This month is the last month before finals and is the class called Animation Production, or APR. Our project was to work in a group of six animators to create a short animation. Each member got 2 clips, each clip about 3 seconds long. I was the first animator in the group so I received shot 1 and 6. We planned out our scenario and decided on the characters personalities. As a group we then filmed our reference and we did thumbnails separate. Finally came the time for animating.
Above were my rough thumbnails for the first shot. The first week I was focused on my shot 1 trying to finish as much of it as possible. After taking a break from it for the 2nd week I picked it back up. Her character is a professional spy who is going to rescue the captured tech agent. She is upset but keeps a straight face. I have been trying to work out all the popping of the legs to make her crouching walk smoother. Also the hands, eye blinks and timing had to be adjusted and could still use some more work. Below is my work in progress of shot 1.
For my second shot also known as shot 6, my character is a male tech agent who is drugged and tied up on a box. I drew out some thumbnails and then began to animate.
I mostly had trouble with the timing and the head drop mechanics were tricky. After lots of critiques and plenty of work hours I have the video below. It is still a work in progress but it is getting close.
Overall I have really enjoyed this class. Working in groups has been lots of fun and I can hardly wait to post our final. Until next time.
I am back again! This month I am in my second Visual Effects class (VEF 2) and I wanted to share one of my projects with you. Our first project was to create fire or smoke from Maya fluids and then our second project was to create fire or smoke using Houdini Pyro. I decided to create fire in Maya and smoke in Houdini. They both came out ok looking but I liked my smoke more then my fire so this post will be centered around that.
So here it goes. Smoke. That was a nice challenge, I had to search for reference and recreate my smoke effect as close as possible to the reference. This in of its self is a challenge. But not only did I have to make this as close to the reference as possible but I had to do it in a program that I was not very familiar with, Houdini FX.
Back to reference. I looked up smoke reference on YouTube and found a video of someone creating fog out of dry ice and warm water. I took this video and chose a section from the footage to recreate. Here is a screenshot of said footage to give you an idea of what I was going for.
With my reference in hand I began with the dry ice primitive in Houdini and built from there. I adjusted the turbulence quite a bit to give it that rolling effect and messed with the opacity so that it look more cloud like. There was also a need to make sure that it dissipated and spread out so I upped the dissipation and found a fan field to apply. This field acted like wind coming from above and helped to spread the smoke out in all direction. With a slight angle added to the fan I was able to get a different effect that I liked better. It caused my smoke to start spreading in one direction and then when it had built up it spread out in every direction matching my reference better than I had hoped.
With the right effect I proceeded to create a Flipbook which is Houdini's version of a Playblast so that I could see what my effect would look like. Below is my final Flipbook of my effect so that you can get an idea what it looks like before render and later you can see what it looks like after render.
Liking my effect I then rendered it out. It was after the render that I saw a problem. My effect was far to thin. It needed to look thicker and needed a color applied so that I could sell the illusion of thickness by making the contrast between the black background greater. So the need for a second attempt came.
On my second attempt I had help from my lab instructor who showed me how to apply a cloud shader to my effect. With this new shader I then decided to completely recreate my effect only this time in a glass bowl to look even more like my reference. After that was all made, a Flipbook was created and then it was rendered so I showed it to my piers for their opinion between the two effects. It was unanimous, everyone liked the first better. Slightly discouraged I went back for a third attempt. But first here is an image of my second attempt. The final actually was much more opaque and thinner but it was about the same as what is below.
It was on this third attempt that I found success. I simply took my first effect with a shader applied and added some turbulence. This was then rendered out to be my final product. Which you can see below.
Before I go I wanted to show you my Maya fluids fire since I mentioned it above. I won't go into detail about how it was made but I hope you like what you see.
My second class for the month of November is that of Software Technologies (STE). For this post I am going to cover my research project that I did with one other individual, Chris Villareal. Our research project was to create a working marble machine which we got pretty close to doing it. We split the modeling up evenly. He did the upper ramp and funnel while I did the metal wire coil and the Plinko machine. We then compiled them in Maya and then imported them into Houdini. Once in Houdini the two of us decided to work on the same scene on separate computers so that we both could get the valuable learning experience. He focused more on the area I was unable to cover, the Plinko machine.
