Category: Advanced and Experimental 3D computer Animation Techniques 1

Session with George

This week is a summary of the animations done in the past ten weeks. Here are two videos of my animations.

Advanced Body Mechanics

I made a few more changes to the arm animation, hoping to show more about the pauses in movement and a sense of coherent rhythm. But I found that I didn’t pay attention to the direction of rotation of each controller, so the left and right hands might appear to be reversed 360 degrees, and I modified this issue for a long time.

In addition, I found a shockwave effect on a footage site. I added this effect when the character hits the sphere of the shockwave and it looks fine.

This is the address of the footage site：

https://vfx.productioncrate.com

Acting

The acting video I rendered out separately to make it look more like a complete small movie. For visual effect, I changed the character’s original lambert material to an Arnold material and set it to a light color. This will make the animation more clear.

Summary & Reflection

During this ten-week period, I completed two small animations, one for body mechanics and the other for acting. These two animation trainings gave me a clearer understanding of the animation process. First I need to do my own reference animation, this step is very important, just like a good movie needs a good script and pre-design. When doing the first body mechanics, I also had a hard time expressing the feeling of the body floating and the rhythm of the pauses of each body part. So I need to keep checking the position and duration between each frame. Also, the Fk controllers of both hands need to be adjusted one by one. As I mentioned earlier, I didn’t pay attention to the orientation of each controller of the hands, so there was a 360 degree flip. To fix this problem, I cleared some keyframes behind and then adjusted the hand animation. About the second animation acting, I really like to try this lip-synching animation, because it mainly focuses on the character’s facial animation and reflects the change of emotion more. But I still had some problems with the rhythm control between the movements, for example, I always did not keep the animation keyframes of each body part in a similar position, so sometimes the neck and shoulders appeared to be out of sync. Also, I had fun doing the mouth animation by performing it myself many more times to get better familiar with each pronunciation and then slowly animating the mouth part.

Finally, thanks to George for every feedback he gave me, it helped me a lot to learn and understand the animation process！

About Artwork

This is my final rendered video

Summary and Reflection

This artistic creation left a deep impression on me because it was the greatest attempt and effort I could make in the shortest possible time. Compared to the previous collaborative unit tasks, this task is more difficult because I am completing this short film alone. In this creative process, I encountered and solved many new problems, such as how to create character hair, learning how to rig character using the ADV plugin for the first time, learning scene building and light rendering in UE5 for the first time, encountering Maya’s FBX format file where the texture disappeared, and then finding the problem and trying to solve it. Understand the differences in animation import between Maya and UE5, and more. I am pleased with my progress and patience. At the same time, there are still some points that need improvement.

1. I didn’t think enough about the story design in the early stages, so it took up time in the middle and later stages later on. Pre-planning is necessary and needs to be planned in advance.
2. The wiring of the character’s model needs to be considered when doing the graduation design, otherwise there will be another case of character face rigging failure.
3. I hope to learn how to import ADV with controller into UE5 in the next time, after all, the animation made with motion capture data is not natural and vivid enough, and I need to modify the animation by hand to be able to do more expressions on the character’s face and increase the emotional expression.

Session with George

This week’s task is to add lip animation and face animation to the characters

The animations mainly focus on the face, and the lip animations refer to my own movements when speaking lines, as well as theories based on the pronunciation of the mouth. The length of the whole animation is 7 seconds, a total of 5 lines. I will detail the process of lip-syncing the first two lines.

First is the first sentence, Love you：

The line in this place is “love you”, and the first thing is to pronounce like a, ai, so I made a round, full-grown lip-sync.

Here is the pronunciation of the u in You, with the whole lip outward and slightly protruding

This is followed by a second line： But stop pushing your life style on my face/

Here is the mouth shape of But, first the B is pronounced and the lips close inward first, showing a straight line.

Adding down is the u in But, pronounced a, so the lips are more rounded.

Then comes the mouth shape of STOP pronunciation, where the mouth shape first changes to a flattened line, then opens the mouth and the mouth shape becomes more rounded and pronounces the O sound.

The p of Pushing, the mouth shape should be made closed first and slightly puckered.

Next is the pronunciation of the O in Your, with a rounded mouth shape.

Finally, the L and F of Life are pronounced with the mouth shape showing stretching into a line, then the top teeth pressing against the bottom lip and the bottom lip contracting inward. This is the pronunciation of “f”.

Artwork

This week’s content is rendering and editing. Most of my rendering is done in UE5, with two separate shots rendered in Maya.

Before rendering, preset the camera motion and set the output format of the rendering to PNG format.

