Categories
3D Computer Animation Fundamentals Maya UE5

Showreel and Reflection

I am sorry the video doesn’t have music due to the copyright check of Youtube.

You can serve it here by playing the music as soon as video starts.

Or Clicking the link of Google Drive.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/15C_d9K1qdTPWum_kc2-ecwgTBNuJ_fIy/view?usp=drive_link

The Showreel includes both Maya Animation and Unreal Engine Program.

For the summary section, I’d like to start with the part on character animation. As a beginner in animation, I feel extremely fortunate to have received such excellent guidance from the teachers at UAL. This has enabled me to progress rapidly throughout this semester. In terms of character animation, I have now learned some habits that need to be followed at this stage, including:

  1. Start the animation from the main Control of the character first, followed by Hip Control and Spine, and finally the head and limbs. This animation production sequence can help me clarify the logic of FK animation and make the animation more beautiful and appealing.
  2. Handle the ending poses carefully, as this will bring a lot of added value to the completion of the animation. This semester, I only did a decent job with the Stepping animation in this regard. Although the other animations were satisfactory in the beginning and middle sections, they always seemed to end abruptly.
  3. When making animations, it’s not just about relying on vision; instead, one should also learn to perform the same actions themselves, feeling the muscles that exert force and how to make the movements more beautiful, which can make the animation production process smoother.

Then came the UE project. I believe that working on this project greatly enhanced my understanding of animation production. Serra provided a lot of help throughout the process, and her assistance was like a compass guiding me to find ways to achieve certain effects. However, despite the considerable time and effort we both put in, the production of this project was fraught with difficulties and moments of giving up. I realize that artistic creation does require randomness and making choices based on the current situation. But if I can’t express 80% of my ideas, the result will be somewhat disappointing. Therefore, I understand that to fully realize my storyboard, the number of models, animations, and software and functions I need to learn is extremely large. This has made me realize that if I want to complete the Lilac project in FMP, I should start planning from the next semester’s Storyboard course, combining my knowledge and creating my own models and animations. Metahuman allowed me to preview the completed result of my model and provided many conveniences, such as one-click rigging and FAB’s hair and clothing assets. However, my computer’s video memory is not sufficient to support the personalization of the character’s clothing. Additionally, UE’s effect blueprints are also one of the areas I hope to focus on learning in the future, such as motion blur, splatter, flow, and glitch. I hope to advance in this aspect of UE in the next semester.

Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to the teachers and classmates for their help. I really enjoy being here. Happy New Year!

Categories
3D Computer Animation Fundamentals Maya

Week X_Body Mechanics & Hand Poses

Planning 1 from Motion Actor Inc.

This planning should be given up due to it has a turn around in the air that does not fit the criteria of this class.

Planning 2 chosen by George

Blocking stage

Feedback from Ting

  1. It is realistic, but it can be more appealing with more C curves.
  2. When heel is touching the floor, the leg should be straight.
  3. Hip should be up and down before the last frame.

Refining 1

Feedback from George

  1. Turing left a bit so audience can see a more informative silhouette.
  2. More preparing pose and overlap of the left hand.
  3. Left foot should be flat before jumping.

Refining2

Feedback

  1. The right hand can follow an S curve instead of a C curve to make it more fluent.
  2. Head overlaps.
  3. When right foot touching the floor, the Spine curves and overlaps.

Hand Poses

Feedback

  1. The right hand can bend over more.
Categories
3D Computer Animation Fundamentals Maya

Week6&7 Walk cycle & Franken Acting

Blocking

It is kind of weird because it seems like the ball is trying to step forward.

Feedback

  1. Wrong matching of step and Up&Down
  2. Body should be more forward when moving.

Refining walk cycle

Franken Blocking

Franken Refining

For this no feedback but I think it didn’t successfully keep the feeling of tripping over dur to I didn’t strictly follow the rule of editing spine controller first.

Categories
3D Computer Animation Fundamentals Maya

Week4&5_Stepping & Juice Box Acting

Caution

  1. Preparing pose has weight shift from side to side.
  2. Ball scrushing and stretching helps look better.
  3. Toes overlap.

Feedback

  1. Toooo slow
  2. Always key the frame of Heel contacting the floor instead of before and after.

Refining Stepping

Juice Box Acting

Franken Poses

I picked the first pose and the last for Franken Acting.

Categories
3D Computer Animation Fundamentals Maya

Week3_Tail & Juice Box falling

Planning for Tail Animation

The tail part follows the rule of pendulum moving. Knots overlap one by one.

Feedback

  1. More curve when preparing.
  2. When tail is in the air, it should follow the tail of bouncing ball.
  3. More curve and more action after touching the floor.

Refining Tail

Juice Box falling

Feedback

  1. The tail of falling should be more curve.
  2. Try to move change the control rig to make the transaction rig to the central part of the box.

Regret Pose

Categories
3D Computer Animation Fundamentals Maya UE5

Week12_Presentation for Future Project

When preparing this presentation, I thought deeply for a long time. But I believe Lilac is exactly what I want to achieve in FMP. The UE5 project this semester has also given me some ideas on how to proceed with this project in the future.

I am presenting the content of PowerPoint here so that you can have a better understanding of the concept, aesthetics and story of Lilac.

Categories
3D Computer Animation Fundamentals Maya

Week 2: Pendulum & Angry Pose

I made a pendulum animation this week which mainly involves follow through and overlapping action from the 12 principles of animation.

I started with a rough animation setting keyframes manually. Then I used the graphic editor to adjust the curves to make it look more natural.

I noticed that the animation worked better when all three rigs had the same swing period and were delayed from top to bottom. In addition, because of the mass, the upper rig has a smaller swing amplitude than the lower one would make animation look better as well.

Rig 1
Rig2
Rig3

Refining Pendulum:

Key point

  1. Always S curve when turning
  2. 2 Knots Never on the same line

Angry Pose

Categories
3D Computer Animation Fundamentals Maya

Week 1: Bouncing Ball & 3 Golden Poses

Planning

I hope the ball to be a soft but flexible one. Usually this kind of balls lose energy quickly and stretch a lot. Every time the ball bounce, height reduces to 2/5 of the previous time, and time(frames) reduces to 1/2 of the previous time.

During the planning process. I’m a little tired of having to stretch the ball both before and after it touches the ground. That looks just like a balloon filled with water. Therefore I removed the stretching of the ball before it landed to make it more resilient.

George had a few feedback on this homework:

  1. It is necessary to check whether the ball is on the parabola at each moment.
  2. I should maintain the deformation of the ball as it falls.
  3. The small ball usually rotate back a little after reaching the terminal.

Here is homework based on the feedbacks.

3 Golden Poses

Key Points

  1. C curves make poses appealing.
  2. Pay attention to weight and balance.
  3. Informative silhouette is better.

Standing Pose

Happy Pose

Hero Pose

Feedback

  1. C curves.
  2. Find a specific reference instead of generating one from imagination.