Animation 1 Final Documentation and Self Evaluation (Includes Shading Assignment)

Click here to watch the completed video.

Proposal: My original idea for my final project was to create a T-Rex model, rig it, and animate the. The animation was going to be a walk cycle and a recreation of the moment when the T-Rex escapes the paddock in Jurassic Park.

Pre-production: Storyboards based off my original proposal:

I quickly realized that I would not have enough time to completely create and rig my own model and also have enough time to make an animation anywhere near what I desired, so I decided to use a free rig that I could find online. The first model I chose, however, did not function the way I wanted it to, and so I looked a bit longer and went with a different model instead. This model is not actually a T-Rex, but rather the Indominus Rex (I-Rex) from Jurassic World. It is similar enough in anatomy to the T-Rex, so my storyboard still applied.

For texturing and shading (this is the part that is also my shading assignment for the class), I used relatively simply textures for most of the objects since many of them are flatly colored objects. The exceptions to this are the ground and crater walls, which use a mountain texture (see picture below this paragraph), as well as the I-Rex's skin, which is an image texture that is repeated. The trees in the background are actually a Maya paint effect that I just copied and pasted many times.

Production: To help with my animation, I found a walk cycle for the I-Rex created by ILM for reference. My goal was not to copy their walk cycle, but rather study it to pick up certain concepts and movements that I could use in my animation, while making my own personal choices and adjustments. I also gathered a music clip from Jurassic Park (found here), as well as two different videos of isolated I-Rex sound effects from Jurassic World (found here and here), to use when editing my video.

The first few scenes use the walk cycle that I made. To do this, I made 5 key poses: 3 contact poses and 2 passing poses. Then I started to add more details to the frames in between; Making the tail bounce up and down (this included the use of an animation layer) while also moving side to side, making the head and hand bounce with each step, making the stomach fat jiggle with each step, etc. The cycle took place over 90 frames, so to extend it, I selected all of the curves in the graph editor and used the Curves > Pre-Infinity > Cycle and Curves > Post-Infinity > Cycle tools to loop the animation for however long I extended the timeline. I then had to make the I-Rex move forward without sliding, which was again accomplished with the graph editor. The model moved along the Z-axis, so on each foot I took the part of the Z-axis translation that was sliding it across the ground and made it a linear tangent. Then, I selected the model's main control, moved it forward at the same rate that the feet moved (in this case 700 units over the 90 frames), and made that a linear tangent as well. This meant the model was always moving at the same rate as the feet while they were sliding back, making it appear as though there was no sliding at all. To loop the model's movement, I repeated the process from earlier, but chose the "Cycle with Offset" option instead, which kept the model moving forward rather than going back to the 0 position every 90 frames.

For the last scene, I more or less did the same thing, although there was a lot more straight-ahead style animating rather than key posing, largely because I changed the idea for my final shot on the spot when I realized I would not have the time to go with my original idea. This meant I could not follow my storyboards for that portion of the animation. For the first part of the scene, I tried to make it as visually interesting as possible and make it truly seem like the I-Rex was breathing in deeply to catch the scent of whatever left those feathers. I also tried to time the final roar with a sound clip I already had in mind, but for most of the other sounds I tried to find and edit clips to best match the animation.

Self-Evaluation: Overall, I am very pleased with how the project turned out. Both the walk cycle and the close-up shot turned out better than I thought I could make them. The process of editing was more enjoyable than I initially thought it would be, and I would like to practice more with it and see how it could enhance my animations. Also, I think that story of the animation is interesting enough that I could expand further upon it if I wanted to, such as doing going back to my original idea for the final shot as well as making additional shots, such as the I-Rex encountering this mystery creature. There are things that I definitely could improve upon and mistakes that I can learn from.

I made two key mistakes in the animation; one that made animating the scenes more difficult and one that is visible in a couple of the shots. The first mistake was that many of my animations were initially made in too small of a time frame relative to the size and weight of the creature that I wanted to showcase. This was because I kept dragging the slider across the timeline to preview my animation rather than playing the animation due to it being choppy. This resulted in me having a skewed view of the speed of my animation. To fix this, I used the Key Scale function to move the keyframes to different points and essentially spread them out. The second mistake was that I kept forgetting that blinn textures are inherently reflective, and in some shots the creature's eyelids reflect the background. I had rendered those shots before I noticed the mistake, and due to time constraints I did not re-render them.

