Week 10 - Final

With my final animations complete and fully rendered It was time to send them over to Krzysztof to combine them with his and Joe's animations in Adobe After Effects. After Effects is a motion graphics software used for video editing in the post production process in film making and allows the user to create animations and effects. This would be the software Krzysztof would be using to combine all our animations together, edit them, add effects and finally render as a whole package.

These below were the final renders I sent over to Krzysztof using the render process I talked about in the last post.

Idle Animation

Walk Animation

Sword Animation

Ninja Close up Animation

Crouch Animation

Crouch_02 (Different Camera Shot) Animation

I was happy with the final forms of my animations and however I felt there could have been more that I could of really added and maybe done a tiny bit differently. Looking back at the planning process from earlier in the term all of my animations played out how exactly or not far off how I wanted them to look and be presented. Still I can never be 100% happy with the work and when I keep looking back at those final renders I still see parts and points that I wouldn't mind changing. However these are not dramatic and too extreme and probably hardly noticeable.They just stand out to me, due to me working on and watching these animations over and over again for the past term. Looking back from my animations from the first year I feel the progress in my animation has come along well and I saw this in every new animation I worked on. At the start I was nervous to get back into animation again due to it being such a long time since I last did any form of animation on the course. However once I got the ball rolling with the first animation which was the idle animation I was getting the hang of the new rig and getting some form of movement with the character.

So with that to one side, all of our animation was edited and the final render done in After Effects was complete. Below is the final animation render.

          

All of the animation I worked on plays at the start of the video. I have to say I was really impressed with what Krzysztof did with the added light change and different camera positioning I really like who well they look and play out. One other thing that I'm happy with is that even though we were all working on our own animations and for the most part animating them alone, they all relate and work really well with one another. The basic plan for our our group at the start of the term was to have my animations of the ninja play out in the style of a quick time event and Krzysztof and Joe's would be presented and laid out as if a player was controlling the ninja character (in game footage). From my point of view I believe that our animations do play out how we wanted them to.

Finally getting to see all your work over the past term presented in a video that lasts 55 seconds is just crazy.

Week 9

This week involves me finalising all my animations and getting them into my main stage and have them rendered. Again as I'm doing this I'm always tweaking the animations and getting them to look as best as I can.

One thing however I have done this week is go over my original storyboards from earlier in the term. I felt when looking back on my blog that the storyboards were one thing I could easily improve by making them look a lot more presentable. These storyboards follow how my animations are at now, compared to the previous storyboards I had were slightly different to how all my part of the show reel plays out.

When it came to rendering the animation instead of just rendering it as a AVI. like I had been doing for past renders of the my animations in my blog, I rendered the animations as JPEGs. This meant each key frame would be perfectly rendered in quality meaning nothing gets compressed like if you were to render the animation as a AVI. Other things I changed in the render settings before batch rendering the animation was making sure the quality was at HD 1080 and that Motion Blur was turned on and set at 2D. 

Once I was happy with all the settings and they matched up with how Krzysztof and Joe had theirs set then I clicked batch render. Once the animation was rendered fully, it was broken up into the correct amount of key frames. for example my walk cycle was 96 frames long so 96 frames were individually rendered out. here's a quick example below. 

Now that I had all my animation rendered I would need to now convert it into a video. For this I used Windows Movie Maker and dragged all 96 frames fro the walk cycle in the open space in movie maker. all that was left to do was adjust the duration settings under the Edit tab and set it from 7 seconds to 0.04. This would then adjust the playback speed to it's correct state for my animation. Once I was happy I did this for all my other animations and saved them all as 1080p in quality. When I was finished I sent them other to Krzysztof to add to his and Joe's animations s that they could be rendered together. 

Easter Break - Week 3

This week Krzysztof took my animations and began placing them into a scene where all of our animations will take place. Here is my opening a window animation in a scene, with all it's lighting.

With all the assets and lighting placed, you could tell the Maya software was struggling and running slow on my laptop. When opening up on my desktop computer there wasn't much difference. I rendered the animation below to see how it all looked. 

