The end of Animation Practice 1

So, it's 8:25 PM and I am officially done with Animation Practice 1.
I just uploaded my latest task to Blackboard and everything seems to be working. Was a bit worried since it took quite a while to upload the file, even though it's only 22mb.. Luckily I wasn't trying to submit at 23:55.. Hehe.

This last component has been a tough one.. As I mentioned in the last post, the main reason for this was the rig. But I worked until bout 1 AM last night and managed to render out a version of the animation just to be on the safe side. When I got up this morning I realized that I had forgotten all about including blinks on the character, but fortunately I always render in images so I only had to re-render 300 frames. But it was not all bad since I knew I had a backup version of the piece, so I actually got time to add blinks and polish a bit more before I had to send it to render.

The blog has been a helpful tool to document my progress, I really like the fact that I can sit down and write about problems or observations etc. at the end of a work-day.

- But this also means that a lot of my posts doesn't include material directly related to the assessments, so I'll mention it again; to easily find the actual animations you could just press the "Finished work" button on the header and you will find all my animations there.

All my planning for the ICA's are posted on the main blog (You just have to go back a bit..)

Now it's time to do something completely different.. Or, sort of. I'm going sit back and watch and study the pro's work in:



(image taken from: www.coversdaddy.com)
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- Oh, and I will post my last task (component 2) in the "finished work"-page as well.

linear to spline and rig-trouble.

As the title says I moved over to spline curves today. I did the fingers and hold pose in linear before so that it would be about right when I started polishing.
I always work on about 50 frames at the time on my animations, it's easier to see and control what each curve does to the animation that way.
But today that wasn't a smart choice. Apparently the dee-rig is having a bad day, it's been a lot of bugs on it. The mesh has popped away from the rig controllers, heads has "magically" disappeared and the rig has been a absolute nightmare to work on - And I have no idea why.
Because of this I was set back at least 5 hours work.. I sat polishing on the first 150 frames for hours and when I made a preview of the piece as a whole, the remaining 350 frames was a rig that where doing whatever it pleased.. And it just kept happening in older files, but at different points in the animation.

Here's an example of what I have dealt with today:



I then realized the best thing to do would be to go back to the linear-version, put it in spline again and start over. (Fortunately you work a bit quicker the second time around..)

I have worked on most of the animation, but I would like to continue with "fresh eyes" tomorrow. But, I will render one version during the night so that I have a version to hand in tomorrow if it rig keeps acting this way when I continue polishing.

Productive saturday!

Got quite a lot of work done today.
I've been working on tweaking curves today, mostly all the ease in and outs and trying to prevent "floaty-animation". I'm still working with linear curves, so it's still looks a bit choppy.
Last thing I did tonight was to start working on his fingers. I also need to work on the ending, since I haven't done any work on Chris hands in the part where he holds Joy, and I know there is a bit of correction needed there to prevent mesh-collision between the two characters.

I have made an observation through this walk-cycle as well. If you move the character too low so there is a lot of bend in the knees and you then add a lot of movement from side to side on the upper-body you get a "drunk walk"! I have really been working a lot to try and prevent that look on my walk. I want it to be a walk that you can see in kids that have been playing around for a long time. They tend to move about a lot, but they are obviously tired at the same time.. (hope that made sense..)
So I guess my conclusion is that when your animating a bipedal character with no facial or visual clues to show their age or mood, the difference between tired/exhausted and drunk is hard to figure out. Hehe..

Got feedback from both my room-mate and Daniel today so that helped me a lot.

Here's a preview of my animation as it looks at the moment:




As you can see in the clip I have changed the story a bit from the original idea. Joy's jump in the first block sent the wrong message.. Seemed like she was attacking Chris rather than playing around.

I need to sort out the fingers and the holding pose tomorrow, and hopefully I'll be able to move over to polishing the piece sometime during the afternoon. I was hoping to get two days to polish it, but I'll have too see about that..
It's 1:05 AM now so it's time to call it.

work, work, break, work.

Here's an update to keep you posted on my progress. I have been working on the animation non-stop today.. I have had some problems with the arm- and body-movement on the animation, so after a couple of hours tweaking I decided to get rid of a lot of it and repose it. Don't know if it was the best solution, but at least it sorted out some of the worst problems I was having.

Took a break from the animation after dinner and brought some of my precious Norwegian chocolate over to Albin & Joliens house for a long over due visit. Was a good way to get my mind of work for a while. Tim was there as well since he's back for the graduation (he's currently working at a 3D company in Amsterdam). Lot's of fun! The amounts of laughter and sugar provided me with new energy so I could continue working when I got back.

It's 1:00 AM and I'm getting tired so I think I'll call it a night. It's been a productive day. Will hopefully be able to spot the flaws Iv'e missed today after a good nights sleep.

Animation moved to linear.

So I moved over to linear keys today. It looked okay so I decided to continue working on it in linear since I feel the deadline closing in on me. I know how much work and time I spend in linear mode so I felt that I couldn't wait any longer.

As usual there are some gimbals on the knees, but this is common so I was not surprised.
I have worked mostly on the first walk and I am struggling a bit with getting the movement right.. But it's 10:30 and I've been working on it all day so I think my eyes need a rest. Hopefully it will be easier to handle the issues with fresh eyes tomorrow morning.

Show and tell & work in progress.

So today was the last show and tell in this module. I showed all my pieces today, since I had done changes since last time. I got some suggestions for changes I could do if I got time, but I'll have to see if I can get around to actually changing anything on the animations since I'm already pretty occupied with the last task.
The feedback I got on the last animation was pretty much to just keep going. And the puppy's attitude and personality had improved since yesterday, so I'm happy with that.

I'm a bit worried that I might not finish in time, but then again, I always am.. Hehe.

I "moved" Joy (The ball w/tail) over to linear keys today. Mostly because I want to use as much time as possible on Chris, since it's a lot more work needed on a full bipedal rig. So I decided I'd try to get most of the rough animation done on Joy so I could make a layer in 3dsMax and hide "her" while I continue working on the secondary breakdowns on Chris. So far it seems wise, since 3dsMax is running a lot smoother now.

I have uploaded another wip_preview, and I apologize in advance if it's a bit troublesome to watch. There is a distinct difference between the two now that Joy is linear and Chris is still on stepped, but hopefully you will be able to see how I'm progressing anyway.



- I will continue working on the secondary breakdowns on Chris tomorrow, but now; Bedtime!

Practical, feedback and breakdowns.

Today's lecture became a practical, so I got do work more on the piece while Penny was available for us to ask for feedback and so on. I showed her my wip and got some useful pointers on what I needed to work on. There was lack of character to the puppy, so I have been working on the attitude of the ball w/tail and also continued to work on the breakdowns. I am currently working on the "secondary breakdowns", which basically means the poses between the breakdowns and key poses.
These are really vital to get the walk correct.
In a walk you have the contact pose - passing pose - contact pose, in this case the passing is the breakdown. But you also need to add down and up position to get the weight in there so these become your secondary breakdowns. You also need to add breakdowns and secondary breakdowns between the other poses so that the transition between them is clear when you move on to linear keys. So that's what I have been working on today.

- I'm still working with step-keys, and here is a preview of my current wip:




I got a lot of useful feedback from my friend Daniel (previous Ma student) via skype this afternoon as well. And as I understood it the story was pretty clear so I'm quite happy with that.