final showreel

here is a link to our final showreel enjoy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuuHVXgTR58

reflection

on reflection i have begun to realize that even though animation can be fun at times it's not the sort of thing I would consider for a career, having said that the editing part of the process was interesting and it was nice to achieve the finished effect that we aimed for.

its also worth mentioning that this rig has given us alot of trouble for example a common error that kept coming up with mine was that everything time i played an animation of any type the mel script editor would say that the was a problem with "expression2" but having looked at it in the expression editor it wasnt translating to anything therefore i just decided to delete the expression seeing as it had no functional purpose within the rig.

all in all this module has had its moments but i can say ive learnt alot about the animation side of computer games.

finished animations

With our animations finished we did a batch render with lighting and a background shader on the surface in order to achieve the ambient occlusion effect we wanted in our finished showreel.

Once the batch renders were finished we took them into adobe after effects so that we could create our own avi's and our finished showreel ready for submission.

theo also managed to figure out some of the transition effects so that we could give the showreel something to jazz it up a bit so to speak.

primary research

Here I have some primary research on my characters movements give or take some might be a little different then what the final outcome will be but they will only be slight difference i'm still happy that i'm on track with what I have.

dodge final

The playblast seems a bit fast but hopefully it will come out a bit better in the final editing, here I have the final make of the dodge animation not quite what I had aimed for but none the less i'm pleased with what I have.

dodge animation

here I have a quick playblast of the dodge animation this is not the finished animation as there is still alot of tweaking to be done

walk animation

here is a quick playblast of my walk animation im not sure if it seems a bit fast but i seem to be falling behind on time so i will begin on my dodge animation and have a consultation with sam once term starts again

idle extended playblast

following the previous post here I have a quick play blast of the extended idle now of course there are some bits and pieces that need to be done but this is still the initial phase of the pose (blockout) so there is still a good amount of work to be done to it but i think this really puts across the idea of how the character portrays himself.

extended idle

Here I have some images depicting the extended idle for my character, the extended idle is basically depicting the character tying his cuff links and straightening his jacket then resuming his pose seen in the idle part of the character.

the idea of this pose is really to put across that he's an upstanding upper class person who is snobbish and looks down his nose through everyone which i think really captures the essence of what pride can represent in society

playblast of idle pose

here is a quick playblast for my idle pose it is very quick so some repetition may be required of the user in order to notice the animation...

unfortunately I did suffer some data corruption from a few of my files a constant factor was that an expression had failed to execute in the expression editor this was resolved simply by deleting the expression as it seemed to have no visual use what so ever.

idle pose

the first set up of the first pose has been completed this will be the pose that starts and i have ended up making some changes to the animation list because sam pointed out that the animations we intended to do wouldnt look right on a cycle so here is the revised list first

idle - looks left and right

idle extended - straightens jack and cufflinks

dodge - quick step

walk cycle - hands behind back

and here is the pose

this pose will most likely be used as a basis for the other animation cycles because the pose has the best portrayal of the character

update on animation devlopment process

After searching for a while me and Theo have finally decided on what rigs we would be using, they do not have a facial expression feature but this would'nt really be key to our animation as long as our movement is strong and characterised.

Here are the links to the two rigs we will be using:

http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/downloads/character-rigs/c/ultimate-beefy

http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/downloads/character-rigs/c/ultimate-bony

They are in essence the same rig the only difference being is that they are opposite in body build (one is tall and skinny while the other is short and bulky) this really helps us with our animation seeing as our ideas for what the characters will look like are pretty much along the lines of what the rigs looks like, a happy accident if you will

Four cycles

from the list of animation cycles we posted for each character we have refined the list to the four animation cycles we will be doing:

Sloth Animation

Idle - Long deep breaths.

Idle Extended - Yawning, starting to fall asleep, scratching.

Walk - Slow strides, posture is dragging and slumped.


Bridge animation - Stand To Crouch.


Crouch - Slumps down into a crouching position.


*Possible* Extended Crouch - Falls asleep.

Pride Animation

Idle – Straighten jacket


Idle Extended – Tie cufflinks.


Dodge – Quick step.