There are also some changes to my animation process that I can make. I feel like I should use Key Poses more in order to give me tighter control over the animation and make the process more efficient. I also probably should have given myself more time to make the animation so that I don't feel as rushed, but in this case I wasn't exactly sure what I wanted to do for my animation until later on. Finally, I need to improve on my lighting, shading, and rendering in order to make my animations look even better. But again, even with all of these things, I am still happy with the animation that I was able to produce.

Animation 1 Walk Cycle - Contact Poses

Using a pre-rigged character (the Ultimate Bony rig, found here: https://www.behance.net/gallery/17774421/Ultimate-Rigs-for-Free) I started to animate a walk cycle. For now, all I have done is the contact poses, meaning the poses the character is in when they are fully win contact with the ground and is about to take their next step.

I would go into detail about what I have done, but for this case I think it is better to share the tutorial that I followed along with for these poses: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAD84OQ1wyI. I feel that the creator of the tutorial explains everything much more usefully than I could, and I highly recommend viewing her channel and others like her's to gain valuable knowledge and help get things moving for yourself. (Just to note, she is using the Ultimate Beefy rig found on the same link I posted in the beginning. I decided to go with the Bony rig, but ultimately the choice doesn't matter all that much.)

Animation 1 Midterm

For my midterm, I took the pear model that I had made previously and decided to do a more cartoon-like animation for it. In order to animate the bending effects I had to use two different bend deformers, one for the top half of the pear and one for the bottom half.

In order to easily animate these deformers, I created two new attributes for the pear called "Bend Top" and "Bend Bottom". To do this, click the "Edit" button that appears in the channel box and select "Add Attribute". A menu appears to edit the settings of this new attribute, the important thing for right now is the minimum and maximum values. Before adding the attributes, I took note of how far I wanted the pear to bend on either half (done by messing with the "Curvature" attribute of the Bend deformer), and found that I wanted the top half to bend from a range of -75 to 75, and the bottom half from -25 to 25. So, when I made the attributes Bend Top and Bend Bottom, I gave them their respective minimum and maximum values. Now, even after making the attributes, those attributes don't actually do anything yet, which means Driven Keys have to be used.

For the pear's top half, I needed to control the curvature of the top bend deformer, making that the object being Driven, while the new attribute Bend Top is what would be controlling the bend deformer, making that the driver.

Now that everything is selected, the values for Bend Top must be assigned to the respective values for the curvature. I made sure both values were set to 0, and then hit "Key". I then did this when both values were at -75, and then when both were at 75. After doing this, the Bend Top attribute now had proper control over the bending of the pear's top half within a certain range. The same process was used for Bend bottom, but with the values ranging from -25 to 25 instead.

After that, animating the pear itself was relatively simply. One thing to note about the camera zoom was that in order to animate it I had to right-click on the "Focal Length" attribute of the camera and select "Key Selected". This was because setting keyframes for the camera only tracks the position of the camera, not the zoom. Also, the waving, freehand looking movement of the camera while it is following the pear's fall was achieved more or less on accident; I simply kept dragging the camera by hand and keyframing in order to keep the pear in frame. This meant the camera did not travel in a completely straight line, creating the effect.

Animation 1 Week 6 Assignment

For my NURBS model, I made a pear. Overall, the hardest part was creating the initial shape, which I did by creating a line to act as the outline of the shape and then revolving it to turn it into a complete model. After that, it was simply a matter of moving the components around to achieve the desired shape.

Animation 1 Week 4 Assignment

Considering how complex the process of lighting, texturing, and rendering the animation was in class, I decided to follow as closely along to the class instructions as I could for this week. Overall I think I did well, although the process of aligning the texture on the ball properly still feels cumbersome to me.

Animation 1 Week 3 Assignment

This week I redid the bouncing ball demo that we had done previously in class. Overall, I'm happy with the way things turned out, especially since I feel that I made the bounce itself flow more smoothly than when I did it in class.

Animation 1 Week 2 Assignment

The model that I made for this assignment is a shield that is meant to resemble a gear. All of the shapes used are modified cylinders, except for the one in the very center, which is a half sphere. In order to make the gear shape, I created a cylinder with the right dimensions and extruded every other face of the shape.