Thursday, February 16, 2012
Assignment Part 2
For the second part of the assignment, I have decided to do the scenario where Joe walks up some steps and jumps down. However, I have and interest in Parkour and decide to animate Joe to do a forward-backflip (oxymoron much?).
I used the animation I did in the walk cycle and edited the second half of it. Editing the feet and body to follow the stairs up was more challenging than expected as I wasn't working with a clean sheet where I could do the 3 stages of animation again. It caused some problems where part of the foot will go through the steps and such. It took some time but I managed to refine it. One thing to take note of was the body weight when a step is taken. The body is pushed up when Joe takes a step rather than moving up at the same time he is taking a step.
Once at the top, the anticipation of the backflip is animated where Joe lifts his arms. The arms then pulls down quickly and Joe bends down with his spine bent forward. When the arms reaches the end of the back swing, the body lifts up slightly, getting ready to jump. The arm then swings forward and the rig jumps both upwards and forwards.
During a backflip, depending on skill level of the person, people normally keep their knees as close to themselves as possible to have control of their body during the flip. The center of gravity is also easier to control when you 'ball' yourself up. I have animated the rig to do exactly this with Joe using his hands to hold his knees during the flip. Rotating the body and arms gave me a lot of problems and I took quite long to solve them. The legs too, gave me a lot of problems as placing them too close to the body will cause the knees to dislocate. =D
Aaanyways... moving on. When the flip is almost completed and when Joe is about to reach the floor, the legs will naturally reach out to the floor first. This is to cushion the impact of the fall. When the legs reaches the floor and the foot fully connects to the ground, the body will have a recoil motion (moves down and up slightly). His arms are wide open to balance the body after the flip. Joe then stops for a moment in realization that he did a flip.
And for realistic purposes (and for fun!), I animated Joe to check himself after his flip. He gives the "Omg, I'm fine!!" gesture during the animation. His spine straightens in this process. This has been a fun assignment to do! Haha =D
I used the animation I did in the walk cycle and edited the second half of it. Editing the feet and body to follow the stairs up was more challenging than expected as I wasn't working with a clean sheet where I could do the 3 stages of animation again. It caused some problems where part of the foot will go through the steps and such. It took some time but I managed to refine it. One thing to take note of was the body weight when a step is taken. The body is pushed up when Joe takes a step rather than moving up at the same time he is taking a step.
Once at the top, the anticipation of the backflip is animated where Joe lifts his arms. The arms then pulls down quickly and Joe bends down with his spine bent forward. When the arms reaches the end of the back swing, the body lifts up slightly, getting ready to jump. The arm then swings forward and the rig jumps both upwards and forwards.
During a backflip, depending on skill level of the person, people normally keep their knees as close to themselves as possible to have control of their body during the flip. The center of gravity is also easier to control when you 'ball' yourself up. I have animated the rig to do exactly this with Joe using his hands to hold his knees during the flip. Rotating the body and arms gave me a lot of problems and I took quite long to solve them. The legs too, gave me a lot of problems as placing them too close to the body will cause the knees to dislocate. =D
Aaanyways... moving on. When the flip is almost completed and when Joe is about to reach the floor, the legs will naturally reach out to the floor first. This is to cushion the impact of the fall. When the legs reaches the floor and the foot fully connects to the ground, the body will have a recoil motion (moves down and up slightly). His arms are wide open to balance the body after the flip. Joe then stops for a moment in realization that he did a flip.
Assignment Part 1
When starting this assignment, I followed
the 3 steps in animating. First was setting the keyframes at the extreme poses.
Then adjust the timing of the animation and finally tweaking the graph editor.
I used the walk cycle image found online to key my poses for the legs, feet,
arms and waist. One important part of the walk cycle is knowing that the body also
moves up and down instead of just moving forward. The waist has to also tilt
down towards the leg that has taken a step. Another area to pay attention to is
the Toe, Foot and Ball Roll attributes. For each step, these attributes need to
be adjusted to make the feet look realistic.
After finishing the legs and waist, I moved
on to the arms and shoulders. Even though it is difficult to see, the shoulders
in the animation are actually rotating on both the y-axis and z-axis (check the
graph editor if not visible). The reason why I only rotated them slightly is
because I use myself as a reference and realized that people only move their
shoulders slightly when walking. The shoulder like the waist, stoops slightly
to the leg that has taken a step.
The arms are particularly different as
swaying it back and forth moves both the arm joint and elbow joint. When the forward arm is at it’s extreme, it
stays in the air for a split second before swinging back. The elbows also bend
when the forward arm reaches it’s extreme.
After completing the body, I animated the
head to rotate left and right so that the eyes would give the head some realism
of movement
Friday, February 3, 2012
Week5: BigDoggy
1)
If engineered or programmed
badly, BigDog would fall over. Watch the full video again, and describe how BigDog’s legs move while walking– ie. what is the sequence of leg movements for
one complete step? Use the terms BL, BR, FL, and FR for the back-left,
back-right, front-left and front-right legs.
BigDog’s leg
move alternativly. The FL and BR move in one step while the FR and FL move in
the next step.
2) Explain how this sequence of movements manages to balance BigDog’s body weight.
2) Explain how this sequence of movements manages to balance BigDog’s body weight.
I think because
of the alternative movement, the body weight is balanced on 2 legs each time.
And while the weight is on the 2 legs, the other 2 legs will move in a position
that will balance BigDog’s weight when the step is completed and BigDog’s
weight will be balanced when it take the next step.
3) Look at BigDog_kick_slow_motion.mov. Draw a storyboard of BigDog stabilising itself after being kicked.
Stage 1: Before kicked.
Stage 2: Being kicked, body tilts towards the kick.
Stage 3: FL takes a step towards the right and the body weight is over it. The FR then takes a huge step to the right, attempting to balance out. BL takes a step towards BR in order for BR to take a huge step in the next step. The entire body tilts heavily to the right.
3) Look at BigDog_kick_slow_motion.mov. Draw a storyboard of BigDog stabilising itself after being kicked.
Stage 2: Being kicked, body tilts towards the kick.
Stage 3: FL takes a step towards the right and the body weight is over it. The FR then takes a huge step to the right, attempting to balance out. BL takes a step towards BR in order for BR to take a huge step in the next step. The entire body tilts heavily to the right.
Stage 5: FR now takes a huge step and the body is balanced. The entire body weight is dispersed in this step.
Stage 6: BigDog is now walking properly.
Week5: Spidey
The first lab of this week kicks off the start of the animation process. We were told to animate the hip of Spider-Man when he moves his weight from one leg to another. Before starting animating, I expected to be quite easy since it was just normal animation. However the moment I started working on it, I was surprised that it was much more challenging then I thought! The displacement of the weight was particularly hard to animate and it took me a few attempts to get it. Mr James then taught us the three layers of animation which frankly made life much more easier.
The first layer was to key the key poses. These key poses will be the extremes of the movement which means that there will not be another frame that is more "extreme" then those key poses.
The second layer was timing. Drag out the key poses and make sure the timing of them are well measured. Add more details to the animation in this step too. Anticipation and Follow Through should be done here.
The third and last layer is to make sure that the Slow in and Slow out principle is in the animation by editing the graph editor to give the animation some acceleration and deceleration.
With these skills, I believe that soon, I will be able to tackle the assignment with some readiness. =)
The first layer was to key the key poses. These key poses will be the extremes of the movement which means that there will not be another frame that is more "extreme" then those key poses.
The second layer was timing. Drag out the key poses and make sure the timing of them are well measured. Add more details to the animation in this step too. Anticipation and Follow Through should be done here.
The third and last layer is to make sure that the Slow in and Slow out principle is in the animation by editing the graph editor to give the animation some acceleration and deceleration.
With these skills, I believe that soon, I will be able to tackle the assignment with some readiness. =)
Friday, January 27, 2012
Week 4: Rigging
Stop 1:For the first stop, I have created all the joints for the entire body. This includes the fingers and feets. Every part of the body is renamed for usability purposes and it is also what the video asked for.
For creating the joints, some knowledge about the human anatomy would definately help in the creation process. There is no IK handles yet and the joints still moves individually. I later on learnt that even with the IK handle, you can still move the joints seperately by holding onto 'D'. I have parented all of the joints accordingly and they all can be controlled by the pelvis.