So once I had Houdini up and running I created a sphere that was to be my marble. I made it an RBD object and turned all of my geometry into Static objects. First came some issues with the upper ramp. My sphere penetrated through the wall and eventually I simply moved on when it was working almost perfect. It still tends to penetrate through the tunnel before it drops into the funnel but it is less obvious now.
I moved onto the funnel which simply allowed the ball to fall down to the metal coil. At first I wanted it to circle a few times but I just didn't have the time. After running into some more penetration issues I watched a few Houdini tutorials and then continued with my work.
My last part was the metal coil. I spent hours tweaking this to try and get the ball to ride down the path all the way but to no avail. I read from our manual that was provided for the class but did not find what I was hoping to. I tried things like glue, adjusting both the friction and the bounce and tried to add more gravity. I eventually decided to turn in. Sometimes we have to make the tough calls and turn in even if we are not happy with our end results.
Also just to show you here is an image of my Plinko machine. Even though this was lots of trouble it taught me a lot about Houdini and made me excited to learn more about it in the future. Thanks for reading and taking the time to journey with me as I tried to create a working marble machine.
This month is a beautiful month full of animation. Now originally I was not the biggest fan but I could not help but get excited when we started to learn about acting. I especially loved the fact that we had to create our own characters and there back story. Who doesn't love an opportunity to be creative? Our first animation project was called the Pantomime and it was based off of a scenario that we chose from a list that was provided by the teacher. I chose going to a museum and knocking over something and breaking it.
What we had to achieve through this animation was a successful change of emotion and we also had to take at least three steps. My original idea in my Pre-pro was that Bugsy (the character/rig we were given) saw a guitar and pocked it out of curiosity. The guitar would fall over and break giving him a reason to react. As you can see in the image below that was the original plan.
After speaking with the teacher she suggested some changes. So I got on that right away. I decided to raise the guitar off the floor and instead of fall down on both knees he would kneel on one knee. This made my animation not only easier to animate but also more clear when read by the audience. Once my idea was finalized it was time to film reference. Off to one of the back room areas I went with an idea better solidified.
With my reference done I proceeded to start animating. I started with a block-out and then added some in-betweens for the walk. Next came time to focus on adding a few more breakdowns in the change of emotion areas along with some anticipations. When the time finally came, I took it out of stepped and began to add moving holds and to tweak the animation to make it that much sweeter. It was during this phase that I realized the guitar I had chosen did not break correctly so it had to be changed out for a bowl. I then proceeded to adjust the animation to fit the changes needed, changes that helped make him interact with an object higher up. Finally I finished. As an artist I still believe it needs more work because we are never satisfied and always want to tweak things into perfection. Unfortunately animation is never really finished. You could spend a lifetime on one section which is why we have deadlines. So with my deadline comes my finished animation. Here it is, the final video for my Pantomime project. I hope you enjoy!
So there you have it. My first project in a nutshell. I have to admit this class has really taught me how important it is for an actor to know his character before he acts him out. Because I took the time to Pre-pro and to write a backstory I could more easily slip into Blossom's shoes. (Blossom is what I named my character, she was a female version of Bugsy) I knew how she would react and was able to film that and later animate it without losing that original direction because it just felt right for who she was. I think I will start creating character sheets from now on whenever the need for me to animate (or act!) arises.
Thanks for taking the time to join me on another one of my projects. It certainly was lots of work but thankfully I had a great teacher and wonderful friends and class mates that gave me very helpful critiques. If you every have to animate don't forget to get lots of critiques, they are the difference between a good animation and a truly great one.
This month was the month for Visual Development (VSD) which is considered the second shading and lighting class at Full Sail. We spent our time working on projects in Maya and Nuke. Here are three of the projects we were required to do.
Project 1 -
This first image we were required to match the reference as close as possible. We worked in Maya and used basic lights such as directional and area lights. We then hooked up the area lights to mia_portal_lights to create a more realistic look to the light pouring in through the window. This was a new tool that I learned and I just love the result it gave. We also added a sphere shaped area light that was connected to a physical light which in turn had a mib_blackbody in the back room which we adjusted the temperature in order to make it more orange. Here is the end result.
