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.
Version 5.0 after last week’s revisions
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！
Hand-painted modification of hand movements
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.
This is the operation panel of this plugin
Considering that I was planning to do Chinese Republican period character, I looked for new hairstyle reference.
At first I wanted to do the left side of the hairstyle, but considering the technical difficulty and time factor, I made the right side.
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.
Very weird！！！！！
After countless attempts to slowly make the shape of the hair ：）
These small hairs and the fluffiness of the hair were made by me individually one by one for the face piece.
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.
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.
Movement of body weight
Overlapping of hand movements
The adjustment plan of the attack animation of the end part
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.
This is the character UV mapping
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 process of adjusting material parameters in Maya
The eyes were downloaded from Bing as eye mapping, then I redrew the highlights and changed the eye color in PS.
The eyebrows and eyelashes are each individually modeled and posed one by one for shape.
The process of modifying eye mapping and materials
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.
This video tutorial is from Bilibili
Break up the UV of the dress in Maya.
At first I used the pure color material in SP, so it was very ordinary and not very special.
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.
Finally I adjusted the parameters of the texture in SP, and then this is how it looks like.
This is the effect after importing the dress texture into Maya.
In addition, I made a semi-transparent material effect at the end of the dress to give this dress a more gradated feel.
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 vibration feeling
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.
Hand adjustment demonstration
Better looking hand curves
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.
Bend inward at the waist, contract arms, and look down with the head.
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.
Some distinctions need to be made in the posture of the legs as well.
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.
My hair reference picture
In the first step, use the mask to extrude some thickness as a scalp.
Then, I adjusted the body size of the whole model according to the reference picture of human scale.
Drag the model according to the length of the long hair
Using Zbrush brushes, pull out a single hair shape on a large base of hair.
This is what the exported fbx model looks like in Maya.
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.
Topologize each part of the dress separatelyCombine the points at the joints of the sleeves of the dress and merge them together correspondingly.Since the collar of cheongsam has buttons, I need to make the collar separately.Make a buttonThe dress is complete.
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.
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.
Suggestions on the conception and design of the performance
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.
reference video
In order to further understand the movement and details of the action, I drew the key action in Photoshop.
Key actions for hand painting
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.
storyboard01
storyboard02storyboard03
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.
I really like this scene reference
Female character reference with a preference for realistic reality
This week is the final video export, as well as a reflection and summary of the first nine weeks of content.
First, there is the final video.
Reflection on Project 1
This project one lasted for ten weeks. I actually didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do for the first three weeks, I just knew roughly that I wanted to do an animation preview and that I needed to learn storytelling. I also didn’t have a very clear idea of what I wanted to do with the story, and it took about four weeks before I finally settled on my story content and storyboard. After that, it took about 6 weeks to build the scenes, animate the characters, set up the camera, etc., and it was revised many times during the process, and each time I needed to check and connect the front and back shots. This was a very different attempt for me than before. In the past, I paid little attention to the skill of transitions and the charm of storytelling, but now I found that these two points have greatly improved the quality of the film.
This week we finally finished the final short film of the project, next I will introduce the editing, compositing, sound and summary. We edit the film in the last week and then add effects and sound effects in Pr.
In addition we added 2d painting as 2d effects.
About the team
MA 3D Computer Animation Yaxin Hou (y.hou0420211@arts.ac.uk) Team leader/Storyboard/Scene modeling/Textures/3Danimation/Lighting/Rendering/Sound Qiaoqing Yu (q.yu0320211@arts.ac.uk) Character modeling/Scene modeling/Rigging/Textures/3Danimation/Lighting/Rendering/Editing Jiazhuo Tang (j.tang0420212@arts.ac.uk) Character modeling/Scene modeling/Textures/3Danimation/Lighting/Rendering/Sound MA 2D Animation Yinyun Xu (y.xu0320215@arts.ac.uk) scene design/2D animation/ 2D visual effect Guowei Gou (g.gou0320211@arts.ac.uk) Character design/scene design/2D animation/2D visual effect
About final film
About working process
About editing and sound
The background music was collected and integrated by Jiazhuo Tang and I from the Ai composition website. The rest of the sound effects were downloaded by Tang from material sites. The composing and editing of the video was done by Qiaoqing Yu.
This is the website of Ai Composition：
https://soundraw.io/
About 2D effects
I wanted to show a combination of 2D and 3D animation to present this short film, so I chose to use 3D animation to tell the story and 2D animation to show the visual effects. After a meeting and discussion, the story plot of the burning carousel was added and this 2D effect was drawn by Gou.
Different colors tested, finally chose the blue flame
Based on the image of the main character, we suggest drawing an end caption illustration that is cute.
