Assignment Walk Cycle

Rigging Poses

Rigging Exercise & Poses:

Let me start with a personal note: This exercise should be given more time and training put into it. Because rigging is quite a big component, we only had 1 week to finish it. Moreover, after following the tutorial, many aspects of this component have not been covered.

Learning Outcomes:
We started off building the skeleton with the joint tool and then moved on to put IK handles on the model. All these are simple. Soon, we moved on to the part where we give the feet and fingers attributes - although this is tedious, I found it much entertaining and easy.

During the initial stages where we had to orient the joints, I didn't do that part properly, when I skinned my model and tried to orient the backbone, my model did not behave properly and I had to orient my model again.

Moving on, after skinning the model, the hardest part was up ahead. The weight painting, it is not only difficult but you have to have a good sense of imagination and knowledge of the human body.

I've learnt quite a lot from this exercise and the video is really helpful for rigging beginners.







Pose 1



Pose 2

Pose 3

Big Dog Animation

In this exercise, we are to animate a "Big Dog" when it is kicked from the side - and to show the actions of it losing its balance and trying to regain it.

i) If engineered or programmed badly, BigDog would fall over. Watch the full video again, and describe how BigDog’s legs move while walking– ie. what is the sequence of leg movements for one complete step? Use the terms BL, BR, FL, and FR for the back-left, back-right, front-left and front-right legs.

The legs that move at the same time will always be diagonal to each other. For example, the FL and BR leg will move then the FR and BL leg will move. Thus its : FL and BL moves forward, FR and BL moves foward, repeat.

ii) Explain how this sequence of movements manages to balance BigDog’s body weight.

As the center of gravity is at the middle of the dog, if the dog were to use its 2 right legs to stablize itself then it will lose its balance.

iii) Look at BigDog_kick_slow_motion.mov. Draw a storyboard of BigDog stabilising itself after being kicked.

Reflection:

When attempting this exercise, I applied all the principles that I stated in the post below (Spiderman weight shift). I found this exercise to be simpler than the spiderman weight shifting. I had to use ease in and ease out to give a sense of impact when the dog was kicked and when it tries to regain its balance.

Also, I had to stretch some parts of the timelime to be longer.

Lastly, I edited the graph editor to give it more life. The middle part where the dog almost lost its balance.

Spiderman Weight Shift

Animating Spiderman.

The video above shows an animation of spiderman weight shifting.

In this exercise, we learnt how to do the basic 3 steps of layering.

1. Key Poses

2. Stretching the timeline

3. Graph Editor.

By obeying these 3 steps, we can create animation that is Pose-to-Pose instead of straight ahead.

Straight ahead method is not good because if the animation is not well done and needs editing in the middle of the animation, the animator will have to redo the entire animation. However, when using pose-to-pose, if the animator needs to do editing, he can just edit the key poses.

From there however, after all the key poses are done nicely, the animator can proceed to do the detailed straight ahead method to make the animation more realistic. But that is only good when your key poses are already solid.

Reflection:

In this animation, we learnt basically 2 things. Ease-in ease-out and anticipating.

Without ease in and ease out, the animation will look very static. In the lab, our tutor gave a demostration of using 2 balls, 1 with ease in and ease out, 1 with just a normal animation. From there we can see which animation looks more dynamic and realistic. So, we must have some fast actions and some slow actions to make the animation more realistic.

Anticipating is the weight shifting of the model. As spiderman shifts his hips from left to right, the rest of the body must follow in a realistic way. For example, when the spiderman shift his hips, his feet that the weight is not acting on will shift first and then followed by the other feet.

Spiderman additional poses

Did this pose based on laracroft's pose above. I found problems with the left leg as it was hard to position it such. I did not do the fingers for the left hand because I could not see the fingers other than the thumb.

Eleven Model Posing

.:Pose 1: Sitting

In this exercise, I based my model on the sitting picture above. I faced problems mostly with the crossing of the legs because I wasn't too used to the model yet. After some trial and error, I began to understand how to cross the legs by using the twist.

When I asked my tutor about the model, he told me that the bending of the back is not really bended. Thus, I played with the shoulders, twisted the hips a little and bent the back to suit the picture. I also edited the eyes to make it more 'smiley' and similar to the picture.

.:Pose 2: Basketball

This pose is done when I was halfway though the model. I thought it was pretty cool so I took a screenshot of it ;)

This is my first pose for the basketball player. I faced problems in bending the back to fit the picture as much as possible. Also, in the reference picture, I couldn't see the right hand so I had to improvise.

When I approached my tutor, he gave me advice to twist the hips more to and the legs. He told me to always remember the force acting on which part of the leg. Additionally, he said that that hand was well done.

This pose is my final pose after consulting my teacher. I changed the feet to suit the reference picture more. Earlier on, I thought of making a slight change to the model to make it more realistic looking but I was told to follow the picture.

I twisted the hips to help the viewer to see which part of the body the character's force is acting upon.

.:Pose 3: SNSD

In this model, I followed the reference picture posted above. Of all the 3 poses, I found this the easiest yet the most pleasant. However, though easy, I still ran into some basic problems - the eyes and most importantly, the weight of the body again.

I consulted my tutor and he asked me to change some of the things I mentioned above.

The eyes are now more seductive and the hips can show the weight of the body is acting upon.

Furthermore, I added breasts and slightly gave the model an '8' figure to try and mimic the orignal model.

Spiderman

In this week, we learnt the basics about posing. The picture above is the spiderman I modelled after watching the reference posted on olive.

This spiderman was done at school. I consulted my lecturer about it and he said that my side view has a little problem. The spiderman is leaning too far forward.

He also mentioned that the legs were too spread apart. However, I followed the reference image and therefore retained the shape of the legs.

Thus, I edited the spiderman so that he doesn't lean so much forward.

This is the spiderman that I came up with after that.

The center of gravity is at the stomach.

Going off topic a little, today my lecturer also talked about the pose-to-pose animation principle and the straight ahead animation principle.

Pose-to-pose is more efficient as you only have to define the key positions/poses of the model rather than editing it from the first keyframe. As a result, if a problem were to happen half way that is irreversible by undoing, we can revert to the last pose that we did.

This is my 2nd blocking that I've done. After listening to my tutor about how to use this rig, I didn't find many problems with getting this pose.

However, I had a general problem with all poses which was the issue with the arms. I always found the arms distorted everytime I dragged them to one side. Of course, after fine tuning by shifting the shoulders and twisting the arm I can get something more decent - but will never get a very smooth arm.

This block was inspired by a character with great charisma. His arms are raised to generate an atmosphere of superiority. He looks down onto the camera to mimic a proud and confident attitude.

In this block, I faced similar problems as the one above. Everything is fine except the arms - which looked a little blocky. Other than that, I think that flow is pretty good.