Poster for Degree Show

Here are my cycles in poster form. I will be uploading the final show reel soon.

Test render

This isn't quite what the final render will look like but baring the cloth its near enough there, and to be honest in quite pleased with the overall look.

Final block out

This is an extremely rough block out for hand in just to show the content of my final reel. I've discussed Matt's character scenes with him and I should be able to get his character on a white background so that it ties in with my characters sections, giving the reel some unity. Another advantage of this is that it wont detract form his short, if they are both show within a short interval of each other.

Its worth noting that the second to last clip with the throw is only a block out and will be of a much better quality of animation. It may also be accompanied by another animation of a jump . I am hoping to have this finished and fully completed by Friday the 15th of May at the latest. At this point I may need to tweak the colours for projection in the show, but we will see how it goes from there.

Stalking pray

I really like this cycle I think it brings a totally different aspect to my character. It was strange doing this cycle because of how slow it is but I really like the outcome, it defiantly my favourite cycle. I fell like this is a clear indicator that my animation is improving with practice.

Walk cycle 2

I tried to put a bit more charcter into this walk without going to over the top. The hair still needs a little tweeking but all in all its not that bad. His interaction with the stick is pretty ok i think but there are still aspects that could do with some touching up.

Hair animation

Breakdown of timings for hair

Graph of hair motion

One of the aspects of my character that I wanted to be a big part of my animation was hair. My idea was that as my character ran his hair would trail behind him like that of a squirrels tail. In order to do this when Matt rigged my character I had him add a tail to the back of the head. I figured that making the hair flow behind the character would be a simple case of overlap, but in fact it took some intricate planning. To get the hair to cycle with the body the first joint had to follow the down of the character and then each successive joint had to follow that on a 2 frame delay of the one in front of it this also had to occur on the extreme up of the run. This was then added to a similar motion which followed the lateral movement of the character. Creating the effect you see above.

Strong identity

A strong silhouette is a great indicator of good character design, and I am happy to say that I think I have achieved this. My character is easily recognisable and I think his silhouette also gives a strong indication of who he is as well as what he looks like. I feel like I have advanced my concept to a point where I can be happy with the aesthetic outcome.

Cloth nearly there?

Sometimes when the ncloth comes into contact with my character it sinks inside his body and the legs can be seen through the cloth a simple solution to this was to increase the collision thickness on the character mesh.


I managed to find work my way around the problem today, so all that is left to do is define the properties of my cloth so that it reacts realistically to my character in motion. The way I skirted the issue was by layering two different types of constraints on top of each other, a transform constraint like I had before and a component to component constraint. By changing the parameters of the new constraint I have managed to keep the waistband of the loin cloth just that, at his waist and whats more I worked it out myself through hours on the Maya help page.




In order to get the cloth to behave in this manner, I had to layer yet another pair of constraints to my characters legs. By making them spring type constraints it keeps the cloth close to the character without hindering the cloth simulation to a noticeable level. As you can see I'm nearly there but getting the cloth to move perfectly may take some time been as it is all number punching and painting properties. Soon everything should be finished.

Cloth adjustments

For the moment nCloth has become the bane of my existence. At first I thought that I had got all of the cloth properties write and made short work of it all. As always things were not as simple as the first appeared. The problem lies in my animation. When the cloth comes into contact with a fast moving passive such a my character it defies its constraint and the anchor point of my character loin cloth on it waist band rides up into his chest. After some testing neither Matt or I could find a reason why the constraint wasn't working. Especially been as the same procedure worked perfectly on Matt's model. I was stumped.

Here is the problem in all its glory.

Patom

This is my character close up. Hes finished now so I have named him, Patom.

By Matt

Matt has helped me out by unwrapping my character for me, hes pretty straight forward,and everything works well. The only anomaly seems to be a glitch with his toe. This only occurs on certain files so it hasn't been a problem, but neither me or Matt can work out why it is doing it.

Shading networks

The shading network above is a downloaded skin shader that I have doctored to fit my character. The file came without any colours or ramps, so basically I just filled the texture boxes with procedural textures. The shader basically comprises of a rim shader made form a lambert linked to surface luminance, and a ramp which distinguishes the placement of the surface luminance to the rim of the texture, this is based on light facing angle. Added to this is a bump for which I just used a softened fractal. There is still space in this shader for me to define some specular highlights because I haven't filled the network with all the texture space it can take. The problem with this idea is that my character is almost completely naked so any painted map would show up his seams, where as the procedural textures I used keep him seamless. I may add a specular pass in later on but for now my focus is animating.