   

                                     

After looking at the render I'm happy with how it all looks. One thing however I might want to change the way his eyes move in the clip. Around half way in when the character is turning back I fell his eyes should be either looking to the right still or already be facing the left side.

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So after looking over the animation again, I made changes to the eyes by not having them move so much while the head is slowly turning. Here is the new render. 

                                    

Easter Break - Week 2

Coming into week 10 I am pretty much happy with how my 4 animations are playing out. I keep making minor tweaks to each of the animations (especially with the walk cycle), however these are the renders of the the 4 animations below. I uploaded the render videos on my group Facebook page and team member Krzysztof said he likes the animations now it's time to start combining all our work together.
Idle:

Walk Cycle:

Pull out Sword:

Crouching:



Easter Break - Week 1

Slow progress this week due to my other module specialist 3D, which also involves me animating. In that particular project I'm looking into comparing Pose to Pose and Straight ahead animation. Back to this module, I uploaded the animation that I had for my final piece so far to my teams Facebook group. One of my team members Joe pointed out that at the end of my animation the sword my character is holding is facing the wrong way. However apart from that he liked the animation. This tweak would be very minor as I only needed to move his wrist slightly so the swords blade is facing the front.

Here's the rendered version of the edited animation. Comparing to the last rendered version of the animation, you can really see the difference and improves that last final pose. The next thing I need to do is look over my 4 animations and make sure I'm happy with how they look and play out and finally combine them all together.

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Above I have rendered the walk cycle I animated a few weeks ago. I've been making a few changes to the characters right foot. I felt the when the right floor is about to make contact with the floor the animation looks clunky and doesn't look as smooth compared to when the left foot makes contact with the ground. Also with the rendered animation, I have also displayed how we might present the walk cycle. As a group we thought it would be a good idea to have the walk cycle play out like this in our show reel, as moving the camera around will add variety to our show reel.

Week 8

This week I have made very slow progress with my animation due to big deadlines in other modules like Applied Game Art Project which we had a major Alpha deadline which we had to make sure we hit. So majority of the week has been spent on that.

Where am I up so far with this module? I have 3 animations pretty much done, with some like the walk cycle needing a few tweaks here and there. My final 4th animation I have started, the idea for the animation has changed slightly. Originally I was going to have my ninja character walking then turning when he hears a noise and pulls out his sword. However I felt that have the character walking then turning was going to be tricky to animate. So the plan is now to have the ninja character pull out his sword while in his idle pose. This animation will still take place before the opening the window animation. I feel this will be an easier animation to get done seeing how much time we have left to get every thing done in our groups.

When looking back at some of my previous animations like the walk cycle for the ninja, I felt that the animation could do with a few tweaks. For example when the foot is about to make contact with the floor with one of my characters legs it seems very rush and clunky. While watching the stop motion film ParaNorman, I noticed a key piece of animation that could really help me. I managed to break the couple seconds of animation into screen shots showing the up close walk cycle. Here this demonstrates how when his feet are about to make contact with the ground, he leads with the heel and the toes curl up. Whereas in my walk cycle the character feet at one stage just goes straight down. However once this minor tweak has been made, I'm pretty happy with how that piece of animation looks.

Here is what my final animation looks like so far rendered. There's still a lot more work to be done to the animation however I'm liking the way it's turning out so far.

Week 7

I used this week to continue working the animations that I have already started on in the previous weeks. First the walk cycle, I wasn't convinced that the characters legs were correct in the way they were positioned. I got my other team mates Joe and Krzysztof to give feedback on the animation. With the walk cycle the key frame timing was correct however, adjustments with how high the feet were being lifted off the ground needed to be changed. Once I did this the walk cycle was less force full and a tad more relaxed. When I was happy with how the animation was looking I went and started animating the rest of the body. Below is the rendered animation of the walk cycle for the ninja.

After went back into my into the crouching/opening window animation. I showed this to one to my group and feedback was that they felt that the animation needed to be longer. what I mean by that is so far the animation finish with the window moving and the ninja staying in the same stance before the window opened. This working in our scene doesn't make sense because if the ninja is sneaking and trying not be caught, once the window opens he would probably duck and hide. I added 24 more frames and have the ninja lower himself behind the window.

Week 6 - Presentation

Week 6 marked an important landmark in the module for our group, this week we would have to present our overall progress and blogs to the class and Sam. In Tuesdays lesson me, Joe and Krzysztof stood up in front of the class and presented our work so far. The main objective in overall work progress that we had to have done for the presentation was to have our blogs all up to date and detailed with images and us talking about our progress and work. The other was to have two of our animations done for the lesson. The two animations I had done were the idle and my character opening a window. My other team mates Krzysztof and Joe both met the required objective to. So our group is currently on track to get the show reel done. The general feedback from Sam was positive with some handy tips to help with my animation. One thing for me was for my crouching/opening window animation I needed to be careful with how the head moves to the rest of the body. With the idle animation, she said that it looked fine and wouldn't really need to add much more to it. However the crouching/opening window animation is still kinda in the blocking out stage so I can add a lot more to make it better and interesting. This she would go through with me in next weeks lesson once all presentations were done. Overall I'm happy with how our groups animations are coming along and I know we'll meet the deadline.

This week I begin my third aniamtion, which will be the walk cycle that the ninja character goes into after the idle animation. I tried to brekdown my primary research video of me acting out the walk. I paused the video at the key points and took a screen shot. Below is an image of the walk cycle brocken down, showing the key poses.



I would then use this to help me with the block out of the walk cycle. I haven't done a walk cycle since the first year module for animation. I found it tricky at first, the walk cycle started to look clunky and a unlife-like. However once I collected some primary research and found some images that helped me last year, the animation finally started to look like he was properly walking.

                                        

Week 5

The first lesson this week I was introduced to the software Motionbuilder. Like Maya Motionbuilder is made by Autodesk and is used in video games. When first loading up the software we had a selection of files on udo to help demonstrate the various ways of working in Motionbuilder. When first looking at Motionbuilder it seemed like it was going to be really complicating and still kind of is looking back. The main part you notice when starting up the software is the viewer, this is where you'll see your animation taking place. This is very similar to the scene viewer in Maya. However that for me was where the similarities ended. Everything else just looked foreign to me. We were given a piece of animation captured using motion capture. We would then be able to attach this to a model of a character given to us on udo. This was unfortunately as far as we got with the lesson and with Motionbuilder. I have since then downloaded the student version of Motionbuilder and I plan on looking into the software further in my spare time. Below are some screenshots from the lesson showing the various rigs we used.

Also this week I finished recording the last video reference material I needed for the rest of my animations. Now I could begin working on my next animation ready for the group presentation next week. Below are the videos to help with my crouching, walk cycle and turning around animation.

 

 

I began work on my second animation with the deadline being the presentation on Tuesday. The second animation I did was the ninja crouching and opening the window. In the scene to demonstrate him opening the window, I made a simple (very simple) window setup.

This is no where near finished and there's still more I would like to fine tune on the animation. However the ways it looks at the minute, I am happy with how it looks.

                                        

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The YouTube video above is a animation progression research video for the film 'Horton Hears a Who'. The video displays 4 mini progression videos showing a video of the animator acting out the scene, early block out animation. Then finally showing the animation near complete and finishing off with the animation all rendered in the lighting. This video gave me a better understanding of how to actually go about this process for my own animation. This was the first time we were properly acting out our animation to help plan and help us while animating.

Week 4 - Start Animating

This week Sam talk to us about the presentation we would have ready for week 6. In the presentation we would talk to the rest of our class about our idea and the 4 animations we are doing each. The presentation will be informal and not require a power point, but however we will present our blogs with all our work on them. One big task for the presentation is to have two animations done each (one idle and one other animation). With no animation done as of yet, this will be a objective for me.

