Character Creation: Modelling, Texturing and Rigging.

In this project I had to model, texture and rig a character of my own creation. To begin we had to model a classmates head. This was to practice modeling heads as we had never done this before. I learnt about loop flow and where to put cuts to create shape without causing there to be any tris. This was done in a day but even though it was quick, it built my confidence for modeling a whole character.

Next I went onto creating my character. Because we had so much to do in such a short time with this project, we didn't get much time to create and design a character. I had to quickly draw up a turn around so I could go straight into modeling.

I spent a lot of time in Maya on my low poly model. ( probably more then I should have) I really enjoyed the form making and the fact I was creating something entirely my own. I tried my hardest to keep the model clean and neat so when I got to high poly sculpting, it would subdivide nicely. I had some trouble around the jaw, neck and shoulder area and spent a lot of time deciding where edges needed to be and how I could create that without causing other problems like tris. After modeling a whole body for the first time, there are definitively different ways I would go about things now I know how they should be. I wanted to go straight into modelling another character once I had finished this. I was happy with how it turned out and really enjoyed creating it.

Next I moved onto high poly sculpting in Mudbox. I have a lot of fun in Mudbox because I don't have to worry about a clean wire frame. I got to add all the little details I wanted and also add the texture and secular shading. It was fun to play with different material textures and the brushes to create different effects. Sculpting is something I would like to spend more time practicing at as I really enjoy it.

 

 

 

 

Here are the maps for the model (created using mudbox)

Texture Map

UV Map

Displacement Map

Normals Map

AO Map

Spec Map

 Finally I had to rig my character. This was the first time I had rigged anything from scratch. I found it fairly challenging but once I had wrapped my head around how everything worked it wasn't too bad. I had a few problems with the feet and the shoulders but I eventually managed to get them working to a standard I was happy with. Unfortunately I didnt have enough time to go into any advanced rigging with this project (such and a facial rig, finger curls etc) Though I intend to go back to this over the summer and add more to it.

Deformation test of rig:

I would definitely like to work on my rigging skills in the future. I think it will help me a lot as a secondary skill to animation. I love the idea of being able to design, model, rig and then animate my own characters.

Lighting Project

Leading up to this project I was quite apprehensive as I had heard a  lot about CG lighting and all the problems that tend to come along with it. I was also very intrigued because I feel it is a very important skill to master as it can improve the look of your work incredibly.

We started by getting to grips with the lights and the material setting in Maya by creating a basic scene. We had to have one chrome, one glowing and one glass ball. We were given the environment and it was our job to add the relevant lights to the scene and manipulate the material settings to get the desired look.

Next we had to create studio lighting using mentalray to render rather then Maya software. We used our previous model of our hand as a subject to light. I found myself faffing around with this a lot because i just couldn't leave it alone. We had to use warm and cool tones while also making sure the whole model was lit and all the details were highlighted nicely. We also had to make sure there were no harsh shadows but shadows enough for definition. Its a case of changing small bits, rendering and changing a little again. I didnt think it would be as hard as it was and I have even more respect for people who can light a model well. I wish I could have spent longer on this, but I feel I learnt a lot and would be quicker next time. I see this being very useful for me when displaying any future work nicely.

Finally we had to add a GC object into a photo. We did this by using a chrome ball and taking RAW HDR images to capture the light of the scene. Using 3DS Max, we set up a camera for the scene and then took that camera into Maya so we could add our object into the scene. Then using Maya we used the HDR images to create a similar lighting set up to the lighting in the scene of the photo. Then it was up to us tweaking the settings and also editing in After Effects and Photoshop to make the object look as believable as possible in the scene.

I found this one quite challenging, mainly because of the shadows the plants cast. It took me a while to figure out how to cast the shadows onto the Dalek and make them match the shadows on the post it was seated on. I learnt a lot because of the challenges this brought up. I think if i were to go back I would perhaps make the Dalek model a different colour just to it isn't lost in the colour of the wall.

 After the Dalek I moved onto this shot with the nail varnishes. I wanted to do a very different shot with different lighting so I could learn different things with each photo. I found the shadows cast on the table hard to  replicate here. There were two light sources casting both warm and cool coloured shadows with a different harshness.

Over all I am happy with how both photos turned out. I don't think they were too bad for a first try and it sparked my interest at possibly doing some composting in the future.

Lighting is definitely something I want to practice and get better at. I feel this project really helped me understand lighting a lot more. It has made me want to go back and re-light all my old work to make it look pretty. I am definitely going to make sure I give myself the time to light my future projects properly to practice my lighting skills and make my work look more professional.

Character Animation (Production)

After all the planning I had to begin animating. I was super excited to start animating again, though I was worried that I'd be rusty with maya.
I went through two to three stages of blocking before I went onto smoothing it and getting the weight there. I then moved onto the lip sync and facial animation, making sure that was working before going back and tweaking the whole thing. I enjoyed getting into the routine and method of animation. I'm sure this is something I will perfect when I am more experienced.
During the smoothing stages, I realized I had underestimated how much movement I added to the hands. I found it tricky to get the timing correct on them. There was also a lot of problems with the hands and arms slipping across the legs and clipping through everything. It took a lot of work to fix it while not detracting too much from the gestures I wanted initially. I was ultimately happy with how the gestures turned out with the time I had. I personally talk a lot with my hands and I love character animation that uses hand gestures well. When I had a friend look at this she mentioned how it scared her because my character had the same gestures as me. I suppose you animate what you like and what you know without realizing.
Here is the finished character animation and the facial animation from the project:

During the weeks on this project we learnt a lot about humans facial expressions and eye movements. I found learning about when and why we blink especially interesting. I always enjoy gaining more knowledge about people and why we do things. Even how we look towards different directions when we are remembering something or creating something in our mind. I wish I had known this when I did A-level drama. I would have been the best little actress there. 

Over all I would have liked to spent a lot more time on this honestly, especially with the facial animation and the acting of the character. Even looking at it now, I know what I would change. Still, I am happy with this and it has made me want to do more character animating as soon as I can. I love bringing life and emotion out of a character. Its definitely something I have lent towards since the beginning of the course and wish to pursue in the future. 

[This animation was made using Josh Burton's Morpheus rig]

Character Animation (Pre Production)

For this project we were given a 10 second clip of audio and we had to create a character and animate them to the audio clip.
Fist off was the pre production. This included creating the character and deciding who they are, what they do and how they are feeling during this scene. This also included thubnailing and story boarding the clip, along with animatics. (and of course filming video reference)
The planning is really important to me. I honestly don't think I could produce anything without a lot of planning first. I keeps my brain happy and in order.

These are a few sheets from my character pre production. I had a fair few sheets of work for this as I wanted to create and understand the characters personality and motivation for the clip. Even though it was just an 11 second clip, I find it really useful when it comes round to the acting part of the animation.

 I enjoyed coming up with a character, though I was restricted with my sound clip. I had to go for a type of character im not really used to, nor a fan of drawing. In the end I was happy with my concept and was excited to start planning his animation.
I first scribbled a load of rough ideas down just as a sort of visual brain storm. From there I would be able to show others what I was thinking and see what was working best.
After initial planning I went in with more detailed ideas but still rough planning.

I found coming up with ideas for my dialogue was quite difficult as its not a particularly emotion filled clip. I felt massive movements and gestures would not fit right with the clip and thubnailing subtlety was a challenge. I had to push some poses just so it was readable.

After I filmed video reference and then drew up some final storyboards. I tried to capture some of my natural gestures in my final story boards. Again, they were subtle but as long as the general idea and timing was there, then they would be useful for my animation. I also turned them into an animatic to finalize some of the timings and to show others to see if it will work.

I was quite happy with my idea after pre production although it took me a while initially. I looked forward to including the little gestures and getting into the acting of the scene. I like pre production because it sets me up with a solid idea with the animation, but because this was the first project of the year where we were back to animating, I just wanted to get stuck in.

