Category: 3D Computer Animation Fundamental

FINAL

Some process from the sculpting project

Showreel 🙂

7-12-2022

This week I made the tongue and modify the shape editor a bit more to make the animation look better. Here’s the final result.

There are some problems with the engine. I tried to solve it through internet but failed. So I only render a few images from as rendering results.

Week 9

30-11-2022

Last week I was having problem with sculpting in Maya.

Nick told me to turn off catch playback and the sculpt function will stop bugging

I also divide the facial features that was mixed together before into individual parts

Progress this week XD

31-11-2022

George’s feeback:

-feet in one place

-drag a little bit(exaggerate a bit),head-body-butt

3D Computer Animation Fundamental Week 8

Week 8

23-11-2022 Lip Sync

-Upload video and audio into maya as reference

Select the jaw rig and load it as driver

Select blend shape and load it as driven

If I select rig then blend shape node and set keyframe, I can make blend shape node move together with the rig.

24-11-2022

-Polish walk cycle

-Find reference

original link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lCK4jkqQxA&t=39s

Rough planning of the animation

Week 7

16-11-2022 Shape Editor

I tried to make more expressions following Nick’s tutorial.

17-11-2022 Polishing Walk Cycle

-The animation needs to be rhythmical

-Z path(or the moving direction) has to be a straight line for it to be smooth

3D Computer Animation Fundamental Week 6

Week 6

9-11-2022 Weight painting/blend shape

A new way to import file: first copy the script and save it as a ma text document and open it.

Weight painting: Replace cover information, adding is the better method

Take shape editor from animation editor part and customize the model

Final

10-11-2022 Walking Cycle

Final

Week 5

02/11/2022

Today Nick taught us how to rig a whole character.

First putting boxes in the shape of a robot

Create a new group for the other arm and put negative

Creating nurbs and changing it into a nice shape

Creating parent constrain with the controllers and boxes

Following orders for the final controller on the legs

Adding IK handle on both foot and toe.
Creating a controller for the leg IK handle and use pole vector to control it.

03/11/2022 Weight shift and posing

[1]Posing according to sketches

[2]Weight shift animation

3D Computer Animation Fundamental Week 4

Week 4

26/10/2022-Flour sack rigging

Today we had class about animating a walking cycle with a flour sack.

01.Using IK to make the rigging better

First download the model and set up the project

I want to set up weight for the controller on the feet, so I have to delete the original one.

Then I put Maya to X-ray model and unhide(press “H”) joints group to the bones

Then I use IK Handle to create connection between the feet and the floor(make sure sticky is on)

In the final step I firstly create NURBS circle and match the pivot point to the bottom joint. After this I create a parent constraint between these two.

02.Animating

First time animating walking cycle was hard. However, I did it with the help of my classmate. Here’s some notes that I think is important.

1. The body need to be between the feet in the beginning and ending of a step.

2. The body goes up and down during walking.

3. The body slides towards the point of gravity.

3D Computer Animation Fundamental Week 3

Week 3

19-10-2022 Parenting and constraint

Today Nick taught us about doing animation with constraining. I complete a short animation of picking and throwing a ball by setting up a parent relation between the locator and the object.

Firstly I create the first finger. I set up the group between the bottom and the top so I can control the animation better. Also, it is important to keep freezing transformation.

After finishing the first finger, I build up the whole hand.

Nick also told us a quick way to rename objects faster.

Adjusting the size of the forearm and posing the arm.

Parenting the hand locator, ball locator and ball (following by order).

Final animation after adjusting the keyframe to make it more physically accurate.

20-10-2022 Anticipation

Today we had class about anticipation, George gave us the squirrel video as a reference for animating a ball with tail.

Real squirrel reference

Other helpful reference

Final animation:

On 27th I had my feedback from George through syncsketch:

https://syncsketch.com/sketch/dccac5cb5ae7/#/13453954/14066547

I fix my animation accordingly:

3D Computer Animation Fundamental Week 2

Week 2

12-10-2022 Deformers

Today we had class about making animation using curve, which is one of the basic forms of doing 3D animation in Maya.

Nick firstly taught us to pull a dark from Maya’s assets, then draw a curve as the trace of shark swimming.

To animate the tail of the shark, I need to use sine deformer from the nonlinear part to imitate the movement. To make the deformer move together with the shark, I had to parent it with the shark
object.

In order to capture the shark animation from a nice perspective, Nick taught us to set up a camera with camera aim. I need to parent the aim with the Shark as well, so the aim moves together with the shark.

For the rendering part, I put an aiSkyDomeLight as the overall lighting. Then I create a gradient environment to make it look more like the ocean. I also replace the texture of the shark to standard surface.

Remodelling the shark

Adding the eyeball and use extrude to make the mouth.

It is a shark so sharp teeth is necessary, I made it a bit cartoonish because of my personal preference.

I add a tongue and a party hat to make the shark has more personality.

Animating the tongue using sine deformer.

I put the tongue on the side because it is swimming. There is resistance under water.

I then set up octane to render it. I use octane because I forgot to cancel my subscription, and I don’t want it to go to waste.

Final render with octane daylight and simple texture.

I also did some underwater light effect with Cinema 4D so I can use it for compositing.

Final result.

13-10-2022 Pendulum animation

After fixing the bouncing ball animation, I started the pendulum animation:

Besides the animation assignment, I also need to sketch people for posing characters next week. I went to the gym on Friday and did some sketches based on gym workout.

notes from class:

I don’t really know 12 principles of animation so I will put it here.