Project 2 -
For this second image we laid out UVs in Maya on a scraper or a gear. I chose to do the scraper since the photo manipulation for textures in Photoshop was considered to be easier. After laying out the UVs I took a snapshot of it and brought that into Maya. There I took photos of a real scraper and manipulated them to create the textures. I had had very little experience using maya so when we learned how to use masks I got really excited. Life was ten times easier and I was able to make a texture and UV Map I was very proud of. So with out further ado, here it is my UV Map.
Project 3 -
Now comes the final image. For this part of the project we split our Maya scene set up into render layers and rendered out .exr renders to be brought into Nuke. I took the images into Nuke and proceeded to split it out into the many passes it was rendered in, 6 to be exact. These passes were beauty, diffuse, indirect, reflection, refraction, and specular. After remerging these layers together I adjusted the exposer and added in two radials to fade the corners and to make it look like light was coming from the top left corner. After that I added a depth pass and put in atmospheric perspective. Finally I rendered out the image into what you see below. Sorry about the confetti it was the .ple version of Nuke which is for students so they cover it in water marks.
There you have it. Another class, another month. Hope you enjoyed the read and the images because I know that I certainly had fun making them. I have to say that the teacher and lab staff were great and I can hardly wait for another month.
Here is the second installment of my CAN 1 class blog posts. This post is about my strong poses project. In this project we were required to do one page of exploratory poses that expressed 7 different pre-defined emotions, one page of blocked out scenes to show off our 7 chosen poses and lastly a Maya file and play blast of Bugsy in said poses that we chose earlier.
Pre-Pro was the place to begin. The 7 predefined emotions were relaxed, fear, anger, happiness, sadness, disgust, and the seventh was just a balanced pose on either one foot or one hand. It took me quite a few hours to brainstorm all my poses and I recommend that if you are hitting your head against a brick wall then it is a good idea to just look up reference of people posing.
I then went onto the Maya scene. I began to pose Bugsy into all sorts of poses having fun and trying to create good negative space. All the emotions did not come across as strongly as I wanted but given the limitations that the Bugsy rig has I managed to get the idea across.
This whole video is in stepped so that you focus on the poses themselves. All in all this project helped me stay in touch with the animator within by making me use my MEL button making skills and by allowing me to use the graph editor and dope sheet. Overall tons of fun.
Another class project to post so here goes. CAN 1 (character animation) had me doing this project that they call the Eggy Walk. Why such an interesting name? Well the little character known as Bugsy is walking around with an egg shell covering his upper torso. So naturally it is a walking "egg".
The project requirements were as follows. Make Bugsy walk across the screen by including contact, passing, up, and down poses. Also we were to make the walk more realistic by adding foot rolls and hip tilts and twists. There were two other sections to this project that were optional but they provided a chance to get more points. These sections were a walk/turn and then stop in front of either a mailbox or a scale (Depended on the background you chose.) and the second section was to do the walk/turn but instead of staying stopped do a pause and then jump onto the scale. If both these were attempted they added an extra 10 points to your grade.
I decided to do the Eggy Walk with a turn and stop at the end for my CAN 1 Project 1. I spent a good amount of time getting familiar with the rig taking time to make MEL buttons to key the whole rig and to select the whole rig so that animating would be easier. Once familiar I jumped into contact poses and then passing poses. I had the most issue with the fact that I made my steps to wide. I did not realize this until around the final phase because each adjustment made my knees lock out. So keep that in mind when animating, take realistic sized to smaller steps just to be safe.
Next came my ups and downs. I tended to lean to far forward in my ups and to far back in my downs which can make the character look off balance, this was a pain to fix but definitely gave a better result. After those were done I adjusted my hips and tried to add foot rolls. Eggy walk was completed but I was not done yet. On to the turn/stop!
I did a few more steps the same as I had done earlier only this time I added a little turn to the hips so that Bugsy could turn so that he could check his mail. The steps here were smaller so they were more complicated to get to look right but they all have the same principles. Finally it came time to stop Bugsy. Simple add a few moving holds and simply stop moving the character.
I learned a lot and am proud to announce I can finally understand animation better than I did in FOA (fundamentals of animation). I got a couple critiques from my lab instructor and was not afraid to ask the lecture teacher to critique me in front of class all in hopes to make this project as complete and pretty as possible. Remember your eyes can only see so much, ask for others to look at your stuff and you might just be pleasantly surprised at the results of taking their advice.
