can see that the colours on the words have a gradient on them.
I applied the Ramp effect on them to give them a gradient-colour look.

5. In addition, the words have a slight 3D effect because of the sides.
I applied the Bevel Alpha effect to give them a 3D look.
Also, I duplicated the words 3 times and push them backwards.
I applied 3 different colours to each so enhance the 3D effect on the words.

6. And in the background, you can see particles.
I applied CC Particle World in the background, and applied the option,
 Faded Spheres to make them look like particles.

I combine the different effects together and duplicate them for each scene. Also, I parent the cameras for each section so that when I want to edit or delete something, I can do them easily without having to re-do them. I changed the background to black in the end.

The output:

Effects used for this part:
1. CC Particle World - Faded Spheres for the background
2. Ramp Effect on the words to make it look like there is a gradient on the colors
3. Bevel Alpha Effect on the words to make it look 3D-like
4. Mosaic Effect on the blocks surrounding the words
5. Grid Effect on the blocks surrounding the words to separate the lines in between the mosaic
6. Fractal Noise Effect on the blocks surrounding the words to let it 'bling' on different frames
7. Camera-parenting to make different section of words move from one point to another and manage each section easily

Video Reference:
I refer to the Video Copilot video called 'Energetic Titles' to make this credit video.

Link: 82. Energetic titles http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/energetic_titles/