Move Walk – Straight posture/ chin up/ hands behind back

now that we have refined our preparation and tested the rigs we can begin posing them and storyboarding our animation

moodboard and thumbnail

here are two images of the character I will be animating "pride". one is a moodboard to give a general idea of the appearence of the character the other is a quick photoshop thumbnail I drew up.

animation brief

Brief

7 Deadly Sins animation – animating two human physical representations of the sins.
For our animation idea, myself and Nathan will be animating one of the seven sins each from our own selection. I will be basing mine on the sin named Pride and Theo will on the sin named Sloth.
The animation will show emphasis on the sins origin, for example if we were doing Greed, the character would be a fat human and the actions would be something like rubbing its belly or eating something. From this example, it applies to Sloth (tired, lazy) and Pride (well-kept, smart). They are complete opposites so it should make for a good diversity of personalities.

Animation cycles for “Pride”

Idle – straighten jacket

Idle to crouch – subtle bend

Idle extended – tie cufflinks

Move walk – straight posture/ chin up/ hands behind back

Move run – arm across/slightly leaning forward

Dodge – quick step

Hit – fast accurate punch

Stand to Crouch – subtle bend

Crouch to stand – straight up hands behind back

Move to Run – gradual but quick transition into run

week 1 cont'd

Animation pipeline

The animation pipeline is the entire process of creating an animated character from start to finish separated into stages here are the following stages in a nutshell

upon coming up up with the idea of the characters we start off with some thumbnails which would be vague ideas on what we would be doing e.g. how the characters initial pose would be, how they would stand idle and just general blocking out of the animation process

Next up once we have an idea of what the characters will do we begin story-boarding which does kind of fall upon the thumbnails section but the difference being is that here we have a structured and definitive idea about the whole animation process and how it will play out 

Ideally the next step would be voice overs but that would not apply to us as our animations would not go that in depth.

Instead we skip ahead to the actual modelling of our characters again intially blocking out our characters so that we get a good idea about what our characters will look like 

(Note: we have been given the option to just simply look for our models that we can use and we have been given a few rigs that have been approved and tested)

next up we begin skinning the rig to our mesh (whether that be a found mesh or one we have created) and test out some basic movements to check that our character rig moves fluidly with our character mesh.

next up we consult back to our storyboard and begin creating our motions linked to what we have made within our storyboard and maybe even improvise with something new we haven't already used yet.

finally ideally we would be texturing our character but for the purpose of time i do not believe we have to have textured models.

below is a diagram which gives you an idea about the pipeline and how the stages work in with each other

  

Our idea

For our animation brief me and Theo have decided to consult back to our college days where we had a similar project; our idea is to create a show reel transition based upon our psychical representation of the seven deadly sins, obviosly for the sake of time we may not be able to manifest seven different 3D models based on the seven sins but we're hoping that the idea will have enough imagination and with any luck be able to create a fluid enough transition to show our depictions of certain sins

week 1: Brief and ideas

In this blog I will be showing my work related to my study of 3D animation in game format, for the brief of this module Sam Malone our lecturer has explained that we must create a show reel consisting of 4 basic animations that will string together creating a full video with varying string methods to create a fluid motion of movement that demonstrates an animation as you would see in game.

For this module we were put in to groups of 2 or 3 groups (for the sake of diversing workflow) and in that group we would come up with ideas as to what would be included within our show reel such as what characters will we show, what animations would we include, how the characters would move and so on.

So far I have paired up with Theo Lyster-Bridge and we have already begun discussing ideas and may very well have already settled on an idea as to what we may do, some factors may still need to be executed such as thumbnail sketches and initial research but I believe we have a good idea about what direction we will move in.

so far in our first lecture we have gone over what we are going to cover and what will need to be demonstrated in the show reel when it comes to our animation such as our animation poses like how our character would stand idle when the player has no interaction with the character, what movements will they do, what their walking pace and gait will be like and how they will differ from each other.

when it comes to the technical aspects we will be using our standard software (maya) along with some new software that I haven't personally used before such as adobe after effects, motion builder and sony vegas.

and finally our showreel will be brought to you by...

The dutch & cockney thugs!!!