I grew sick and tired of my initial Backwards animation, I didn't like it much and got really bored working on it. In fact there went two weeks were I didn't do a single minute of work on it and instead focused on another project, I went back to it a few nights ago and completely redid it. I edited the sound down from its initial 94-second length to a more manageable 38 seconds, I made a new set (it's just a round table and a chair, but it did a lot to boost my creativity), and of course all the animation is brand new.
The only thing I've kept from the last version is the altered versions of the Dee rig that I've made.
I am much more pleased with this and I like it a lot more, in fact just working on this for the past few days have reignited my love for animation and I can't wait to start animating in the morning. Good times are had.
I've been sat for the last two weeks trying to implement some new features into the Dee Rig I downloaded for use in my project. I found that after three/four attempts at animating my scene, that I spent the most time trying to make the elbows not float around. Both on IK and FK they move around depending on the body and/or arm, and I really wanted them to just stay still.
I spent the first week experimenting with whether or not it was possible for me to make a rigged arm that could do what I wanted, after much faffing about I found that I there was no problem making the arm, the next challenge was to implement it into the already existing Dee Rig without breaking the rest of the rig or the skinning. That took another week, but I managed. The rig was set up in a way that I was not used with, so I spent most of that week just figuring out how it all hung together, when I had the basic idea it wasn't too hard making the arm do what I wanted. Sure, there was a lot of small bumps along the road, things that just didn't make sense, but I finally found a stable way of doing it.
I've spent this morning animating with the rig, and I find things are going much quicker, and it's more fun. Without the hassle of the elbow I can focus more on the animation itself, making it great.
As a minor feature I've also added actual, "physical" controls for the finger bones. Previously they just had sliders, which I think is a mess to configure in the curve editor. The controls were as easy as they should be, as soon as I figured out which weird dummy they were linked to, I could move them the way I wanted.
A round of googling later I happened upon an old script meant to export motion from After Effects to Maya, Max and Lightwave alike. Due to its age I was unsure it would run and do its job properly in the much newer software I have, but it actually worked. I managed to get tracking of my face onto a dummy object in my Max scene, but in order for me to take advantage of that motion for a facial rig, I would have to rig a face with bones, something I had never done before. I had never even tried, just because I always thought it was too difficult for my level of Max understanding, but it turned out I was wrong. I did manage to set up a very basic rigged face, and I did even manage to get the movement from the dummy object reflected on the correct facial bones. The 3D face moved roughly as I had moved.
It was all very rough, but the basic idea was there, and I had accomplished it in only a few hours. I have decided to continue experimenting with this facial rig and the facial capture pipeline, if I can polish both enough so that outsiders can learn to use it easily I wish to use both features both on my group project, and on the project this blog is for, my final year project. I will polish the process most for this project, as a lot of my animation work will be facial.
I am not hoping that I will ever get the facial capture process as to eliminate much need of clean-up, I want to use this more as a 3D reference, that I can apply directly to my rig. I think the mere fact that I can track my face and have the motion on a 3D model within minutes will help me greatly when it comes to getting realistic facial animation. If nothing else, this will be a very interesting experiment which I will continue to work on and develop probably beyond this project. At some point I will have to learn how to script After Effects and Max enough for me to write my own script for exporting motion with the best possible result, but right now I have no doubt in my mind that I will eventually manage to do it.
Two blog posts in a day? MADNESS!
I've decided to try a bit of a different workflow than I'm used to on shot_002 of my animation. I've grown in a bit of a rut after going through my entire clip many times blocking it, so both for the sake of morale and experimentation I am going to from now on focus my efforts on shot_002 and complete one hundred percent.
If I manage to successfully finish the shot without having a nervous breakdown I will do the same for my other shots. Previously I've always built up my animation more or less at the same time in all the shots I've been handed. That way I'm always working in the same stage of animation on all shots, but I think doing it all at once can help me greater. It may let me rethink how to do other things for other shots later on, and perhaps I can also get things done faster by being used to working in all the phases of animation rather than just one at a time.
I've cut together what I shot on Monday to a reference video I'm using while animating. I'm mostly pleased with what I got, but some the scenes I, myself, did (Erik, bloke on the right) I want to change. When I was on set and viewed it I thought it was good, and it is for what it is, but I've found I want something a bit different.
I'll probably film some revisions myself at home, and if they don't work then at least I've gotten some more practice before booking the studio again for a second round of filming.
While on twitter an animator from Pixar shared this video of Glen Keane animating a dance, it was very nice seeing a professional going through it an explaining his thought as he did so. It definitely made me rethink the importance of thumbnails, which I've never been good at doing.
I started today off at Teesside University's green screen studio to film reference videos for a bunch of animation projects. We were only two who turned up, though, so lucky for us we both got extra time filming our references. There was one hour booked for ten people, we were two using it for two. Needless to say, we got a lot more detailed references than we expected to get.
Later tonight I'll get access to the footage and I'll find the best scenes and cut them together. I don't even think I'll need more references videos shot as I mentioned in yesterday's post, maybe I'll have to do some separate face references, but I'll take that as it comes.
Perhaps the best thing about this day was the input I got from Mark Buschbacher and Em Johnson as we were doing our references. It got me thinking a bit more about exactly why I'm having the characters do certain things.
As it stands now, I'll have a finished motion reference by tomorrow (Tuesday, 29.01.2013) and will be start animating properly by Wednesday. If nothing else, this studio visit has really pumped me up.
I've spent the past few days mostly writing on my dissertation, and I regret I haven't started it earlier. I've had a lot of ideas about what I want my animation to be, but they've been floating mostly through my mind, and I haven't put them black on white. The moment I did that I felt as if I had an epiphany, I started really liking my idea and my take on it (you can see a paraphrased version of a small bit of what I've written in my last blog post), I caught my second wind, even though I didn't know my first had slipped past me. I've actually had to take myself away from writing these past few days to do some animation.
When I'm talking about animation, my Final Year Project supervisor, Em Johnson, has booked my FYP group some time in the Phoenix Building's green screen studio tomorrow. I imagine that tomorrow will give me enough reference for the basics I need, e.g. someone leaning on a bar for a prolonged period of time, but probably not the more in-depth motions and over-all acting. Me and one of my flatmates have agreed to do this for each other (he has a similar FYP to me), we're learning each other's sound clips my heart and thinking of ways of doing it.
Hopefully, when I've gotten all of those references down I'll be able to really start getting somewhere on my animation, and finish blocking by February as scheduled.