This is the note drawn by Xu
Summary & Reflection
This project cooperation is a very good and precious opportunity, and I have learned and gained a lot from this cooperation process. As team leader, I still have a lot of improvement to make. This project collaboration was only ten weeks long, and we completed a game promo.The meaning of this film is to oppose bullying, and the main character of the story is a young boy who was once bullied and isolated because of his appearance, and his heart has always longed for an amusement park of his own, and the rabbit doll was the only playmate he ever had. He originally thought he could find a real friend, but became twisted in the depths of his desire and he eventually lost himself. At the end of the film, the hand that appears is the one who comes to save him from returning to reality, but can it really save him?
The first thing I need to reflect on is that my lack of experience in time planning for collaborative projects led to a slow progress in our first month, so the time left for the later stages was not all sufficient, which also directly compressed the time for later revisions and adjustments. The second point is that my mind is not spread out enough. Sometimes I feel like a good idea comes to me, but I can not move it forward or make it more developed, and I often feel a lack of new inspiration. This has been a problem for me for a long time. In the early stages of our collaborative project, I had a long plot and the story didn’t become complete until the fifth week. I should take the time to watch more books and films, and the one that has interested me recently is the David Hockney exhibition, which I will visit afterwards. In the end, I accumulated more lessons about project production from this experience, such as how to record the meeting process, how to communicate with members about the process and details of the project, and how to search for various materials, all of which were very valuable to me.
This week’s task is to do the lighting first and adjust the lighting effect. After finishing the lighting and animation of all the files, render them by shot number and duration.
About rendering
I mainly do the lighting adjustment for the animation part that I am responsible for. Here are the details and process of the lighting adjustment for the third shot. In addition, I did the lighting and rendering for the ending section.
This is the effect without lightening
The effect of lightening
The effect of lightening
Another light was added, so the reflection of the eyes is very strong, and the original eye highlights are not obvious.
Disconnect the light link
Therefore, I disconnected the added light and the light link to the eye. So that the eyes are not affected by the intensity of the light
About Rendering
The final animation rendering took us about 5 days. We worked on the rendering from Monday to Friday, and while we were rendering we also needed to check that the rendering settings of the files were accurate and that the textures and lighting were working properly.
This week, we basically decided on the final version of the video, reviewed it again based on the previous changes, and made the final adjustments and edits.
In my discussions with George, his feedback focused on the ending section, and a significant rotating overhead shot.
The main character’s final ending part of the animation changes
The following shot switches to a closer view
The main character turns around and smiles
In the previous version, the view size of this shot and the previous shot were not the same, George suggests not to modify the view size of these two shots, keep the same to make the shot more coherent.
Session with Nick
Overall, the rigging part of the arm is complete and I now have movable fingers, forearm, elbow and large arm. The next thing to do is to do more texture and material details.
Demonstration video of the movement of the robot arm
I wanted to make a very minimalist looking robot arm, so I basically used only two basic colors, pink and black. I make more adjustments to the material in terms of metallicity and roughness.
My material sphere is Arnold’s Ai standard surface, with five different materials and colors.
First give a sky light, now there is no sky light a suitable
hdr , so the current light is relatively flat.
When given a suitable environment map, you can clearly see that the lighting has changed very much. At the same time, the basic color, roughness, metallicity and highlights of the material surface are more obvious and easy to see.
Therefore, the material of the robot arm has to be adjusted again.
One of my design highlights for this robotic arm is to make an electronic screen mapping to its forearm, making it more intelligent and technological.
This week’s task is to make changes to the feedback from last week. In addition, I have made new adjustments to the animation and shots in the ending section. It’s worth coming to a well discussion.
Once again modified the model’s face direction, this time you can clearly see the front.
The last version of this shot, the angle of the face when crying is too low, resulting in the inability to see the character’s expression, so this time when crying did not keep the head down very low
The second character’s model adds a frontal shot
In revealing the psychological activities of the main character, George looked for overhead shots from the movie as a reference, which greatly inspired me.
Since I didn’t take a picture of that reference shot during the class, I had to find a similar shot reference to illustrate. I learned the terminology for this shot, called a Trial Shot
Film reference from-[I Am Legend]
This place is, in my opinion, the best change. Following George’s suggestion, keep getting closer and closer while shooting the character from above, then close up. Such a process can express a state of deep thought / falling into.
For this shot, I added animation to visualize the process of the character’s mental struggle.Video – In front of the door, the standing animation of the feet is modified to a natural state.
I’ve added a new look at the Door Handle shot here, divided into two. One is a static shot of the handle of the door. The other is the main character reaching out to twist the handle of the door.
Video – The second shot of the door handle, the main character twists the door handle.
Feedback！
Maybe I set the character standing problem, George suggested that I change a hand to open the door handle, so it would be more reasonable.
