For this project I was in charge of modelling a 3D scene. In this show reel you will my most recent models, texturing and also a brief attempt on green screen compositing. I plan to finish the compositing shortly.

In this assignment I was asked to work on some third year projects. I decided I would do some 3D animation on a project called light after dark. This is an animation of a girl running away from a monster. In this show reel you will see some of my most recent animations.

VFX

This is the colour grading I have been doing this term. I have been using DaVinci. Each video is a fasion photographers project. Enjoy

11second club evaluation

Evaluation:

In my animation I am most happy with the Punch. I feel the timing and arcs of movement are accurate to a real punch. I achieved this by studying the animation test shot very closely. I also feel the weight of the character is also very well represented. I did this by acting out the punch multiple times. I feel The anticipation of this punch is built up with the calm ‘cute baby’ scene before. There the baby is just sitting, then reacts to the punch a moment before it comes. When watching you are questioning who the footsteps are coming from, and as the baby looks in freight you know something is there. The camera then switches to a more zoomed out side view, where the punch is revealed and your questions are answered. The weight and and force of the Punch is then distributed across the body as it twists and follows the movement of the punch. The overlap is also seen as the legs bend and the punch follows the direction of movement, slightly slowed down after the impact.

The force of the punch is then transferred into the baby as he flies back at an appropriate speed. I feel the arch of movement as the baby falls back, hits the floor and rolls into the shelf represents its weight and body movement very well.

A problem that i initially faced was getting the shelves to fall at the right rate. However the first shelf smashing was relatively easy as it could just follow the rate at which the baby hit into it. I also animated the books on the shelf separately. This allowed me to produce a life like ‘smash’ as books tumbled on top of the baby. I feel the overlap of the books falling and then taking time to settle also represented a lifelike smash depicting the weight well. This was done with subtle adjustments after the shelf had landed.

Although the first shelf was easy to animate i did not have such luck with the second ‘smash’ / bookcase falling to pieces. The weight of the shelves appeared very light and floated down instead of falling, this was particularly evident in the top shelf. To overcome this I asked my friend studying physics how to calculate the rate it would fall.

This is what he replied : 

“You use the expression V^2=U^2+2as. Where V is the velocity (i.e the rate at which the object is falling), U is the initial velocity (so if the object is being dropped, U=0, if it's being thrown down with a speed of 1 meter per second, U=1), a is the acceleration (which for falling objects is 9.81 meters per second squared) and s is the distance which the object is falling (measured in meters).

So if the object is being dropped from a height of 2 meters: U=0, a=9.81 and s=2.

Then V^2= 0 + 2 X 9.81 X 2

=39.24

then, because this is the velocity squared, you need to square root this number to give the falling velocity

V=SQRT(39.24)=6.26 meters per second” 

I then used the information he gave me to figure out how fast the shelf would drop at. The top shelf was approximately at 1m. V^2= 0 + 2 X 9.81 X 1 = 19.62 

The square root of this was 4.43m/s

time=distance/speed

=1/4.43

I was animating in 25fps so 25 divided by 4.43 =

5.64 frames

After figuring this out i was happy with the timing of the fall. Although the actual movement didnt appear natural. After much playing about in the graph editor i still couldn't figure it out.

Overall i am happy with the body language throughout the animation. I feel the baby looks innocent in the first scene and the punch is completely unsuspecting. I am happy with the punch as it looks fast and aggressive and i am also happy with the limp flying baby. After the punch i feel the breathing of the ‘macho man’ appears fast and aggressive, calming himself down just before is ‘macho’ walk off the stage.

Although I am happy with the body language of the walk i am not happy with the way it flows. The arcs of of movement do not appear smooth. They ‘pop’ instead of flowing naturally. To solve this i read through Keith Lango’s blog. Unfortunately although this did help, the ‘pop’ did not go. Reading through keith Lango’s text i realized i still had some work to do on the animation: having to make curves in the graph editor smooth and timing making sense for the type of movement, I also had to offset the keys so parts of the body led other parts like it would in real life, not all at the same time.

I am also Not happy with the overall finish. I do not claim to be the best and texturing or lighting, but i feel if this was improved when watched the viewer would be more engaged.

In terms of ‘stretch and squash’ i only used minimal amounts as i was going for a more realistic animation. Instead of stretching the geometry the character is stretched in terms of its pose when putting all force into its punch. I think this is the only time you can see it being used.

Overall I am happy with the Animation. I feel the anticipation as the baby sits there is broken by a sudden punch, which overlaps and force can be see effecting the rest of the body after the punch. I feel the baby flies and tumbles well after taking a blow to the head. The two parts of the animation i am not happy with are the walk and the look of the top shelf falling. If i knew hoe to make them better i would makes the arms of the walk more free flowing and the shelf fall more naturally.

11 second club

Animation continued fairly smoothly from that point until it came to the Baby hitting into the wall. I knew of a method using nParticles where i could break a wall up using the physics engine on maya. Unfortunately after a few days of research and more than a few attempts this method was not working for me. As a solution i decided to make the wall a book shelf where i could manually animate each piece falling. This was a very time consuming process, but the end result was very nice.

By the 16th of January I had to hand in my lip sync test, animation. My animation had no speech, so instead i gave in my animation as it was so far.

Finally by the 22nd jan i had finished the animation.

11 second club, key poses and animation test shots

I decided to do the man punching a baby to appeal to a darker sense of humour. Also to build suspense as the close up of a baby appears very innocent, only the scene to be violated with such violence.

Over christmas I began the task of filming myself perform each scene; acting out the ‘cute baby’ scene, punching a teddy bear and practicing a macho walk. I then used these videos as reference and began to animate. My first challenge was with the moo moo rig; unfortunately i could not get it to key frame and after much searching on the internet for a solution decided to not use it. Instead i scaled down the morpheous rig to use as a baby. I then started to animate getting a fraction done before encountering my next problem: having no character sets to keyframe all attributes. To combat this i used the ‘All’ button that comes with the Rig. Unfortunately this button only worked for the baby and not the ‘macho’ character. This meant i only animated the baby until i could get further help.

When i came back after christmas i got help from my tutor Georg. He showed me how to create a character set correctly. I then continued to animate

On the 5th of January i handed in my key poses, live action vid test, animation tests.

Storyboard