Final storyboard

Above is the final team storyboard showing all the different animation sets our team (Cornered Badgers) had to do. The only change that has been made is my animation set, where the climb onto the wall part has now been replaced with a dismount.

Motion Builder

There was a particular lecture I missed that was on motion builder. I took the time however to learn some basics of the software and document them. I looked into the powerpoint that was provided to catch up on what I had missed from the actual lesson. Motion builder is a piece of software that is commonly used within the motion capture process. Motion capture is an element of game design I am greatly interested in and would love to learn more about. I intend on following up my research of this software in future. Below is an image of the basic interface. As is shown, there is a character with blue balls upon it. These balls represent the balls on the motion capture suit the actors wear. From these balls, a rig can be created/imported to be animated by the actor. I followed the tutorial from the powerpoint. Although I struggled with it, I managed to obtain a basic understanding of the software. This something I will improve on and carry forward that may help me one day in my career life. I plan on researching the software more and obtaining the package to practice with in my own home. this gives me more time to develop my skills in the area.

Line of action

I tried my best to include a good line of action in at least one of my animations. I managed to get (what I believe to be) a good strong stance out of my shimmy animation. I managed to create a stance that showed some strength to the balance on the ledge. One that would appear to be realistic to look at. This was a goal of mine as I am not particularly great at creating good strong poses from my character. A way I can improve on this in future is to look hard at the silhouette's of my stances and take note of how good or bad they look. From this I can better my skills of creating poses, which will make my animations easier to follow up.

 

Final animation

I rendered out my final animation using a playblast technique in Maya. This is a quick way of rendering out a video with successful results. I believe my animation was successful but could use some work. The main part that lets it down is the dismount at the end. I believe I could have put a lot more effort into the crouch to finish. It lacked drama, it was a very simple part that was put together quickly. Next time I am faced with a similar task, I will manage my time and invest more of it into making my final pieces of work looking perfect. Generally I am happy with this though. I would like to render this out and make a better scene so I can use this as an actual show reel piece in future.

Sequencing

Using both the Trax Editor and the Camera Editor, I was able to pull all of my scene into one animation. I created Character sets for each animation, which I then placed into the Trax Editor. From this, I was able to position my animations together in sequence, I was also able to loop the shimmy animation to give the effect of my character shimmying for longer than my actual animation was. Altogether, my animation reaches around 200 frames, this I feel is a good amount for a short showreel. Because I was not able to move my character once I had positioned all the different animations together, I kept his animations stationary (his feet always stayed on 0 on the X and Z axis) and simply moved the environment around him. This is a technique I was able to pull off because of my camera shots which faked the illusion of him moving. Below are three screen throughout the different sections of my animation, these show the character about to jump onto the ledge, shimmying and dismounting at the end.

I used the camera editor the create transitions between each camera shot. I started by creating five different cameras and sequencing them and animating them for the different sections of my animation. This I edited and corrected until I achieved the desired results I was after. I then created the Camera sequence. This allowed me to select how long each camera lasted and for what frames it  played. I used this to my advantage throughout my shimmy animation. I set a camera to play what had already been played by another camera. This was to give the illusion that the character had been shimmying for a lot longer than he had actually been.

Camera 1: above fly over. This was to show the spikes the character was about to shimmy across and to give a sense of depth to the characters height above them.  

Camera 2: Follow camera. This camera follows the character as he jumps up and grabs the ledge. This camera was used to get a full body shot of the jump to the ledge.

 Camera 3: Behind shimmy camera angle. This angle follows the character from a static position from behind as he shimmies across the gap. this gives a sense of how far the character is moving.

 Camera 4: Above shot. This camera angle reminds the viewer that there is spikes beneath the character to bring out the danger of what is happening. I wanted to emphasize how deadly it would be if the character falls.

Camera 5: Side shot of dismount. This camera shot was used to finish up the animation. I chose a side view as the whole character is in view, and the distance he has just covered is also included as a triumphant view of success. 

The Scene

I created a scene for the rest of my team to use. This scene is heavily influenced by what is seen in Uncharted, but on a simpler scale. The scene features a hole with spikes at the bottom ready for my animation set, a wall for Antony's vaulting over a wall animation, and a rope for Ellen's zip-line animation. I created my scene using several pieces that could be used several times throughout the scene. I used a high to low poly baking method to create a nice looking wall. This wall was used very heavily throughout the scene but adds to the atmosphere very well, in my opinion. I tried to make the walls as grimy as I could, I achieved this by adding moss and dirt to the top of each wall, giving the illusion of decay and erosion. Below is an image of the complete scene I created. I really believe I have captured the image I wanted well and it suits the animations my team created correctly.

Dismount animation

I discovered that creating a believable animation of my character climbing up onto a wall was a lot more difficult than I had thought it would be. Setting the hands to be static throughout the clamber upon the wall proved extremely hard. Because of this, my team changed our storyboard, mainly for my particular animation set. Instead of climbing upon the wall, my character now dismounts the wall by jumping away. The story board is now laid out as to be my character climbs up a wall, shimmies across a gap in the ground, then dismounts safely the other side. I found this animation a lot easier than the climb as all the fundamental steps to this were that the character kicks away from the wall, lets go with his hands and crouches on impact with the floor. This was a quick animation I was able to put together later on during the creating pipeline. This helped me because of my bad time management skills (leaving things until the last minute is something I have learnt not to do in future). I'm quite happy with the outcome of this, but in future I feel I could put a lot more effort into the crouch to make a more realistic animation set. I would also put some more effort into the actual facial expressions, this is also to make the character more believable. I feel my animation skills have benefited from this exercise though.

