Character Animation II Lip Sync Exercise

For the next two weeks Im going to be animating to a short sound clip. This assignment is currently in the blocking phase where I'm trying to create dynamic storytelling poses that will help let the character's emotions read.

First blocking Pass



Second blocking Pass


Updates soon!

Character Animation 2 at Full Sail University

I wanted to take a second and post what I've been doing recently in maya and at Full Sail University.

This month I'm focusing on strong animation body mechanics and acting. In the first exercise my class and I were tasked with creating a short animation based on a given scenario, by showing the characters full body and with the help of strong storytelling poses I believe I was able to achieve a comprehensive representation of my scenario.

Scenario: "You are impatiently waiting on the bus and are excited or relieved to see it arrive, only to have it whiz right by. You must walk 3 consecutive steps in this scene."

Below is what I came up with!

Next post will be about the next project. Lip Syncing!!

Character Animation 1

This blog post is dedicated to the projects that I have been working on for my Character Animation 1 Class at Full Sail University.

In the first project we explored a basic walk with a leg rig called eggy. 

here is a playblast from the final project turn-in.



For the second project we were tasked with creating a series of strong poses that would suggest a specific emotion. In this video you will see each pose one after another all while in a silhouette format.



For the third project the stakes were raised and we were given a fully rigged character.
This walk was still more on the basic side of things but with having to move the arms, head, body etc... This project became a little more intricate. A turn around was also required but this time we had the articulate the character acting towards the end.

Advance rigging and shot finishing

For this section of my blog I wanted to cover some more advanced full body rigging.
This past month or so I've been developing a rig that has sudo muscle systems using nDynamics in maya. For the stomach and pecks I created a dynamic system that manipulates the geometry to get a realistic "jiggle" to emulate the way skin might slide across the muscles.

This rig also has a fairly basic joint based facial rig with SDK's that control the emotions and eye blink also the nose and ears have abilities to be animated.




Here is a playblast from one of the final shots. Below is an image of some added fur detail that was also attached to a hair system letting the fur be manipulated by dynamics.

Character Rig Critiques

Moom rig

Ramtin Ahmadi

(http://lesterbanks.com/2010/03/22-of-the-most-fun-rigs-for-maya/)

critique:

The clean controls that is comes with, also the overall build ( orientation, weighting, joint system ) is spot on and really helps with creating dynamic poses. The legs have RFL systems and the arms are set up with an IK-FK switching system similar to ours. 

The hierarchy however is completely set up in a different manner than ours. I'm not sure if this system is better or worse but for my animation style I really think this rig would be a joy to use on a regular basis. The controls themselves are well designed and simple in shape with alot of the rig functions being held in attribute menus. One system I would like to research more on this character would be the stretchy systems that are built into the entire rig including the head system. 

The Kit rig

Kürsat Savas

www.bubiworks.com

Critique:

This rig was well laid out with proper naming and a very easily understood interface. The biggest difference with this rig is the fact that it is a car. We haven't really talked much about rigs of this sort but I imagine a lot of the same theories we've been taught could apply to a rig of this sort.Considering the simplicity of this character rig I would definitely like to animated and study further with this rig. 

I found the most interesting system was the facial rig. I loved how simple it was.

World Zombination Character Rig Postmortem

Sterling Reames, Senior Animator (www.proletariat.com)

(http://proletariat.com/2014/01/09/world-zombination-character-rig-postmortem/)

critique:

This rig was well laid out with proper naming and a very easily understood interface. The biggest difference with this rig is the lack of any arm IK system. We are taught to have arms that have a IKFK switch system so that the animator has the ability to do IK system motions like lifting weights or tugging on a door.  I really liked this sytem beside the missing IK system. The controls were very easy to navigate with little research having to be done. I found that the arms and legs had an extra control for articulating the rotation of middle joints. These controls were somewhat annoying to work around but not detrimental to posing the character.

Considering the simplicity of this character rig I would definitely like to animated and study further with this rig. I also would like to figure out how to access the other characters that share the same rig but for some reason I think there might be compatibility issues with Maya 2015

I found the most interesting system was the facial rig. I loved how simple it was, although to get a large range of emotions might be hard because the lack of control.

