Waking Progress

Had a chat today with my supervisor about the progress of my projects. I am getting on fine with Waiting and development continues with me hoping to start animating soon. But the other project has not gotten much further forward. I am waiting to hear back on getting access to the motion capture studio which the project hinges on to progress. As such I am reluctant to put time into the development of a project that might not come to fruition. If there has been no word within a couple of weeks I will have to put the project on hold. Below are the thumbnail sketches I have done to show the type of movement that I was wanting.

Animation Update One

First go at starting the animation so I am just blocking in some rough poses and timing.

 

Reference Video

Using the list of Actions as a guide I recorded myself performing those movements to get an idea of the overall timing and of it flows together. Below are some images and videos from these sessions.

Action List

In preperation of starting the animation I have written out a list of Actions that I would like the character to perform. I will use this list to create some reference footage that I can then base the aniamtion on.

Walk in from the left
Stop and check timetable
Pause/Shift weight/Look
Turn to lean on shelter
Look down road
Yawn/Hand covers mouth/Look down at bench
Sits down on bench
Pause/Leg Scratch
Shifts weight - forward/back?
Zone out/ Look around
Attention caught off camera - leans forward
Super yawn - leans back and stretches
Zone out/ distracted/ thinking/ looking down
Looks back up

Modeling the Background

In addition to creating a character to animate I also need a set for the character to be placed in. Like the before, I wanted to keep it simple so this background was roughed out with basic geometry to give me a rough idea of the layout while animating. If time allows I was add more detail to the model and also proper lighting.

Character Rigging

Roughly knowing the style of animation and what the character will and won't be doing I can make decisions on how to go about creating a rig to control the character. I have decided on a mixture of FK, IK or both depending on the body part.

I am using full IK for the legs with seperate controls for knee and heel adjustments. The bodys overall position and rotation is controlled by a nurbs circle with the spine, shoulders, neck and head being directly controlled through their individual joints using FK. The arms are a combination of FK and IK using a switch depending on what they need to be doing at the time. The Eyes are setup using aim constraints with blendshapes being added at a later date.

As you can see from the image I have now added basic materials and a textures to the model. I will talk about the details of this in a future post.

Modeling the Character

After taking the model sheets into Maya I was able to start building the character model. I decided to keep the model quite simple so I was able to create the final model quickly. One thing to note is that I have created the body and clothing as seperate models. If time allows I will use Maya nCloth for the shirt and trousers. Below is the final unsmoothed and untextured model of the character.

Model Sheets

I am hoping to get through the pre-production stage as quickly as possible so I can work on the animation as much as possible. The first stage of the process is to create some model sheets to use in Maya as a guide for modelling. Below are some rough sketches I will use to help create the character in Waiting.

Semester Three Plan

The plan for this semester is to work on the two projects I mentioned in my semester two presentation. They are:

Waiting:
A character performance of someone waiting at a bus stop.
It is to be a full 3D animation with 1 character and 1 location
To be between 60 and 90 seconds in length.

Waking: 
A choreographed performance of someone waking up in the morning.
It is to be a motion captured 3D animation
1 character and 1 location
Between 60 and 90 seconds in length.


I have done some initial research for both projects which can be viewed in the previous blog post and semester two presentation file.

Undergraduate Films

Here are two of the films I worked on during semester two.

My Welcome Intruders
   

D'Ark
 

Semester Two Presentation

Click here to view presentation.

Presentation notes.

Links to my animation for: 

My Welcome Intruders, 

D'Ark, 

Turtles Run

Waiting Research: 

Cold Souls

The Illusionist

Ryan

Father and Daughter

Thought of You

Ghost World

Ferris Bueller's Day Off

Fourteen Actors Acting

Photographs by Mike Garbowski

Undergraduate production blogs: 

My Welcome Intruders, 

D'Ark, 

Turtles Run

Reflection on Practice

As part of the Reflection on Practice module I have also uploaded an online version of my report.

Click here to view report.

Report Writing and Presentation

From now on I will be focusing all my efforts on writing my Reflection on Practice report and preparing for my end of semester presentation. I will be trying to continue with my own practice as this is happening and will update my progress here as time goes on.

Turtles Run Final

Progress on the walk cycle. Added in an extra bounce in between steps to make it more groovy. It is now complete.

Turtles Run Update

Update on the progress of the walk cycle. Got everything moving now, think it is looking good.