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.

Cow Modelling

Well, after speaking with the teacher and watching him teach other students how to make the cow more realistic and rigging ready, I have done some adjustments to my model.


The old cow before editing:

In the picture above, notice that the cow's head is slightly too big for its body, the arms are also not realistic in a sense that the shoulder should naturally be bigger than the arm size(learnt in class). It also applies to the legs of the cow. So I decided to edit it to make the thighs slightly fatter to make it look more realistic.


The new cow:

This is the new cow that I've edited. I changed the things i mentioned above to make the cow looks more realistic and balanced. I've also added edge loops on the arms to make the rigging simpler.


I hope that I can learn more soon!

E-Learning (Cow Head)

The cow head is actually quite easy to do. I have not merged the vertices in the middle or do the mouth yet, but here it is!

Process

Body:

I created a cube and subdivide it. In the picture above, I was selecting the faces needed to extrude to form the legs of the cow.

In this picture, the arms and the legs are successfully pulled out. No problems at this point of time.

After that, I began to sculpt the shape of the cow by editing some vertices like shown above. However, slowly, I found out that I had used too many sub divisions which made it harder to edit.

Because of the problem stated above, I restarted the model and used less sub divisions. In the picture above, I've almost finished sculpting the top shoulder part.

I moved on to sculpt the stomach of the cow. Manipulating some vertices, I made the stomach protrude out a little to mimic fats.

In this picture, I edited the vertices such that the flow of the body shape to make it a little more realistic and less "boxy".

This is the result of the semi-finished sculpting of the body. Why I said it was semi-finished is because along the way later, I did some renditions to the size of the hand, legs and edge flow.

I moved on to create the hand. To do this, I created a box and sub divide it. I extruded the thumb and the 3 other fingers from the box. To make the thumb curve slightly, I played around with the rotation tool and move tool.

As you can see here, I altered the transformations to make the hand looks more realistic. I also manipulated the edges to create a smoother edge flow. After the hand is completed, I extruded the wrist part to form an oval shape as shown above.


In this picture, I merged the hand to the arm on the right half of the body using the merge vertices tool. I faced some problems here such as extra edge loops and vertices - so I did a cleanup by deleting these extra edges and vertices to ensure that the merge is successful and looks good.

After merging the hand, I deleted half of the body and duplicated special it. After that, I joined the 2 body parts together by merging the vertices which will form the picture you see above.

Finally, I deleted the faces on the location where the head was supposed to fit and extruded the edges to form what you see above in the picture. I did the same to the head. I joined them by merging the vertices.

At last, this is the final image. I edited the perspective of the model so it looks better by enlarging the head and make the arms smaller and shorter.

Learning process:

In this assignment, I experienced the basics of modeling a cartoon character. I found issues moving to organic modelling which is quite different from modelling unorganic objects. The human body is not easy to model not because of the shape, but to maintain the proper edge flows and topology is important to allow the texturing and animation to be smooth.

I faced problems along the way in which I had to totally restart the model. In my process shown above, I have restarted the model only once that is because I practiced before hand. If I was a starting modeller, I think I would have to restart many times to get used to modelling organic models and maintain a good edge flow.

I feel that this model is mediocre. I still want to improve my model even further and will continue practicing till I get the hang of it.

Character Development [Stage 1]

These are my character design sketches

Above: Some emotions on the character's face

Above: An sketch of the accessories the character have

Above: An initial sketch of the main appearance on the face of the character.




Above: TPOSE

My character was drawn this way is show a great deal of curiosity, fun-loving, without a care in the world, naughty, mischievous yet good hearted at the same time.


Thus, this character is greatly referenced by a cat.


Research(Inspiration):



The eyes of the cat represent the eyes of my character, mischievous and street smart.




The bandana she wears emphasizes the poverty she is facing and that is most probably why she left to do this business(of stealing).

Name: Phoebe
Story:
Long time ago, in a small town located far northwest of the Great City, a bunch of haughty thieves wreck havoc once again. Phoebe, the first female leader of her band of mischievous thieves. With witty tactics and lightning fast reflexes, they are able to evade local guards and steal merchandise with ease from stores. However, another worthy adversary arrives. Lina, who is Phoebe's childhood friend, leads a band of thugs to plunder and torment Phoebe.



Driving force:
Phoebe only seeks for fun. Being playful and mischievous, she might be willing to steal - but her motto is to never physically harm people. When her childhood friend Lina showed up, Lina plundered and harmed people for the sake of greed and power. Phoebe chose to stop Lina and her evil ways of stealing by helping the people get rid of Lina from the town.

Appearance:

1) Phoebe's key feature is the eyes and mouth. It resembles a cat's features. The slit eyes and curvy mouth. These features makes Phoebe look nimble and mischievous like a cat.

2) Phoebe wears a hat wrapped with a bandana and a collar around her neck that is given by her mother. This shows that she comes from a poor family.

3) She wears slightly revealing clothing with bright and cheerful colours. This reflects her mischievous and playful personality.

Behaviour:

1)Phoebe is playful and mischievous. She can steal from people in a flash.

2) When Phoebe walks down the street, she takes big strides swings her arms back and forth in a wide arc like a small child. She always wears a cheeky smile on her face.

3) As much as Phoebe steals, she lives by the motto to not hurt anyone physically.


PHOEBE: Guys, go for that one over there! I'll be grabbing the money~
FRIENDS: Aye boss!
(PHOEBE snatches the money sack from the town citizen)
Phoebe: Aha! Got your money~ See ya~!
Town citizen: H-hey! Stop you thief! GUARDS!