Progress Report - Week 14

Hello again, some more updates on my animations. Probably my last progress report before hand-ins.

The drunk guy walking into a pole animation is still pretty much done. I did some tweaks as he falls down to the ground at the end. From the timing it appears almost like ragdoll physics which is unexpected but I like it. Its definitely not realistic but for an animation its totally acceptable.

The sword swing animation has been really tough. I had to re-do the arm in FK because IK was just not working out. I've also discovered just having a character do anything that has them rotate their body is painful to do with 3D animation (I guess like any animated format?). Trying to keep the sword swinging 360 in a consistent pace is hard, I chose to use IK in the arms for that sole reason to keep the sword moving in nice timing but the arm snapping was much more distracting.

As the sword and/or body does sort of slow down from time I am going to work with this putting in some rotation in the body in the opposite direction (i.e. up and down) so that it appears as if he is fighting with the swords momentum. This may help to make the motion of the sword appear more natural.

I am pretty happy with the footwork though, this was also hard to predict as you can only do so much with animatics, you kind of have to work out where his feet go as his body spins and hopefully keep the balance correct. I think I did this quite well considering how I wasn't entirely satisfied with how the rest of the animation turned out.

The spell casting animation is one I am pretty happy with. Although not perfect the timing for this animation is a bit better, maybe too slow towards the end but I'll get to that in a minute. I like the hand actions and how the interact with the orb but I'm not too sure if they are "epic" enough for the brief (at least at the start) but there is a margin of change I seem to be getting away with for the rest of the animations so I should be fine.

As for the hands at the end, another Maya technical weirdness I had to contend with. The initial keyframes for the hands and arms wasn't getting the motion I wanted. Maya was doing that weird thing where the arms would flop around through the body before getting to their designated positions. I've fixed these type of problems before with the graph editor but this one was going to require more keyframes just to set the arms on the right path. I got them to do what I wanted in the end but I wanted to make them quicker. I will definitely try and correct this before hand-ins.

The stream jumping animation was interesting, I still struggle to animate any convincing run animation. It appears as if the character is being careful of her footing rather than running, which in a way works for this setting as it is hazardous after all. Again timing was an issue here, the actions themselves seemed decent enough, they were just sometimes a little jittery from the timing.

The story in the animation changed a little bit from the animatic, instead of losing balance on the rock the way the character's momentum was working I though it'd be better to just continue with the jump and using her arms and legs to balance hereself as she was doing that. I feel that was better than trying to stop to balance when it didn't really need it.

Finally, the desk flip animation has been working out fine. Although not the main purpose of the animation, the typing part worked surprisingly well. I was happy with the main action of the table flipping and I think this is one of my better animations for telling a little narrative. Having thought of this one last I think it was the result of learning from experience.

On a side note, rendering stuff in Maya 2013 is weird. I picked the exact same render settings as in Maya 2011 but it decides to do that weird thing where the video flickers and its cut in half and stretched diagonally? I don't even know how but... Maya. Anyway, I rendered the video uncompressed which works then used MPEG Streamclip to compress the videos right back down to an acceptable level.

Long post, well hand-ins are this week so I better get back to work.

Progress Report - Week 13

Hello, just an update on where things are at on my animations.

The "walking into a pole" animation is basically done, just a few tweaks here and there when I have time.

The sword swinging animation is getting there, I struggled with the technical side of things getting the sword to attach to the hand but I've got that working now. (turns out you can keyframe the parent constraint at the frame where its meant to bind)

I am having problems with the IK (inverse kinematics) in the arm, I thought it would be easier to do this instead of FK (forward kinematics) but as the character turns his arm retracts and snaps a lot which is the opposite of what I wanted it to do, the arm should be straight at all times as the sword pulls him along. Currently the way to fix this is to set a lot more keyframes than I'd hoped which may lead to future problems. Alternatively I switch back to FK and re-do the arm, which is a shame because I just figured out how to switch to IK to begin with.

The stream crossing animation like the spell casting is being done in Maya 2013 so I can use the very advanced Mery rig which is a joy to work with. I've currently got to the point where she is ready to make the first jump. She initially flexes her arms before making a short run up to the stream. From there I'll have her make contact with the rock and attempt to bring down the other foot so to carry her momentum.

The spell casting animation is looking all right, I've got her hands and arms moving in a way I'm happy with. I'll get to the fingers later. I've added in a polygon sphere as a sort of placeholder for any particle effect that would've been used. Its helping me to get an understanding of what she's actually casting and how she will use it. Still need to animate the part where she uses the spell to shoot at something.

Desk flip animation was put on the side until last week or so. I have a good idea for it and like the drunk walk its going to be fun to animate. I've got the scene setup and some initial keyframes done on the body as he types and reacts to the computer failure.

Not much else to say, I'll just carry on making stuff.

Progress Report - Week 12

Thought I'd write a progress report since I've just been getting on with animating and don't have much else work to post.

I've not got 4 out of 5 of my animatics done. I will start considering the last animation soon but would like to do a desk flip animation.

I've done the most amount of animation work on my drunk guy walking into a pole animation. I've animated the part of him stumbling up to the pole and smacking his face against it with a bit of dizzy recoil. The walk cycle was mostly taken straight from the animatic with the large strides and staggered timing. I made sure he wasn't going to anticipate walking into the pole as in his mind he would be near it. The impact with the pole is just a head smack and recoil to the point where his head bends right back (its okay, its a cartoon). I'm pretty happy with it so far. Next I will add arm movements into the recoil as if he was about to fight someone before falling back on himself and falling unconscious.

In the sword swinging animation I've got the character bending down (apparently that's not easy to do but I was happy with the result I got) to pick up the sword. Its slightly than he imagines so he doesn't just pick it up in one action, he sort of retracts and pulls it up a second time with more force from his body. I'm switching the arms from FK (forward kinematics) to IK (inverse kinematics) the moment he makes contact with the sword so that I can move the sword around and his arm follows. Meaning I can animate the sword and the character will be dragged along with it. I've used a parent constraint to bind the sword to the hand controller but I need to figure out how to apply it to the point after he makes contact with the sword.

I will be using Maya 2013 for the spell casting animation in order to use the Mery rig (only works with 2013+) as it has more advanced hand controllers allowing for easier animation when it comes to conjuring the spell itself.

I've also built the scene for the stream crossing animation which I will start this week.