I will upload the rendered file to Onedrive and save it

Next is organizing the files and then editing

There are approximately 21 files in total, which are then edited in order and accompanied by special effects. The website for special effects materials comes from：https://vfx.productioncrate.com

Session with George

This week is to make keyframe changes to last week’s blocking, and to take notes on George’s feedback.

Last week’s animation was clean on most of the poses, but the lack of movement linkage makes the animation seem a bit stiff. The main goal of this revision is to make the character’s upper body animation more flexible and linked.

The third modification can be divided into two parts, the upper part of the shoulder and neck, and the second part is the movement of the arm.

Firstly, the posture of the hand was adjusted and raised to the right. After that, the animation of the upper body was adjusted, with the overall body tilted to the right, then driving the neck and the left shoulder.

Artwork

This week’s character is mainly to complete the character rigging and animation.

First, I need to state that I am also learning to rig with Advanced skeleton for the first time, so I searched for a new video tutorial on rigging. The good thing is that the plugin is not very difficult to use, so I was able to follow every step of the tutorial clearly.

I learned character rigging based on this tutorial, and it uses Chinese, which is very friendly to me.

After that, I continued to try facial rigging, which is a little more complicated than body rigging, and the steps are more complex.

Here are pictures of my process in rigging the face.

Finally, there was confirmation of rigging, but when my steps reached the lower jaw, the plugin prompted me that there was a problem and I couldn’t rig. I tried for two afternoons but couldn’t solve this problem, so I only rigged the character’s body.

About animation

Initially, I planned to create animations in Maya and then import them into UE5, but my idea did not achieve.

Due to the need for a special method to import the skeleton created by ADV into UE5, it is very difficult. I have tried many times but cannot import them correctly. Before that, I made three animation clips in Maya that were abandoned.

So I changed my approach and after searching for methods online, I found a website called Mixamo, which has many actions and can import my own model for rigging and assigning actions. Its principle is similar to Motion capture.

Session with George

This week’s acting animation refines Blocking from the previous week. But perhaps the movements were still not natural and consistent enough and lacked dynamism.

This is the second blocking animation that has been done, mainly adding hand and head movements. Also, the animation of the eye part has been added.

Feedback!

George’s suggestions for changes to the blocking animation focus on four areas. They were about the coherence of the whole head-driven upper body movement, the hand pose waving process, the adjustment of the shoulder animation and the naturalness of the hand lowering movement.

Next is the planning of the arm posture adjustment

The picture above is a breakdown of the process of the hand waving. I had only done the keyframe with the hand on the table and the keyframe after the hand was fully raised, but I didn’t pay attention to the keyframe in the middle, so it looked like the arm was not raised vividly enough.

Next, it’s the shoulder animation that appears to be broken, and it looks like there are still adjustments to be made to the settings of the shoulder controller. Make the movement of the shoulder more stretched.

Finally, the ending action, as the hand gradually falls onto the table, also needs an undulating change of motion to give this part of the animation more flexibility.

Artwork

This week’s content is the construction of forest scenes. Because of the learning of UE5 asset building in the previous week, I basically already knew the main points, so the forest scene was not that difficult to build, and I only spent one afternoon to finish building the scene.

For building the forest scene, I studied this blogger’s video tutorial. Since my scene will have a pond in it, I want to know how I can do the water effect in UE5.

In fact, this blogger’s method is very simple. Use a plane instead of a water surface, and then texture map the water.

In fact, the whole scene is based on the existing assets, and I built it the way I like.

Session with George

This week’s task is acting, focusing mainly on the facial expressions and lip-synching of the character. What I’m going to do is find a suitable audio of a movie or TV show, and then perform it myself based on the recording and then do the facial animation.

Learn more about how we pronounce

These are demonstrations of the lip movements during pronunciation. Different syllables will form different lip patterns, for example, the most obvious ones, such as b, m , p, my lips will tighten inward and close and form a straight line.

This is a video of my performance based on a clip from the American series ” 2 Broke Girls”, with the main actions focusing on the face and lips, as well as some of the eye changes.

According to my previous acting video, I divided the movement into two parts, one part is before the hand is raised, this part of the movement is mainly focused on the head and shoulders. The second part is after the hand is lowered, the body is tilted backward, and then the head and shoulders are animated.

Artwork

This week’s content is to build scenes, a total of three scenes, an indoor scene, an outdoor scene of the forest, and a scene of the door and the stone wall.

To save time, I chose to build the scene with UE5. Since I am a beginner in UE5, I don’t know how to operate UE5 at all. So I followed the video tutorials on Youtube to learn how to import UE5 assets and build scenes. Fortunately, there are many video tutorials for UE5, and it is very similar to Maya, Blender and other 3D software operations, so I am familiar with it quickly.

