Evaluation

For this project as a collaborative effort we had to 'design a character who will attempt to pull the sword from the stone. Based on the classic Arthurian legend the challenge will form the ideal starting point from which to create characterisation and dynamic performance options for discussion and negotiation'. I feel like as a team we kept in contact well, we kept everyone up to date with what we were up to. It did dwindle at the end as I think people started to struggle but didn't want to confide in the team. I like my character, I think it came out well, much better than expected. Sculpting my characters from now on will be the right move. I also feel like my rigging was successful too, considering how uncertain I was.

The story telling in my solo animation wasn’t too successful, I feel it isn’t clear to the audience what is happening. I made a background for the scene, but it wasn't used. Which on the whole I understand, it was textured like my character rather than everyone else’s. Which feature a lot of flat colour, so the consistency wouldn't have held up.

I regret not rendering my sequence again after I noticed that the shoe textures were missing, but through timing issues I didn’t want to keep my group waiting longer for me. It might have benefited us to have given each of us different roles. For example, we'd have someone who was all about rigging the models, had someone to create the scene etc. But then again, if this kind of project has taught me anything. It’s you have to make you know the person will do the work.

The Final Touches

The quality has diminished by converting it to a youtube video, but above is my rendered sequence of my character. The lighting turned out better than expected, no colours seemed to distort from it. However, in my stressed rush of trying to get it rendered the day before submission, I forgot to add the shoe textures, which leave my shoes black. It's only a small feature, but it's a feature that will bug me. For my sake I will probably render it again just for me. But I was pushed for time, as everyone was waiting for me to put the videos together.

Here is the final product in all it's glory, again compressed down so the quality has diminished. Overall it worked out pretty well, everyone's sounds work well. The narrative also seems pretty clear and consistent.

Week 8.

 Final touches at this stage on the animation, with rendering and possible sound. Finally submitting.

Eyelids Galore

I added eyelids at the beginning of the animation.

Eye Testing

I couldn't get it out of my head that I wanted to make eyelids so my character could express more emotion facially. So using spheres, I placed the spheres fram by frame in the right place to create blinking.  

This meant however re-texturing the eyelids, since they were simple shapes it was pretty quick.

And it turned out pretty well, I feel like it makes all the difference. There's a new life to him that wasn't seen before. He seems less cold.

Tryng to Improve

I attempted to make the changes that were suggested to me, but I feel like the walk doesn't work very well here at all. It looks too much like stone, very much fake. I feel like this is because I had to move the hips of my character rather than the shoulders. This is because when I move the shoulders the arms move with it and they distort.

For this animation I made the movements with the steps more subtle, which I feel works so much better. I also made it so the sword doesn't move the first time he pulls it. I wanted to try and build tension in him pulling it out, giving him 3 tries to get it out. I also attempted to sort out the distortion on the arm of my character. But the IK's didn't want to co-operate with me, and so they still don't look brilliant. But it has been fixed slightly.

My issue has really been weight painting, but at this stage with all I've done with the character and the rig, adding weight paints by the point seems too hard.

Quick Crit

I wanted to get further feedback on my animation, I wanted to make sure it looked to best it could be (Even without eyelids) - I got the feedback of maybe moving the hips a bit more when he walks, as it's just his legs that do at the moment.

He also suggested making the nod look more like a nod, as at the moment it looks like it's floating. 

and just working on timing, for example keeping the characters leg on the log just slightly longer. 

Eye Lid rigging

I really want my character to have eyelids, to add more expression to his movements. But at this stage I feel like it will only do more damage than good, I also found that with my bigger character (as before I had to change the size of the character with the rig inside) he seems to mess up when I try to update him with the face rig.

Rendered Scene in Marmoset

I thought I would render out my scene that I made, just to show the textures in nice lighting. Marmoset is great for this.

Sounds

Just experimenting with a few sound effects I would use. 

Gasping

Walking on stones

Drawn sword sound 

Male Strain

Male Sigh 

Fixing the arm

This seems to be the end result I'm much happier with, the movements seems much more natural. I would however say that the emotions would be much more believable if I could move the eyelids on my character.