Stop 2:
After the joints are set, their rotation axis has to be in sync with the world's axis. Hence each and every joint has to be manually selected and their axis changed. The visibility of the axis can be shown and hidden via the option.
Stop 3:
I have now placed in the IK handle for the arms and the legs. I have also added the options for the feets such as Toe_Roll_Control and Ball_Lift_Control so that it can be controlled when the rig is completed.
Stop 4:
Next, a NURBS circle is drawn and moulded using the vertexes to shape like the foot. This is the leg's control and by selecting it, the leg can be move around easily. A Point and Orient constraint is placed on the ankle as when the control is rotated, the feet will rotate with the ankle as a pivot point.
Stop 5:
After some steps, the knee Controls are created. They are created using 2 spheres and the texture of the ball is removed entirely and it is dragged away so that it will not be mixed up with the body. The control is parented under the foot control so that when the foot control moves the leg away, the knee control will follow. A poleVector constraint is used for the knee Control so that the knee will point to the direction where the control is at.
Stop 6:
Next is the Elbow joint control where a box is created along with a Pole Vector and Point Vector constaint. Now the elbow joint of the rig points to where this Elbow control is and this is mirrored on the other side.
Stop 7:
Now, a Hip control is created along with the Shoulder controls. These allows the movement and rotation of the shoulders and hips. The hip control is constrained to the pelvis which would mean that it will move the whole rig if the control is rotated/moved. Then, a NURB curve is created for controlling the spine of the rig. It will allow the rig to bend forward and backwards.
Stop 8:
Next, a minor refinement on the rig is made. The neck now has a upper,middle and lower bone. This allows the Neck control to move the bottom of the neck nicely while the Head control rotates on the top neck bone. There Spine, Neck and Head controls are constrained such that when the lower body control is rotated around, the top body control follows it.
Stop 9:
Now is a long and tedious Driven key process where each and every finger joint has to be "Driven" by the new attribute controls. This process is slow but necessary for a good and flexible rig.
Stop 10:
At this stage, the rig is binded with the model. When the rig is moved, the model moves. New layers are also created along with a High-polygon count layer and a Low-polygon count layer. I have also done painting the weight for the skin which was difficult and quite troublesome. The painting process took time but the results are obvious. The rig is complete at this point (or at least for the number of videos provided).
Stop 11:
For the last two videos, we were taught to create eyeballs. For the first picture, a regular pair of
eyeballs are created. They are Aim constrained to the eyeball controll which is a rectangluar box. For the second pair of eyeballs, they are Stretchy eyeballs which has a joint in the middle of them, binded to the eyeballs. The joint can be move to make the eyeballs have a cartoonist stretch. The other box is the head control which the eyeballs are constrained to.
I am sure I have missed mentioning many steps but this exercise is realllly long and I unfortunately, can't remember all of the steps. I hope these are the rough outlines of the process and.......yea......tired. Haha. I can somehow predict our assignment already.
For creating the joints, some knowledge about the human anatomy would definately help in the creation process. There is no IK handles yet and the joints still moves individually. I later on learnt that even with the IK handle, you can still move the joints seperately by holding onto 'D'. I have parented all of the joints accordingly and they all can be controlled by the pelvis.
After the joints are set, their rotation axis has to be in sync with the world's axis. Hence each and every joint has to be manually selected and their axis changed. The visibility of the axis can be shown and hidden via the option.
Stop 3:
I have now placed in the IK handle for the arms and the legs. I have also added the options for the feets such as Toe_Roll_Control and Ball_Lift_Control so that it can be controlled when the rig is completed.
Next, a NURBS circle is drawn and moulded using the vertexes to shape like the foot. This is the leg's control and by selecting it, the leg can be move around easily. A Point and Orient constraint is placed on the ankle as when the control is rotated, the feet will rotate with the ankle as a pivot point.
Stop 5:
After some steps, the knee Controls are created. They are created using 2 spheres and the texture of the ball is removed entirely and it is dragged away so that it will not be mixed up with the body. The control is parented under the foot control so that when the foot control moves the leg away, the knee control will follow. A poleVector constraint is used for the knee Control so that the knee will point to the direction where the control is at.
Stop 6:
Next is the Elbow joint control where a box is created along with a Pole Vector and Point Vector constaint. Now the elbow joint of the rig points to where this Elbow control is and this is mirrored on the other side.
Stop 7:
Now, a Hip control is created along with the Shoulder controls. These allows the movement and rotation of the shoulders and hips. The hip control is constrained to the pelvis which would mean that it will move the whole rig if the control is rotated/moved. Then, a NURB curve is created for controlling the spine of the rig. It will allow the rig to bend forward and backwards.
Next, a minor refinement on the rig is made. The neck now has a upper,middle and lower bone. This allows the Neck control to move the bottom of the neck nicely while the Head control rotates on the top neck bone. There Spine, Neck and Head controls are constrained such that when the lower body control is rotated around, the top body control follows it.
Stop 9:
Now is a long and tedious Driven key process where each and every finger joint has to be "Driven" by the new attribute controls. This process is slow but necessary for a good and flexible rig.
Stop 10:
At this stage, the rig is binded with the model. When the rig is moved, the model moves. New layers are also created along with a High-polygon count layer and a Low-polygon count layer. I have also done painting the weight for the skin which was difficult and quite troublesome. The painting process took time but the results are obvious. The rig is complete at this point (or at least for the number of videos provided).
For the last two videos, we were taught to create eyeballs. For the first picture, a regular pair of
eyeballs are created. They are Aim constrained to the eyeball controll which is a rectangluar box. For the second pair of eyeballs, they are Stretchy eyeballs which has a joint in the middle of them, binded to the eyeballs. The joint can be move to make the eyeballs have a cartoonist stretch. The other box is the head control which the eyeballs are constrained to.
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Week 3: Eleven Rig
Posing
For this exercise, we are given a new rig to play with. The rig controls for this rig is different from the Spiderman rig, especially for the controls of the joints. After we recieved this rig, we were given 3 pictures of poses to pose our rig to. Here we goooo!!!!!
Pose 1
This pose is one of the more difficult poses to pose as yet again, the rig does not consider collisions and the muscles in this sitting pose are pressed againest each other, something the rig is unable to do. For this pose, the spine is curved forward as the lady is resting her hands on her thighs. I have rig the fingers and I find them quite "well-rigged". The sole of the feets are pointing outwards and I have rigged them such that they do not go through the thighs.
Pose 2
This pose is the pose of Yoona from Girl's Generation. She has placed both her closed hands on the sides of her hips and is leaning to one side. I have rotated the entire hip to a direction to show that she is leaning on one side.
In the picture we were given, Yoona was smiling with her teeths slightly opened and her eyes were "squeezed" smaller.
From the back 3/4 view, it is visible that I have added the breast to show that she is a SHE. We can also see that the hands are closed entirely and that by rotating the hip, the butt is perked up on one side.
Pose 3?
And finally for the last pose, I was unclear if we were supposed to pose the women of the boy. Hence, I posed both. Haha. Firstly, the boy pose which I was supposed to pose. The picture hid half of his body from view and for that half, I had to guess the posture for it. For this pose, the boy has a forward momentum and hence has a forward-leaning spine. The knees are pointing forwards and the sole of the right feet is pependicular to the floor. The hands are actively bouncing the ball and hence are bent inwards with the palms facing downwards.
From the other view, we can see that he is moving towards us but facing another direction. And the right arm is hopefully positioned correctly. =D
The woman which I was not supposed to pose, was quite difficult in my opinion. Her lower spine in bent forward while her upper spine is straight up. Her legs are wide open and her eyes are focussed on the ball which is positioned lowly.
Pose 1
Pose 3?
And finally for the last pose, I was unclear if we were supposed to pose the women of the boy. Hence, I posed both. Haha. Firstly, the boy pose which I was supposed to pose. The picture hid half of his body from view and for that half, I had to guess the posture for it. For this pose, the boy has a forward momentum and hence has a forward-leaning spine. The knees are pointing forwards and the sole of the right feet is pependicular to the floor. The hands are actively bouncing the ball and hence are bent inwards with the palms facing downwards.
The woman which I was not supposed to pose, was quite difficult in my opinion. Her lower spine in bent forward while her upper spine is straight up. Her legs are wide open and her eyes are focussed on the ball which is positioned lowly.
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