Following the video tutorial on this, I started to try to build my scene, mainly needing some stone walls to form a channel, and then digging a hole in the stone wall to place a door.

The most accessible point is that UE5 comes with a library of asset materials called Bridge, in which some basic materials can be found, and then start building to create my own scenes.

The effect of the camera view, here I have hit the light and adjusted the exposure.

I rendered the clip right away, and it only took me five minutes! It was amazing!

About the indoor scene

I downloaded the basic model of the indoor scenes, but I made the mapping of the indoor scenes by myself.

The files for the indoor scenes I placed in Maya first, then mapped, and then imported into UE5. The interior scene is typical of Chinese furniture and screens. So in the overall tone I chose a dark color

All I have to do after that is to import the scene with the texture into UE5, I exported it in Fbx format, so that it is a model with texture information. I exported it in Fbx format, so that it is a model with texture information. This is the way it should be, but after I imported it into UE5, there was no texture information.

There’s a big problem with this step, and I don’t know how to fix it!

So I sought Qiaoqing Yu‘s help and thank him very much! It took us about two days to solve this problem. He told me that his previous exported Fbx’s file was with mapping information, and that I was having this problem, probably because of a Maya bug. Later, after testing the exported Fbx file several times and looking up many methods on the Internet, he found that the Fbx file would automatically generate a texture file after importing into Maya, and UE5 was unable to recognize the Arnold material ball.

The problem was found, so I reworked all the models with Lambert materials, which consumed a lot of my time. Finally, the indoor scene was successfully imported to UE5.

Session with George

This week is the final animation revision, to further refine and adjust on the basis of last week. In fact, after a week of motion modification, my animation is significantly more complete. However, some parts are still jerky or not consistent enough.

Based on last week’s feedback, I modified the overall up and down movement of the animation’s weight, the animation of the hands, and the following animation of the legs.

Feedback！

I collate about 5 seconds of hand modifications and there are actually quite a few that need to be made. Finally, I will adjust the animation and then render the final body mechanics video.

Artwork

This week’s content is to complete the hair model and material of the character. At first I was going to use the hair model exported in Zbrush for Xgen reference during the third week. However, because Xgen produces a one by one solid model of the hair, it is very time consuming when rendering. And it was also very difficult to stretch the hair with Xgen’s curves to do the hair modeling, and I don’t have enough time left to do my hair in this way. So I chose the face pieces to do the hair and then used the texture to show the feel of the hair.

The method of generating face pieces: I am using a curve plug-in that can generate face pieces, called GS.

Considering that I was planning to do Chinese Republican period character, I looked for new hairstyle reference.

At first I didn’t know how to use this plugin and I was still in the process of figuring it out, so the face piece I generated looked like this.

Then group the hair, apply the hair mapping, and look at the results of the rendered test image.

It looks okay, there’s still a bit of artificiality, but I did try my best to make it real.

Session with George

This week’s assignment is to modify last week’s blocking and make the animation of span on this basis.

Feedback！

The content of the feedback can be divided into three parts. One part is about the overall animation of the body, especially about the center of gravity of the body, the second part is about the animation of the legs, and the third part is about the animation of the arms and the upper body.

First, about the overall body animation adjustment.

About the last part of the end, the most important point is to hold the action of a few dozen frames of hugging, this action has a feeling of accumulating energy, and then quickly push the hands and legs forward, the overall center back. This modification can highlight the strength of the attack animation. The attack animation I did before was a bit stunted and not explosive. This part of the animation is also one of the difficulties I faced, to make this kind of attack strength is not very easy.

Also, George suggested that I add a sphere to the hand part of the attack animation. This represents a shockwave or something like that, which would be more straightforward and enhance the visual effect of the animation. It is something I didn’t think of before, great idea!

Artwork

This week my content is to get the cheongsam and character mapping done. Although it seems to be the only thing that is texture, but I want to do realistic style character, then the texture of the material and texture performance is very important.

About character texture

The mapping of the character’s skin and appearance is drawn in Substance Painter. The character’s makeup is taken from the web makeup reference image. The following is a detailed picture of the eye makeup drawing process.

The next step is to import the painted character texture into Maya for rendering tests, and then adjust the parameter settings of the Arnold material sphere.

The eyes were downloaded from Bing as eye mapping, then I redrew the highlights and changed the eye color in PS.

About the clothing mapping

The clothing mapping is also made in Substance Painter. But I needed to make clothing with a shiny feel, like the feel of silk fabric, so I looked for a video tutorial on how to make a silk material.

I looked for the celadon pattern picture, which will make the dress more characteristic.