Render tests

Final Composition

Ambient Pass

Colour Pass

This is pretty much what my finished render should look like. Although there are plenty of little addition that could be made before the degree show. I achieved this look quite simply through the use of render layers. My hope is that the proximity shading effect created by the ambient occlusion pass will ground my character against any object he comes into contact with. Allowing me to have a totally white background but still have invisible objects that my character can interact with in a solid believable way.

Sound

I originally wanted a soundtrack that included bongo drums in it but this proved elusive. Finally I have found a royalty free track with bongo drums that I think might suit the show reel. It has a soft electric guitar element to it that I think would go with both the subtle gestures of Matt's character and the energetic movements of my character which I have finally named, Patom.

The track is called:

'Peragrine grandure' by Kieth McLeod

For Matt 7

This is Matt's final scene enjoy, I think its quite cute, enjoy!

For Matt 6

This clip is Matt penultimate shot, and a nice chance to get a bit more close up facial, my main focus in this piece was getting believable eyes that lead the character into the final pose.

For Matt 5 a

Again here is another view of shot ten I just put this one up so that you can see the facial. Hope you enjoy it! As usual, all criticism is welcome.

For Matt 5

This is the shot that I felt had the best prospects form Matt's animation and I really enjoyed animating this scene. It was interesting working out how the body moves when a character walks backwards instead of forwards. I can't wait to see what the final render looks like after Matt finishes the particle effects. All in all this was really fun, only trick thing was the IK/FK switch as she pulls her hands to a relaxed position as she as she trails away. Of course theres still lots of room for improvement but Matt seems happy, so I'm happy.

For Matt 4 a

Despite the horrors of the trax editor I think we have managed to salvage the animation. Turns out Matt isn't going to want to the walk at the start of the scene anyway so scene 2 has been cut down to something that should end up looking like this. At first I created this camera angle to showcase the facial in this animation, which was lucky because when I showed it to Matt he preferred it to the trax edited version with the walk. In my opinion its easy to see why.

The whole farce I enjoyed with the trax editor has meant that where as I was previously planning on using it in the animation of my character, that aspect has been scrapped. I feel that I could get the same if not a better looking outcome from more basic animation techniques.

For Matt 4

Here is Matt's latest scene not that good but the next scene promises to be a pleasant surprise!

This scene isn't my favourite mainly due to Maya's trax editor, a package that at first appears to be highly beneficial to animation. Offering a wide range of perks that don't really live up to expectations. The only real useful features of this application are its most simple ones, adjusting a clips time, or allowing you to import character animation from one rig to another; say I wanted to make my character walk like a girl I could use the animation curves from Matt's character been as the both use the same rigging system. Its other features while not hard to grasp are maddeningly infuriating. Its blend function is blew apart the rig at every opportunity and over all the package just seemed to suffer from lots of glitches along the way. Maybe the most disappointing part of my experience with the trax editor was its inability to successfully translate a walk cycle from A to B without sliding.




Despite boasting that its shortens the process and saves a lot of unnecessary hassle, I found that it did the opposite because I had to create a whole character subset in the base controller of the rig in order to effectively counter animate the slide created. All the Maya help endorsed ways of translating animation failed, not because I couldn't do it but because the package just seems to become seriously glitchy whenever you ask it to string together anything more complex that two copies of the same looping walk cycle. All in all it cost me more time than I had spare so I was forced to move on with the animation.

Below the beauty of the trax editor and the clip resorses I made and imported in the visor below.

For Matt 3

As unlikeley as it is I quite like this animation, I had a little trouble with the eyes though, for some reason the textures Matt sent me wouldn't attach to my version of the rig so I couldn't see where the pupils were going when I animated her. As a marker have put a ramp shader on the lense so that I know where the pupils are, which has worked fine. I think I have succeeded in giving her a little bit of character here, there is so much more I could do but I think I'm at a stage where I can let it go.

For Matt 2

This is the first scene I have completed for Matt so far. The animation was pretty straight forward and made a lot easier by the camera angle. He checked it off and seemed to be really happy with it which is good. I'm not a hundred percent happy with it myself but realistically I could tweak an animation forever before I'm satisfied so I think its time to move on. One thing that I am happy with is Matt's rig. Its great for mechanics but not so great for facial expression, never the less its better than most of the rigs I've used before. Which is a testament to Matt and the beauty of Set Up Machine. As always all criticism is welcome.

Walk Cycle Test 1

This test is just the inital keys for my walk cycle. It has several issues, such as the legs popping and the arms swim a little, it is also missing the animation for his spear. Its not too far off though and I'm quite happy with the outcome at this stage. I think the attitude of the walk is nice it shows my characters confidence, plus it cycles well pre and post infinity. All feedback is welcome.