Hand Modeling

For this project we had to model our own hands. First as a low poly in maya, then we had to take it into mudbox for some high poly sculpting and finally we had to take it back into maya, and using maps we created in mudbox, we would make our low poly model look more like a high poly model. I believe this is used a lot in games, as for obvious reasons, models cant be crazy high poly.

First off the low poly modeling.
Using photos of my own left hand I modeled a low poly model. The most challenging part, I found, was making the wire frame neat. It was important for the next step that our low poly was clean and clear. This was so when in mudbox and subdividing the polys, they are all of equal size. It was quite a brain challenge to figure a way to make sure there were only polys in the model to. Triangles will forever more be a shape a strive to get rid of.
I think learning how hard it can be to get rid of tris it will effect how I begin to model in the future. A lot of problems I faced could have been avoided knowing what I know now.
Here is how my low poly model turned out:

After this part was done, we went on to take it into mudbox. I really enjoyed this part as this was where I could make hand look good and not have to focus on the cleanness of the model. This was my first experience with mudbox and although it took a bit of time, I eventually found it really easy to use (especially with my tablet.) I enjoyed it more and more as I worked up to the higher division levels of polys as you get to a detail level that would be very difficult with physical clay.
I also enjoyed the texturing part in mudbox. Some of the tools were really cool and aloud me to get a realistic skin effect.
Here is the final look out of mudbox:

I was quite happy with how this turned out. I would have liked to have done some more work on the nails and some other places here and there but over all I  didn't think it was too bad.

After making and saving out maps from mudbox, I was back into maya. I applied the maps from the high poly model to my low poly model. This was much more difficult then I expected. They definitely did not work straight away, they required a fair amount of editing. This was probably the hardest part of the project and I would have liked to have had more time to make them work better, but unfortunately I spent a lot of time getting the low and high poly models look nice.
Here is the end result of the whole project:

Over all I am pleased with this project. Looking back there are a few things I would like to change, but for a first proper modelling attempt, I think it was ok. I would have liked the maps to have turned out nicer, but of course the final maya version will never look as nice as the high poly mid box one.

I really enjoyed learning to model, and although I ultimately want to pursue animation, I am happy I have a basic understanding of modeling in both maya and mudbox. I would like to do more modeling in the future and I am extremely looking forward to a character design project we have coming some time after Christmas.

Story Boarding (Part 2)

So like I mentioned before, I had to story board a script from an episode of teenage mutant ninja turtles. This was more challenging but I really enjoyed it. I had quite a lot of dialogue and not really much action with my section so I couldn't go too crazy, but it definitely made me want to storyboard more.

Coming up with camera shots was really fun and a nice creative part of the project.
Imagining how it would look and play through in my mind was cool and it made me want to carry on and actually make this part of the script into a finished animation. I think its because of the crazy amount of cartoons I watch, I loved the idea of making my own ( even if the script was already written)

I wish I could have spent more time on the drawings, but we only had a week for this whole project. I had trouble to begin with when drawing the turtles because I don't tend to draw in the style of the show. After struggling I came to the conclusion that i would enjoy the project more and it would ultimately turn out better if I didn't hinder myself by drawing in a way I'm not used to. So yes, maybe they look like babies, but I liked drawing me some cute turtles.

I really enjoyed this project and enjoyed learning about camera angles and techniques. Its amazing how you take things like the '180 degree rule' for granted until its broken. You only notice camera movement when they are off or wrong. (I guess that could be said for all aspects of animation and film making)
I loved learning how, with just the direction you pan across a room, you can make audience feel comfortable or incredibly uncomfortable. It can really change how you are meant to feel about a scene and how you perceive the situation happening.

I did go back and find the episode the script was taken from once the project was over. I didn't want it to influence my decisions before. I must say, the scene was done in practically five seconds and had no where near the amount of shots in it as I did. It was quite funny to look back and think how much time I spent on mine, only to see the version that was actually aired and see how simple it was. Though to be fair, it was very old and things have definitely progressed since. ( hint hint, the 2012 ninja turtles series is super cool)

Over all story boarding surprised me. It was a cool project to begin the year with and get my creative juices flowing. It also made me want to get stuck into the animation part again. I think its something I would definitely like to continue with and pursue in the future.