Also this week Sam showed us (me and Krzysztof) a ninja rig that maybe would be useful for us for our animation. When having a look at the rig we found the rig we were already using before was easier to control. However one element we liked from the ninja rig was one he was all black. So going back into our original rig and we both changed the colour of the rig to make him more ninja looking. After doing this I started to tweak my idle pose a bit to make him resemble Krzysztof's ninja character (due to us both animating the same character).

I took elements from Krzysztof's idle pose however I made changes, so this will make it look like it's the same character, but it should also show the different variations of the character that we can take advantage of.

Before I began  my animation I needed to film and collect primary research. The first piece of footage I shot was me acting out the idle pose for my animation. In the animation I will have my character almost crouching leaning forward and then stand upright. Here below is the video.

Once I filmed my primary research I started working on the animation. With this idle I would have the characters body lowered slightly (almost crouching) then he would stand up straight. How ever after showing the animation to my team mates, they felt I could have the character doing his idle another way. Instead have him starting in the upright pose for the whole idle animation. Also in the new idle the ninja would be holding the sword against his belt with his left hand. So from the idle he can easily go into his walk cycle and then the next animation sequence I will have him with his right hand grab the sword to hold in defence. So this meant redoing the another video for the idle.



                                        

                                      

                                      

                                      

Week 3

This week I carried on with my idle poses for the ninja/samurai character. When looking back at the first two poses I did, I felt they weren't really showing that this guy was a samurai/ninja. I went back onto Google in search for more research images. My team mates Joe and Krzysztof showed me a game they had been playing called Mark of the Ninja.

As Mark of the Ninja was a cartoon style game, all the animations and poses for the ninja character were really over the top and exaggerated. This would help us as we're going a stereotype ninja/samurai character and the game's ninja idle poses would help too.  
I then transferred these references into my new idle poses. Looking at these reference images really helped me get my idle pose to appear more like a ninja. Compared to my previous poses I had done, these were by far better.

I'm happy to move on with these poses, however once I go into filming my primary research for my animation as I may want to make changes later on. Looking at both of these poses, I may have found a way to use. For my idle animation I may my ninja character in the pose at the top and over the 30-60 frames he'll end up with the pose at the bottom. This however is just an idea and I may not go 100% with the idea, Once I start filming my primary research I will hopefully have a better idea how the pose will play out.  

Week 2

At the start of this week my group had a team meeting to talk about what we had for our animation show reel so. Over the weekend I had done storyboards for brief we had at the time. In the meeting Krzysztof pitched to me and Joe a new idea for the show reel he had done over the weekend. My feedback towards the idea were very positive and I felt that his new idea would play out better than the James Bond theme. Krzysztof's idea was we would have a ninja/samurai that would now attack a guard with either a sword or ninja star. The animation would be split up at the time with Krzysztof doing the animation for the ninja and Joe doing the animation for the guard and then Krzysztof said to me I could then do something with the ninja character after.

The Next day in the lesson whilst talking about the idea still, I thought it would be a good idea to like with the James Bond theme we had a slow build up at the start, we could have this again for the ninja idea. I could animate this slow build up to which our ninja character would walk slowly down a corridor with his sword and once he gets to the door and peeks through and enters the room, Krzysztof's animation would then take over. The one thing Krzysztof talked about when pitching this idea to me and Joe was that the style of which the camera would film it would be like game play footage. However when I talked about the animation I could do at the start, that part could really play out very cinematic. This would show variety in our show reel having one part cinematic and the other very game play style. Once we were all happy with the idea, we could finally (again) start storyboarding our own sequence.

In the first lesson this week Sam gave us a lecture on trax editor in Maya to help us with our animation reel. The Trax editor is a use full tool to help improve our animations later on in the process. For example it can help us extend our animation (if we were doing a walk cycle). The file we were given to us as an example, it displayed a short animation walk cycle. Also shown was the trax editor, graph editor and the dope sheet.  

I began developing the storyboard for how my animation will play out.

Once my storyboard was finished I began to start working on my idle pose. I looked up images online to research typical poses for a samurai character.