Changes

I thought i'd get an opinion on my previous animation, they said they weren't sure about the bend in the sword. They felt like it should stay straight, also the sword should end up next to the character to make it look like the sword was heavy. 

I made these changes and I do feel like it does look better, the sword doesn't look like it gets bigger like before. 

I took another rendered image but changed the settings slightly, now it seems to be too dark. I need a mid ground.

Attempt 2

In this attempt I decided to add some of my characters textures to see whether or not he would distort, from the angles that I had there didn't seen to be too much. Only when the arm is completely straight does the shoulder seem to distort a bit, but it's not too bad. 

I also found that with my second camera angle you can see more of the background that you're not meant to, so this is something I needed to address. 

I did a quick little render test of my scene, but found it came out extremely dark. I will have to play around with lighting and see what I can do.

I had to change the camera angle of the second camera so it didn't show the part of background that was meant to be hidden, I'm still not happy with how the sword is picked up. It feels unnatural, I'm also having troubles with the left arm. with the IK's flipping.

Problem

I problem has accrued, my arms seems to not want to behave. It seems like my IK handles want to play a game of we will not go where you want us to. I might be able to ge away with this issue due to the nature of the angles, in that you don't see it very much in the scene.

Wanted to see If I could do the animation even with the problem due to the angle I have, and to be honest it doesn't seem that bad. It's covered by the rest of the body.

Attempting to Animate

This is the new scene that has been made, I recommended that the vertices be snapped on the bamboo so light won't shine through the gaps in the bamboo. Along with the planes for the same reason, for rendering and lighting problems to not be an issue. 

You can see the positions of the lights by looking at the arrows in the left hand corner, it creates fairly harsh shadows, something which may need to be addressed later. 

Down below is the position of the camera angle in the very first shot of the scene, the stepped camera changes angles as the animation progresses to show my 3 angles. 

Here is just a close up of the light, I've also added some natural white light to  side of my character just for some extra definition on my characters face as he looks down. 

PlayBlast

All of these videos are very similar looking, I was just experimenting with how surprised my character would be, and how to playblast it properly. I had issues with the background not appearing. But it worked in the end. Also they aren't framed, this is something I will have to do to work with my animatic.

Luckily the background seemed to appear when I playblasted this time, I do feel like his reaction is too fast. Maybe his stance could be different?

Me experimenting with posing (self videos)

I decided to try and take self footage to get to grips with how exactly my character is going to move, it's all well and good having an animatic. But I want to know how my body would actually move. 

I was surprised with how quickly my hands made it to my mouth to show I was surprised by finding the sword. 

Using my lovely home made props of an umbrella and laundry basket, giving me somthing physical to focus on and grab and put my foot on. 

Size fixing

I found that when I set my character in the scene, he was way too small for the scene. Because of this I had to figure out of to change the size of character even though he was already rigged, this happened by breaking connections with parent joints and unbinding from the skin. It was a long process to get it smaller but working normally, but it seemed to work. It was my fault really by not basing the size of my character by the scene. I just sized him up by mine rather than the one we were using. 

Floor

I decided to create my own scene with textures, giving the option to use mine or the previous. I understand that the background might match with the textures on my character, but others might not feel this way.

I just think adding textures on something very simple creates a much nicer effect, I'm using normal maps to make it look like it's bumpy when it isn't.

Posing Week 7

I experimented with my rig and what it can and can't do, I placed him in the pose that I knew 

would give him the most strain but it seems to not pull the skin anywhere. So I will try animating. 

Week 7 - We had to decide how we want to the animation to look, by posing our characters in the right positions. And how we want it to look.

In scene

Here is my character in the scene created for our animation, the bamboo is rather large. And it has flat colours but that isn't too bad. But I want to try and create a scene with textures. 

I feel like I do have an issue with scale, and I will have an issue with scale. In I had to make my character smaller for the scene, this will probably cause problems in the end. When rendering it. 

weighing the skin

This is the part of the process where I paint weights on the mesh to try and make it so the character doesn't distort when I move him around the scene.