Stewart rig

AnimationMentor

(http://www.animationmentor.com/free-maya-rig/)

critique:

How does this rig differ from what we are being taught? 

This rig was Fantastic! I absolutely love this rig for many reasons. The first being the clean controls that is comes with, also the overall build ( orientation, weighting, joint system ) is spot on and really helps with creating dynamic poses. This rig is not to different from the rig that we are taught to build. Each side of the rigs controls are colored to indicate right from left, the legs have RFL systems and the arms are set up with an IK-FK switching system similar to ours. The hierarchy however is completely set up in a different manner than ours.

Im not sure if this system is better or worse but for my animation style I really think this rig would be a joy to use on a regular basis. The controls themselves are well designed and simple in shape with alot of the rig functions being held in attribute menus. The controls are well placed and do not seem to get in the way when posing. The only thing I did notice is the way the clavicle control is set up you are able to rotate and translate which kind of threw me off. 

One system I would like to research more on this character would be the stretchy systems that are built into the entire rig including the head system. 

Facial Rigging for Animation

I wanted to cover a basic facial rig that I have been working on for a few weeks. I started working on the rig with purely 'blend shapes' in mind but as I did more research I realised the amount of control seemed limited and adding blend shapes onto the file seemed heavy and honestly unnecessary. 

Instead I went with a combination of blend shape driven controls with a second layer of control that could directly manipulate the face.

In the picture below it shows the joint based system on the left and on the right you can see the individual nurbs control that give the character secondary control for a-symmetrical posing.

Here are some quick emotion poses using the blend shape driven controls. 

During the process of creating the facial rig I came across a very monotonous work flow and found myself having to do the same function over and over sometimes more than 50 or 100 times. So this called for some scripting. From taking my course at Full Sail that covered mostly mel but more importantly python scripting I was able to create some fun workarounds not to mention making a pretty hefty rigging shelf that I now carry around with me.

here are some snaps from my code and shelf setup. code is partial of course

quick tools for unlocking and showing locked attributes

creating a hierarchy tool to automate the joint system for the root_joint, neck and head.

Fast Animation and Animation Wipes

This post is all about the fast animation. What makes fast animation so appealing? Why is it necessary?

Well to start off, this project is comprised of about 8 frames all on their own timing to create the illusion of a fast movement from one part of the screen to the other.

When you go to break this animation down though you will notice that towards the middle you will be able to see the image of the boy start to warp or blur. This effect in animation is called a "wipe". Similar to what a live action camera captures when an object is moving across the frame except in reality this is called motion blur and happens naturally. In animation we must draw these frames to resemble the motion blur effect.

Now the key to creating a successful wipe or motion blur frame is to stay true to the arcs of the character or subject you are animating, the stronger the arc is the better the animation will read. The second trick to getting this effect to work is to animate the "wipe" on 1's. This means creating three frame right in a row. frame 1 and 3 will be the determining drawings for when you go to create the wipe frame on frame 2.

The Wipe frame is strictly to represent the silhouette of the character from frame 1 to frame 3.  This image is often the most distorted and can take some time to get right.

This big question is why is this type of animation so appealing?

3D Animation projects for school

This series of short animations were projects that I was tasked with during the course of a month. The exercises were to demonstrate the 12 principles of animation.

Digital Sculpting and Rendering

In this post there are multiple projects ranging from digital sculptures to final low poly renderable assets.

WarCraft MailBox final low poly render

WarCraft MailBox digital sculpt

Rock Formation digital sculpt

StarLord Helmet digital sculpt for 3D Print

StarLord Helmet digital sculpt for 3D Print

Poly Paint Texturing and Procedural Texturing Project

This project is somewhat split up. The top Image is a render of a hand painted model showing my ability to hand paint textures.

The Last three images are of an original Character I modeled and rigged for facial animation purposes. All the texturing done to this model was using procedural shaders in Maya.

Retopology Project

In this Project I was tasked to retopologize a cartoon style head and a Male Torso for animation and rigging purposes. 

Modeling and Scene arrangement Project

Here is a series of models that I did for a scene. Each model had a fairly low poly count cap making this project challenging. 

These last two Images are of the entire scene after everything was modeled.