My first two poses above were I consider the weaker poses of the punch. I felt they weren't ninja enough or dynamic enough. Just overall a bit bland. Without these however I wouldn't have come up the final two poses that were good enough to use for my idle animation.

Week 1 - Introduction

This week was the start of a new term and new modules, one of them being 3D Animation. The last time we properly covered 3D animation on the course was a little under a year ago. I was happy to be starting a new assignment in the module. Today being our first lesson we were briefed on how the module will be broken down other the next 12 weeks and what we are expected to produce for our assignment by the end of the term.

The brief was that we would be placed into groups of 3 - 4 people and work together on a show reel that at the end of term would be suitable and great enough to show to maybe future employers. The show reel will display each team members skills in 3d animation. For the show reel we could use the Norman and Max rigs that we have used before and used to, or we could even use other rigs from the internet. I feel for my animation I would want to use either the Norman or Max rig, maybe the Norman one (due to me using Max last year). We could also use objects found from the internet to help with our animation if we need the character to hold a gun or push a crate. In our groups we are expected to produce in the end excellent results all round as for example if two members of the group have produced good animation and the third member's animation is not up to standard of the others then in the end it shows the whole group up. Each team member would have to produce 4 animations that will be shown in the show reel. For example one animation could be a character standing idle (minding it's own business), then the second piece of animation could be the character kicking, then crouching down could be the third and finally have the character punch or some other action. Each person in each group would have to animate their own character, meaning that each group's show reel should contain as many characters as their are members in the group. Also all the characters had to relate to each other and almost tell a small story.

So far I felt comfortable with the assignment and believed that once I get into a group and we start to come up with ideas for what we could animate that this could be a great module and we can come out of it with some great work. Research would play a big part of the module as to get our work to be great we would need to collect a tone of research primary and secondary. Primary research would be us filming each other acting out what we would want to animate. Secondary involves collecting research from other games and films for examples of character movement and their actions to help with our animation. With our secondary research it could involve finding a piece of animation from a film for example a certain scene that you like and have our other team members act out that animation which then makes it primary animation.

We were able to choose our own groups, I felt this was a great idea as we were able to work with people we know and trust to get work done on target. In my group I'm working with two people who I know very well and really hard working, Joe Cooper and Krzysztof Chrostowski. In the lesson we were able to sit in our groups and start to get ideas onto paper. Krzysztof came with the idea that we should base our show reel on fighting games. We wanted our 3 characters to be based and influenced from that genre. I was happy enough with going with that theme for our show reel and we started looking at trailers from fighting games we had played like Tekken and Street Fighter. We watched these to help us with getting ideas of what we could have our characters do in the show reel. We agreed that for tomorrow's lesson that we would come in with ideas that we can go through and maybe find bits from each that we can incorporate into one.

The next lesson we pitched different ideas to each other with the hope that we could combine elements from each others work to combine into one. Not being overly thrilled with the ideas, we went back to the drawing board and looked for other inspiration. We discussed working on a James Bond theme show reel. We wanted to base our animations on the opening sequence from Skyfall. After studying some the main key scenes from the film, me and Joe came up with 4 animation sets for the three characters.

Brief story

Agent slowly walks down corridor, comes across an injured hostile, Agent opens fire and chases down hostile, additional hostile then opens fire which commences a shootout.

Animation sets

Agent

Idle - (holding gun down) (guard pose)

Walking - while gun is up

Opening door –

Shooting –

Bad Guy #1

Idle – Injured

Walk – Injured

Dodge –

Fall – Death

Bad guy #2

Idle – holding gun on guard

Shocked – brought to attention

Shooting – retreating fire

Crouch – taking cover

Walk –

Once we finished and had it gone over by Sam, we would now class this as our brief for the assignment. Over the 12 weeks we could change the brief and what actions and animations we would want in the show reel, but however for the mean time this would be our brief.

Later on into the week I started producing storyboards based on the above brief to help my team visualise how our show reel will play out.