Rigging Via Tutorial

By this point I have added my skeleton to my model and created IK handles in my arms and legs, and created nurb curves for each of my joints.

Responding To Crit

I was told in crit that my model looked too 'different' to the other characters, it was too high poly and the textures didn't seem to fit in with the rest of the characters. I was taken back by this news, considering that was the point of our animation. they're all our original designs and original animations.

I changed the 'Blinn' texture to 'Lambert' to make it less shiny, I also took off my normal's and added a black outline to make it look more like a cartoon. It doesn't look terrible but it's not as nice as the original. 

I also decided to go a bit more intense with colours, with toons. Very flat textures with slight lighting. But again, It's not good enough.

Figuring out where the joints would be - What do I need him to do?

I have to think about what I need my character to do, taking reference from my most recent animatic.

I can see I don't need a lot of hand motion, I see that my eyebrows and eyelids need to be rigged. Even though the face is hard that shouldn't be too bad.

Adding my Textures in Maya

I wanted to see what my textures looked like in Maya, It looks better than expected considering it hasn't been rendered. But that's why I favour having nice looking textures. Even if your model is simplistic, a nice texture can make anything look impressive.

All in all i'm pretty happy with the way it looks, below are all the parts the make up my textures.

Textures for my Chest Plate:

Colour Map

Metalic Map

Normal Map

Rigging

Just having a quick try with a simple rig, it turned out better than I thought. Considering I had some worries about it before. I feel more confident. 

Turntables - Week 6

High Poly - 50,000 tris

Low Poly - 9,000 tris

Week 6 - An example of both my high poly model and low poly model on a turntable made in marmoset, I also created a character sheet made with my 3D turntable. I was told that the actual look of my character didn't fit with the overall look of the rest of the characters in the animation, I attempted different 'textured' models. But my character won't look that high definition in maya.

We also had sound tutorials - deciding what sound effects would work well with our animatics. 

Normals/Light fixed

Mesh Display > Set to face

A simple fix for what seemed like an annoying issue.

Bamboo

Practising by helping make the bamboo model.

Low Poly VS High Poly

High Poly: 58,418 Tris

Low Poly: 9275 Tris

Textured

High Poly

Low Poly

There has been a significant change in tris within the character, and to be honest the difference is pretty minimal. The shape of his helmet is slightly distorted, I feel you could only see if you were told that, I do seem to have a but of issue with the texture on the helmet, I need to try and fix this.

Textures On My Model

This model unfortunetly is pretty high poly, which means it would cause problems with me animating and rigging it. The plan is to break down the polys in maya, but making sure I don't mess up the mesh and uv's.

Adding My Textures

I've colour coded my character, just to make it easier for me for when I'm adding my textures later.

Second Attempt at an Animatic with Sound

Here is a remastered version of the animatic, the general story is my samurai is sad about not being a 'strong fighter', and finding this special sword in the woods will impress his friends. But he finds it hard to get out of the log. He does eventually, but falls over in the process. Something I'm not sure I'm going to stick with, this is because a lot of people's characters fall over. I would like mine to be different, it came with the whole, we didn't tell each other what we were doing until we showed our animatics. 

Group Animatic - Remastered with sounds

We did a mini task to get us to grips with the best way to show emotion through our actions, it has shown that it might be better for me. If my character put his leg on the log to pull the sword free.

Blade for a wakizashi

These aren't the best quality pictures but you get the idea of the shape of sword we as a group are looking for in our animation, we want it to not be as curved with a flat tip. This will make it easier to animate, with it being shorter without there being a curve. The handle also doesn't have to be heavily detailed.

Wiki Description: The Wakizashi has a blade between 30 and 60cm, with Wakizashi close to the length of a Katana. The Wakazashi being worn with the Katana was the official sign that the wearer was a samurai or swordsman of feudal Japan. When worn together the pair of swords were called Daisho which translates to 'big-little'.

It hasn't been textured yet.