I searched for a total of three patterns and finally chose the third one, which looks more elegant.

In addition, I made a semi-transparent material effect at the end of the dress to give this dress a more gradated feel.

Session with George

This week, keyframe changes were made to last week’s work.

Because last week’s feedback was mainly for the part of my blocking, I made changes to some key frames of the action. Mainly when flying in the air to do some asymmetric movement modification, and make some subtle changes to make my movements more interesting.

It is possible to look quite similar to the previous version, but in fact several changes have been made.

One is about the duration, this one version of the action has a new pause, adding a sense of vibration of bumps up and down as it flies into the air. Although it is not yet very obvious, in later revisions, I will continue to enhance the stopping action here.

The second part of the change is about doing the asymmetric effect of the hands and legs. George suggested doing some slight movement inconsistency, which can make the overall movement more natural and vivid. I think after the adjustment it is indeed more natural than the previous action.

The third part is about the upper body direction and action adjustment, it includes the waist and hands, as well as the head. I modified it by making the range of motion stronger and making the movement look more obvious.

The fourth part is the adjustment of the final direction of the body’s attack. In the previous version, the final attack action was a direct forward attack, which may not be entertaining enough. When the action is turned to the side, the whole body movement is more clear and visually appealing, and more interesting.

Feedback！

Most of the feedback this time was focused on the overall body posture, such as having some parts of the body weight to shift down more. There are also some parts of the hand animation process to be more obvious, and the two hands do not move exactly the same, a little distinction is better.

When the body floats into the air, it allows the arms to do some asymmetrical movements.

It is suggested that an animation of the sphere of the shock wave can be added here, which will enhance the visual effect even more.

Artwork

My female character’s body model comes from a model done before.

At first I planned to make female character with long hair, so I found some reference pictures of hair, and then learned to draw every single shape of hair with brushes in Zbrush.

About the character’s clothing

The characters for the costumes are made in Md, which is an easy and quick way to make them. Since the clothes I want to make are rather special, it is a traditional Chinese dress – cheongsam（旗袍）. This kind of dress is figure-flattering, so I specifically searched on Youtube how to make a cheongsam in Md. Luckily I found a suitable video tutorial.

This is the link to the video tutorial website：

This is the first version of the dress I made following the tutorial. I used the default model in MD, so the size of the dress didn’t match my own model and couldn’t fit my own model’s body.

The second time, I imported my model into MD, then made the dress again, and adjusted the color of the dress to red in the software to test the visual effect. This time it was much more efficient.

Import clothing models into Maya

In fact, the dress model in Md and Maya are not compatible because the model in Md is a triangular face, while the model in Maya needs to be a quadrilateral face. So I used Maya’s auto topology function and then adjusted the wiring of the dress model according to my model.

Session with George

Last week, I had a preliminary design and reference video for the action. Therefore, this week I mainly work on the breakdown of the character movements, also known as blocking.

My model is a free model downloaded from this site. https://friggingawesome.gumroad.com/l/mecha-mechs-proxy

Thanks to George for sharing the site.

This is the blocking video I finished this week

Artwork

This week I planned the content of artwork in more detail, and this week I had a presentation to tell the class about the content and theme of my project.

The overall style

In the overall style of this project I wanted it to be aesthetic, serene and gentle, just like the following painting by Musha.

I plan to show the inner peace and serenity of the character through a 3D scene of a garden.

Regarding the color palette of the environment and character, I planned for a relatively low-saturation color and a vintage and delicate fragile feel.

Session with George

This week’s content about the body and mime animation show, I need to do the design of the reference movement as well as filming the reference video.

I didn’t have the idea to perform the action at first, so I didn’t get to record a reference video the very first time. I wanted to be able to do a non-routine action, more than a lifelike action, I was interested in magic and artistic action. Then I looked on YouTube for some reference of the magician’s action, as well as some game character’s action perform, hoping to get some inspiration.

Here are the reference videos and actions I found：

The above is a reference videos of the action I want to do, which is similar to the game character’s standby action and attack skill show.

The next is the live video I made according to the reference action, the action is also my own design.

In order to further understand the movement and details of the action, I drew the key action in Photoshop.

Artwork

This week was to determine the storyline of the artwork to be done. So I spent the week drawing the storyboards. This story is about a woman who is oppressed by the reality of life and finds freedom.

These are the initial settings of the story, which may change later, but the overall story revolves around feminism, showing the theme of women’s pursuit of freedom.

Here are the designs I found about the scenes and characters, these are my reference images. I have one scene with grass and trees and one indoor scene, but I have not decided on the style of this indoor scene at present.
For the character, I want to do a realistic character style, here are the reference pictures I found.