Final blog post.

Final blog post for the BSA 225 and 226 animation assignment.

Okay, I'm bad keeping a consistent blog. I admit it.

Weird bug where key frames apply to the whole rig. Not harmful to the work, just bloody annoying. Not sure how I can fix it as I don't know what is causing the problem.

Strange problem with the red ring (Effector) around my character's left hand where moving it will cause the character to teleport to a random place in the scene. I am able to work around it by using the IK.

Problem resolved after deleting strings and string rig.

Hips started behaving differently since I removed the strings. Hip effector no longer seems to be the main setting point for the character, the feet effectors seems to have taken over that role.

Marcus's IK and control got moved slightly in front of him when being scaled to size. Rig still works fine.

Having an issue where my character is meant to perform a move or rotation, over shoots the target then rubber bands back. Problem shows up on the graph editor as a sudden cliff on one line and is not created by key frames.

A solution seems to be going back and fixing the x and z values (if aiming to rotate on the y axis) on the rotation. The values change despite not being told to and start competing with one another. Returning both rogue value to 0 seems to resolves the problem but I'm  still not sure what causes it in the first place.

Not satisfied with how the animation looks in some parts, but it is 1 am on Friday, so I don't have the time to be picky. I'll come back to this project once I haven't had a nice long break from it. Need to be able to look at it with a fresh set of eyes and an eager attitude. Currently I'm kind of sick and tried of it. I don't want to abandon this project, but I think I need some time to get more experience in 3D animation.

I know there are parts of the audio and animation that lets the rest of the work down, but I was running short on time, brain cells and sleep. I'll probably keep the audio clips I have now and redo them for the Flicks version  I will produce later in the year, that is unless a better option presents itself. Some of the animation clip however will probably need to be redone from scratch and the model for Marcus will need to be completely redone too (He looks pretty awful at the moment).

With that said, I am somewhat happy with how the model of the Dancer turned out and some of the animation for her is looking nice. I think I'll make it a personal project to update the Dancer's model at some point, possibly during the summer holidays. I think she is a good character and she would be a good piece to add to my portfolio (Both her 3D and 2D models/images).

Week 6

Week 6

Adding blend shapes to the dress to make the baubles move. Not a perfect system as the computer creates a straight path rather than the wanted pendulum effect. Should get by if I use the system sparingly.

Rather odd problem of a infinitely inflating blend shape. Increasing the blend shape would cause the controlled object to move, but decreasing it did nothing. This resulted in one of the baubles on my characters dress to grow bigger than the character. (No picture, reverted to an old save to avoid a crash). I think it was caused by accidentally moving the wrong slider while edit was enabled on another blend shape. Kind of funny, kind of frightening.

Maya keeps crashing when I try to import my character into the scene. Seems to overload the computer.

Finally got my scene and character in the same work space after an hour of Maya crashing. Nina suggested I try importing the scene into the character file rather than the other way around which was what is was doing. Seems to  have worked. Computer is lagging badly though.

Scale the character to the scene doesn't seem to work either. Had to scale the scene to the character (sitting around times 16 - times 17 the scale of the original)

Spent an hour reworking the lighting set up for the first few shots

Term 2 week 4 and 5

Animation problems

Making the skirt move

Mixed both ncloth and blend shapes doesn't seem to work.

Ncloth might prove a simpler method for animation but I'm worried that it could cause problems. Already there is a small seam or gap between the ring on the bottom of the dress and the cloth of the dress. On the plus side, the cloth actual looks like cloth and cloth responses well the physics.

My other option is to use blend shapes to create the movement in the skirt. This will take a lot more time in the animating stage (And I'm running short on time as it is). The other problem with this method is that the Baubles deform when I set both the left/right and forward/back to active.

I feel like the NCloth model works better for my desires for the character. Blend shapes is simply to fiddly for this task and doesn't provide the result I want. I seem to have the functions sorted, but I'm sure something will turn up to bite me for my decision.

Turns out I was wrong, I couldn't get the ncloth to play ball. The Ncloth objects refused to stay with the solid object I attached them to. Even after hours of research and attempts I couldn't get it to work. This little science experiment cost me about a week of work on my character, but "Nothing ventured, nothing learned and nothing gained"

Thankfully, Rachel was kind enough to spend the time to make me a custom rig for the skirt. Even after all the time I spent researching the subject and watching Rachel do it, I still wouldn't be confident in making one myself. There are some steps I still don't quite understand. After some trail and error, I have the rigged skirt working properly. I will try adding some blend shapes to make the baubles move with some of the more pronounced dress movements.

Started modeling Marcus outside of class. He shouldn't take too long to make as he doesn't need to be very detailed. The most important part (the hands) can be imported from the dancer's model and reconfigured to fit my needs.

Did voice recording on June 4. Had some troubles as the recording board wasn't working properly but I managed to record. Don't know how it sounds in post yet but if need be I can re-record. Either way, a big thanks to Morgan M and Luke Page for doing the voices and putting up with my constant 'artistic' pushiness. Still need foley sounds. Will have to use the Zoons so I can do the recording by myself (none of my classmates seems to be willing to help with foley, or indeed record their own)

Week 9 and the Holidays

Maya Tutorial and learning

Progress

Didn't do much work on The Dancer during the first week of the break. Just finished up the bottom of the skirt and tweaked its general shape.

Did a bit more of the scenery during the first week, but still not a lot. I was kind of busy that first week.

April 24

My first attempt at a breast plate/metal corset didn't go well simply because the topology didn't work as I though it would. In the end I just decided to start over. I feel that it is important that I get the topology for the Dancer correct as she is the center piece of the whole story, so I want her to look as good as possible. Because the topology of the chest piece was wrong I couldn't insert loops correctly or add the edges/rims on the metal.


My second attempt at the breast plate went much better than the first. I'm a bit uncertain about the part that goes under the arm, but that is probably just me nit picking. It should function fine. This is my progress as of April 24, will add more detail tomorrow.

April 25



Started modeling the scissors, going fairly well.

Added bevel/ planes in the breast plane. Will create a more solid looking object when I am happy with the geometry.

Really starting to like 3D modeling. Learned a fair bit just by poking around the program. I also really like how my character is starting to look. Hopeful I can get a good quality of animation in this assignment. It would be a good starting point for my portfolio.

Possible changes

Not sure how I feel about the Dancer's joints. I drew her with universal ball joints but at this point it would take a lot of back tracking to give her those joints now.

Change the hand to look more like that of a puppet.

Overview

Sadly I didn't get nearly as much work done as I had wished. This is probably just because I was home and in holiday mode.

http://area.autodesk.com/
https://www.youtube.com/user/MayaHowTos