Category: 3D Computer Animation

This course was something I was looking forward to study even before the session started. I have always been fond of 3D and Animation but neither I had a mentor nor I had a chance to study it in depth. I had immense expectations from this course and it was exactly like how I expected it to be. It gave me the platform to learn Computer Animation under a supervision of a great mentor. In addition, enabled me to learn a 3d software Maya by working on different tasks and assignments.

Software

I had only used Maya before only for the purpose of animation. This course gave me a chance to practice various fields of 3d art like modelling, texturing, rigging, animation, lighting, and rendering.

Both classes of Nick and George were equally helpful. Nick’s session helped us to broaden our knowledge of software and how can we become generalist artist. George’s session helped me to improve the basics of animation and how we can use the software in the best of our interest.

Animation

The animation course was my favourite one. We started from basic 12 principles of animation and implemented them in every assignment we got. In the duration of our first term we learned the basics of Facial and Body Animation. We also learned to edit the rigs to make them more flexible according to our requirement.

Assignments & Feedback

The weekly assignments and the improvement feedback played a significant role in enhancing my animation knowledge and ability. It has improved my skills. The feedback I received from my mentors helped me in clearing my basics and I am looking forward to learn more in the next term.

Conclusion

I absolutely enjoyed this course and I am thankful to the mentors for their valuable input and feedback.

This week we refined the animation of lip sync and set up the camera, texture, light and took the render.

Conclusion

This whole facial rigging exercise was very beneficial. We explored sculpting, rigging, weight painting, phonetics, and blend shapes. This exercise helped us to explore the muscle study of the face. We learned how the movement of one muscle or bone influences the other part of the face.

This week in the animation class we were supposed to work on the body mechanics shot that we planned the previous week. I started the animation by doing blocking first by keeping the reference in mind. After that I started adding in between keys to make it smooth.

Challenges faced

The most critical challenge I faced was timing and spacing. In the first pass my timing is very slow and it does not feel like character has put so much force to jump over the wall. I assumed that I have to add some pushed poses and anticipation in the character.

First Pass

Final Animation

This week we were given the task to plan a body mechanics shot. I wanted to create something that gives an action vibe. So, I decided to make an animation of jump.

Reference video

I decided to use this as reference video.

Rough Planning Sketch

I then made a rough 2D Animation from some key poses I took from the reference video. It is always handy to have visual references before blocking it in 3D.

Previously, we made blend shapes and phonetics of the head model. This week our task was to pick a dialogue audio and animate the head and do lip syncing. As the character I made was imaginative I did not take any direct reference from the video clip. I have reinforced some different expressions so that the character looks more believable.

This is my attempt the animate the character’s head.

This week we worked on the blend shapes. Blend shapes is a standard approach to make facial expressions by deforming the mesh. Usually it is unique for every character and with this you can add personality to a character. As facial expressions are one of the main way of communication thus blend shapes are one of the key things in the rig.

I have worked on several shapes this week include expressions like blink, smile, smirk, frown, angry and with the expressions I have also made phonetics. As this character has a bit of rough personality that is why I have kept the expressions a bit rigid.

Blink

Eyes blinking is the key expressions so I started my process with it. This blinking action sometimes causes problems in between where the eyelid blend shape often intersects with the eye therefore it is suitable to add an in-between blend shape as well.

Frown

Smirk

Angry

Smile

Thinking/Processing/Recalling

Phonetics

After making the expressions I have made phonetics so that I can easily do the lip sync animation afterwards.

Last week we did the blocking of the walk cycle. Our task for this week was to refine it and add in between key frames to make the walk cycle more smooth. I have given my character slightly cartoonish feel through animation.

First Pass

This is the first pass of the animation. Still feeling some abnormal abnormal behaviour in the knees.

Final Animation

I adjusted knee pops and stretches and here is the final animation.

We have explored facial rigging this week. Facial rigging is the process of adding controls to a face for animating facial expressions. These controls are commonly bound to either deformers or blendshapes, both together modify the shape of the face.

Customization of the Head Model

The first part of our assignment was to customize the model of the head to give it a unique and personalized look. I decided to give it a hybrid creature look. I used the sculpting tool to make some adjustments in the jaw and forehead bone. I also added some boils on the head and gave the creature a very unique nose and chin. I transformed the ears into elf’s ears and gave the eyes a very cunning look by adjusting the shape. Lastly I modelled horns to give the head a more Godly and magnificent look.

I have attached step by step images of my model below.

Making the Joints

After making the head I made a basic rig by adding joints in the neck, head and lower jaw. Then we connected eyes with the head joints by adding parent constraint so that it moves with the rig. After that we selected the bones and mesh and bind the skin.

Weight Painting

After binding the skin we painted the skin weights. Weight Painting is the most crucial thing in the rigging process. If not done properly it will not give the right feel to your model and it will look less life-like or believable. I painted the weights of neck, head and lower jaw so that the influenced part of the mesh moves with a specific joint.

This week our task was to do the planning and blocking of a walk cycle. I have seen a lot of reference videos for this assignment.

I took the main guidance and reference from the book, “The Animators Survival Kit” by Richard Williams. I blocked the walk cycle by key posing the main poses like Contact, Down, Passing Position, Up and then again Contact.

Box Man Rigging

The agenda of this week was to understand the basic human modelling by keeping the anatomy in mind and then make a rig of that model. We were also taught how to make controllers and join them with the rig.

Basic Understanding of Rig

Rigging is a technique used in skeletal animation for representing a 3D character model using a series of interconnected digital bones. Specifically, rigging refers to the process of creating the bone structure of a 3D model. This bone structure is used to manipulate the 3D model like a puppet for animation.

The Process

We started of basic shapes and made a model. After making the model, we adjusted the naming conventions and put them in an organized hierarchy.

After making the model and organizing the hierarchy I then made leg joints and put IK handle on it. IK handles are suitable for weight shifting in the animation.

Later on I made the controls from the NURBS Primitives and added parent constraints with their allocated body parts so that they can control them. NURBS curves help to select the objects that we are animating. We can select the joints by directly clicking on them without the need for the curves. But the extra curve controls are intuitive to pick, easy to show and hide, and you can zero them at the default pose.

Some poses made using the rig are: