Animation Learning Logs
Tai Chi Animation Learning Log
In today's lesson (16/03/18) I intend to create three different animations based on Tai Chi poses. During the lesson I intend to make the animations with as much detail as possible while making use of some of the principles of animation; including pose to pose, secondary and staging.
While animating I will use video and image references to understand how the body moves while transitioning between poses. Tai Chi consists of many slow movements, managing the weight of the model will be extremely important for these animations. Experimenting with timing between these poses will allow for a more accurate flow when it comes to the animation.
Pose to pose referencing
Using a YouTube video as reference I am hoping to recreate the movements displayed in the video. I use multiple screenshots of key poses and use pose to pose animation to begin with – adding secondary and tweaking movements afterwards.
Animation Method & Issues
As mentioned before, pose to pose and secondary was used when creating the animation. Once key poses had been created, I went back to clean up motion in the legs and feet, as well as correct pelvis and torso movement to match the directions the model would be facing. I also had the head follow the green arm which is an intention to give the model more life-like movement.
After the animation was completed I added a stage to the scene which formed a dojo.
During animation, I ran into trouble with leg movements not looking fluid enough. For example, the model’s feet were dragging along the floor or were twisting in unintended directions. To correct this I added stepping motions to areas where feet dragged along the floor and corrected the rotations of the feet accordingly during this process.
I also ran into issues with the timing of the steps. Before correcting this the feet were both moving at the same time, making the animation too symmetrical and with little flow in the lower half of the model’s body. In order to correct this I offset some frames to begin earlier, so each step happened at differing times.
What I Have Learnt & Further Development
Methods I want to develop further are offsetting motions of a model as well as pausing the model properly during animation; instead of motions slowly beginning straight after previous ones have finished. I would also like to develop leg movements further and obtain a better understanding of how to animate stepping motions (how the feet move during the motion; how far off the ground the leg is lifted etc.).
Final Animation
Box Push Animation
On 22/03/18 I created an animation of a CAT rig pushing a box. During this exercise, the goal was to familiarize myself with using IK targets to have a rig interact with objects (picking them up, pushing them, throwing etc).
To create the IK target, I selected the rig's hand and applied the target in: motion -> limb animation by using the Create IK Target option. Once the IK's were applied to the rig, the IK/FK slider was changed to 0 and the targets were linked to the box. Having the targets linked to the box made it so the rig's hands were always on the surface of the box.
Issues During Animation
When I began animating, I first tried to have the rig push the box along without using the IK targets. By doing this, the box in the resulting animation was not moving in sync with the pushing force from the rig. The box would either be too far away at time or too close to the rig, resulting in the rig's arms clipping through the box.
I had some problems using the IK targets at first. When I first applied the targets, whenever I moved them the arm wouldn't move with it. I found the problem was that I didn't change the IK/FK slider to 0; once changed the targets behaved correctly.
Evaluation
This exercise has improved my knowledge of animation and has taught me about an easy method to use when it comes to moving objects with a characters limbs. Overall, I am pleased I have learnt this method, however the final animation could be longer and of higher quality (Grab Viewpoint Render was used). I also feels as though I could have depicted more force or struggle behind the actions of the rig, due to the box's size in comparison. Also, there isn't any staging in the rendered animation, adding an environment would have helped the appeal and narrative greatly.
In the future I plan to depict much more force when it comes to smaller rigs trying to push/pull objects larger than they and to make future animations like these a little longer.
Final Animation
Final Fantasy VX Animation Exercise (Self)
On 19/03/18 I decided to recreate some basic animations from Final Fantasy XV using the CAT rigs included in 3DS Max. During this exercise I intend to create up to two different animations using game footage and images as a reference. Techniques such as pose to pose, staging and secondary motion will be used in the animations.
The first animation I chose to recreate was of selecting a meal during camp; one of the shortest, most basic animations when it comes to characters. Before I began animating the rig, I chose to begin staging first. To complete the staging process I used an image of the meal select screen as well as recording my own gameplay of the scene for referencing movements.
I used a combination of box and lathe modelling to complete the staging process. All together the staging took around an hour to complete and could have been done faster. In future exercises I will aim to complete the staging process quickly and move onto animation a lot sooner.
Animation Techniques
During this session I continued to use point to point animation and secondary motion. Exaggeration was used when the model brings their arm down from their chin, swinging it backwards and finally to their side. Anticipation was incorporated at the beginning of the animation where the model enters a thinking pose (seen above, left image).
Issues During Animation
When animating I had trouble figuring out how to have the model stay in a pose before moving on to another animation. I found that copying the frame that contained the pose I wanted and adding it in again further in the timeline kept the model in that pose. I also had issues with how the models legs moved as a whole; changing perspectives to animate from different angles solved this issue.
Evaluation
After this session I am pleased with how the final animation turned out. Although, there is still lots of room for improvement. In the future I would like to further polish walking animations and the lighting of a scene.
From this session I have learnt how to have the model stay in one pose for a set amount of frames before beginning another animation, which will be useful in the future. For future walking animations I need to remember to have the pelvis further forward than it is in this animation. The blue foot also drags backwards along the floor after the initial step forward. Keying in the foot would solve this problem.
Final Animation
Custom CAT Rig Animation
On 22/03/18 I created a custom CAT rig and planned out a walk cycle based on it's structure. As the rig I created was a tall, alien-like creature, the walk cycle contained large strides and expressive movement on the arms and torso.
The aim of this animation was to create a walk cycle that portrays the personality of the rig that was created. I created the custom CAT rig by placing a triangle "Character001" placeholder in the scene and then created a pelvis. From the pelvis I added limbs and a head to the model, modifying them as I created the rig.
During the creation process, "Copy Strand Settings" and "Paste Strand Settings" was used to easily pose limbs; using these tools allows for manual posing of one arm or leg - copy strand/paste strand stores the position of the limb for automatic posing. Making sure to rename the bones of the rig was correctly an important step during the creation process if I wanted to select certain bones from the left side of Max.
The options to the right of these images allow for bone manipulation such as: scaling, adding/subtracting bones, as well as adding additional limbs.
Animation Techniques and Issues During Animation
Animation techniques used during this session consisted of the standard: pose-to-pose, secondary, exaggeration and staging. Staging was added after the animation was complete and consists of regular shapes such as modified cubes and cylinders.
Issues during animation mostly revolve around creating the walk cycle itself. I still find it difficult to create a consistent and smooth walk cycle, although I feel as though I am improving. Moving the foot forward first, the pelvis in later frames to complete the step, and then adding the between frames to the step is a good process I learned from this session. Another issue is that when animating, the payback was set to 1/2x speed, meaning when it was changed to 1x speed, the animation looked too quick and stiff. In the future I will check the playback speed before animating.
Evaluation
I am mostly pleased with how this animation turned out. In the future I would make tweaks to the walk cycle to give it a nicer flow, especially where the model leans over too much and snaps back rather quickly. I feel the staging for this animation is good - though in the future, I would expand the plane to fully cover what the camera is capturing.
Final Animation
Persona 5 Animation Exercise (Self)
On 10/04/18 I decided to create an animation based on Persona 5's Makoto Niijima during battle scenes.The purpose of this exercise was to experiment with landing animations and animated camera angles.
This animation was challenging to create because a lot of the key poses either had parts of the legs or arms out of view in the original video. The final key pose for example is a close up of the character, only showing her in a shoulder shot, so interpretation of poses was used sometimes during the animation process.
Video Animation Reference
0:27 animation reference.
Animation Techniques & Issues During Animation
Pose-to-pose was the main technique used during the animation process - I tried straight through animation but I found it too difficult to use for this session. Secondary animation was added after the rough animation was completed and staging was added soon after.
One of the major issues I ran into was the posing of the model. Since the key poses had parts of the body out of shot or were too close to the reference I found it hard to get the poses correct. This was solved by slowing the video down and observing how the character moved.
Another problem was the posing for the landing; with the falling and landing poses complete the model began starting the landing too soon. I fixed this by copying the key of the falling pose and moved it along the timeline.
A problem I noticed after completing and rendering the animation was that the blue leg of the rig was not staying in place as the model turned around; this was fixed by using the same solution for the landing animation. I also had problems with the camera tracking and had to completely reanimate the camera a few times before I got the results I wanted. Though these issues come down to poor timeline management (unwanted quick zooms/movements) and was easily corrected once I found the issues.
Motion blur was added during rendering, though I had some difficulty setting it up (not remembering where the setting is/how to actually apply it to the animation). This was solved by referring to a tutorial on YouTube.
Image Key Pose Reference
Evaluation
Overall I am very pleased with how this animation turned out. The second key pose (landing pose) could use some additional work and have the green arm more exaggerated like in the reference pictures above. I feel I have improved the staging from the previous animation (custom CAT rig) as the staging is not showing any of the outer environment. The camera adds more exaggeration to the animation by following the model and zooming in quickly at the end. I'm please with how the camera adds more to the finished animation and I will aim to use cameras again in the future.
Final Animation
MassFX Wall Animation
On 19/04/18 I recreated a scene that was shown to me which consisted of a brick wall with many objects surrounding it. The main goal of this session was to make it appear as if the wall exploded, sending the bricks and various objects flying in multiple directions.
Once the scene was build I added the massFX options to the toolbar in Max by right clicking and selecting the massFX option. MassFX allows objects to be put into four different states: Kinematic, Dynamic, Static and Cloth.
Kinematic is applied to an object so it may interact with the environment.
Dynamic for reacting to actions (Kinematic).
Static for staying in place.
Cloth for acting as fabrics.
Dynamic was applied to the whole scene and was then simulated; simulation dropped all the objects into a resting position so they weren't floating above each other. I had an issue where the planks would fly off once the simulation started, to fix this I angled them towards the wall and placed them further away; when the simulation started they fell into place and the scene was ready to have a kinematic object animated.
Before the kinematic object was added into the scene, the Fracture Voronoi script was used on an object I had quickly created. This script cuts the selected object into individual pieces (default of 10) that will also explode, like the wall, when a kinematic force makes contact with it.
The kinematic object was just a sphere, which was animated to go through the wall. To give the illusion that the wall was exploding, the sphere was hidden while the animation played out.
Evaluation
During this exercise I have learnt the basics of using MassFX and the Fracture script; I will be able to use these skills in future animations. The animation itself would have benefited from either more environment or a backdrop. I feel a second camera angle looking at the front side of the animation would have given viewers a better look at the animation.
Final Animation
(Final)Viking Animation
On 19/04/18 I began producing an animation using a viking rig that Lee provided. Before beginning the animation process I made storyboards for each animation idea. With the animation I produced, I wanted the viking to explore the area and interact with the objects that were placed in the scene. I aimed for this animation to be longer than those I had produced before, as this animation would follow a small story in contrast to smaller actions.
Storyboard
The storyboard above maps out the key points of the animation. In-between actions were added throughout the animation, such as: after the viking holds his wounded arm, he lets out a sigh; and when at the far tower, he checks his surroundings once more before knocking on the door.
Issues During Animation
Major issues during animation mostly came from 3DS Max crashing occasionally during the later stages of animation. This may be due to memory load as there are 1300+ frames of animation in the final version. When crashes did occur, the file would not open correctly and display and "Application Error" which closed Max upon opening the file. Crashing occurred when: trying to select the whole rig for key framing; scanning the timeline; and animating camera movements. I found a solution to this problem by opening a fresh 3DS Max and importing the file.
During animation I had trouble with the walk cycle such as the positioning of the feet as the viking is turning a corner as well as their positioning afterwards. For example, they would be too far apart or twisted in awkward positions - I went back to fix these problems after I completed the full walk cycle.
When the viking first gets up and walks over to the chest, I wanted to add motion to his arms to give him more movement and personality. I tried using an Adjustment Layer in order to animate the arms, though crashes kept occurring and the animation on his arms was lost. I tried redoing the animation as well as recovering the file but the software continued to crash and lose progress - I didn't want to risk any further crashes on the file I managed to recover and decided to leave these movements out of the final animation.
During the same scene described above, I initially had trouble animating the viking getting up.
Smaller issues also arose, such as: when animating the blinking, I had to have the gizmo set to "Screen" instead of "Local" in order to move them both in the same direction, as "Local" would move them in opposite directions. I later realised that animating them like this sometimes left the eyelids floating in-front of the viking's eyes. Although this issue was subtle, I went through the animation and corrected the parts where the eyelids were not behaving correctly.
Local Alignment
Screen Alignment
Evaluation
I'm not entirely pleased with how the final animation turned out, however, considering I began the module three months ago with no knowledge of animation, this is great progress from where I started. I believe this animation could have been helped with the use of multiple camera angles which make use of cutting between one another for a more atmospheric presentation.
I am not entirely displeased with the single camera that was used for the final animation, however, there are some points where I could have had the model stay in a position for longer, allowing viewers to take in an action. An example of this is when the viking gives up on breaking the tower door down and turns around, staying in position here would have given the final render a nicer flow.
I am pleased with the facial animations in the final render and I enjoyed animating different expressions to match the feelings of the character; adding more life to the model. Blinking and eye movements brought additional personality to the model also.
Mentioned above, I would have liked to add arm movements to the viking as he walked towards the chest - but was unable to due to the software crashing. Despite this, I was able to learn a new method for animating limbs/secondary movement with the use of an "Adjustment Layer". Now that I have knowledge of this I will be able to use this method in future animations, although the final animation may suffer from lack of arm movement in this section, I was able to learn a new method for future use.
Walking is still a struggle for me when it comes to animation. Steps seemed to either be too quick - with the foot barely lifting off the floor; or steps were too wide in some areas. There are definitely inconsistencies when it comes to the walking animation.
Adjustment layer option (highlighted)