Shimmy Animation

 The third animation in my sequence is a shimmy. This is where my character moves sideways across a wall using his hands and feet. This animation proved very difficult as i had not figured out a way to keep the hands in a static location while the rest of the body moved around it. This is something I am to learn for future, I feel the knowledge of this method will help me greatly with many animations I am faced with. I started off with a standard "hanging off a wall" pose. From this I made sure the end frame was exactly the same (this animation is roughly 25 frames long) and I created the in between animation of the character reaching over to the right with both his right arm and his right foot. Then bringing back the left foot and the left arm to finish the animation ready for it to be looped. I feel this animation was quite successful despite the difficulties I has faced with. I believe I overcame them reasonably well but will look into working on them in future for definite. I also had to make sure I was keying all, this I knew would benefit me later on when it came to putting the animations together in sequence.

Team Storyboard

As a  team, we created a storyboard of our animations and put them together, we created two versions of this (below being the updated one) showing how our animations flowed together. All three animation sets begin with an Idle pose, these being stealth, strong/heroic and wounded. My animation set is the top four panels. These being idle, idle to jump to ledge, shimmy and climb onto ledge. The storyboard helps to block out the final animation and helps me to see roughly what level the team members are at.  

Graph Editor

 To get to grips with the graph editor again after a long break, I followed a presentation given online by my lecturer. This presentation showed the varies aspects of the graph editor through the tutorial. The graph editor is split into several lines which contrast with the animation made in the view plane. The axis are displayed with different colours, these being Green for the Y axis, Red for the X axis and Blue for the Z axis. This can be manipulated by moving the dots on the graph which match with the keyframes on the animation.
  The tutorial showed me how to create a bouncing ball and and manipulate the key frames on the graph to create a more realistic motion. Another I could take into account if I were to recreate this is the principal of squash and stretch to make a more visually realistic version. I used the technique of onion skinning so I could always see what was happening from the side view plane. This helped me with the anticipation of the bounce and allowed me to correct the animation accordingly.

(above - Side view of the ball with skinning on)

(above - The graph editor after being manipulated)

Animation 2 - The Jump

The second animation in my sequence is jumping onto a ledge. My reference came from a video of myself doing this and from watching game play from Uncharted. I tried to follow the several principals of animation with staging to show the emotion of the character through the strong pose and the facial expression. I also delved into the anticipation of the jump. I made sure the character took a significant step backwards to get a short run up to push himself upwards into the air. I tried to create the basic keys I would need for the animation. These being the beginning pose (from idle), the anticipation (the step back) and the actual grabbing of the ledge. From this I can iron out the wrinkles and finish off the sections missing.

 (above - Idle pose)

(above - The step backwards)

(above - Catching the ledge)

With my animations in my mind, I researched the principals of animation and tried my best to follow them as best as possible. This I believe would really benefit the realism and the depth I go into with my work. Here is the reference material I used: http://minyos.its.rmit.edu.au/aim/a_notes/anim_principles.html 

Reference Gathering

I collected several means of reference to follow throughout my animation process. These come in the forms of images ad videos. My team recorded each other acting out the animations and took photos of each other stood I their strong idle poses.

Here is an image of me in the idle pose I used for my idle animation

Below are the videos I recorded of me acting out the animation. From this I can study the smallest movements and take note of the timing involved.

http://youtu.be/bwcm5grHYCA

I plan take reference of each animation as I go along and to redo these at a later date. This way I can keep on top of my working pipeline.

I also looked into references in games, with Uncharted being a big inspiration for our final showreel, I made sure to look more into that game and study the animations from various angles.

(Nathan Drake, Uncharted, Climbing)

Idle pose 2

Because our team ended up doing very similar idle poses, I decided to vary mine into more of a stealth position, this being low down and ready for action. I needed a very strong pose that really showed the emotion in the character without it being explained. I went for the head looking around a lot, quite quick movements and a very fluent motion following the breathing. Left is the pose I placed the character in. As before I made sure the character was facing in the same axis so the final animation with the whole team would be easy to do.

Idle Pose Take 1

I started off by creating my first idle pose for my character. My first pass at this was to create a very simple idle pose to practise getting the breathing and the timing correct. To start this, I created a very simple strong pose to follow through with. I focused on getting the shoulders moving correctly with the breathing in and out and really tried to emphasise the chest going in and out with each breath. Another thing I tried to incorporate was facial expressions. To do this, I created a relaxed expression, animated the mouth the open slightly with each breath and the cheeks to slightly contract on the breath out. I also added in a blink towards the end of the animation where the eyebrows follow as they would follow the facial muscles ion real life.

I was also careful to make sure my character was facing in the Z direction. This is to make the job easier when adding in my teams animations, with all characters facing in the same direction.

Animation Diagram

A a team we created a simple diagram explaining how we wanted our animations to flow together. We thought as our original idea to create our four separate animations and flow them together as one character. Below is the order we wanted our animations to follow.

To make our animation easier, we later decided that flowing twelve animations created by three people wouldn't be a great idea for our animation pipeline. We decided that the second and third person creating the animations would have to wait for the person to finish their final animation to have access to their final pose to work from. We decided the most feasible way would be to use a similar structure, but to have each persons animations as three different characters in the same scene.

Brief

As a team we have to create a three part animation with research. From this, I have decided that as a team we shall attempt a scene built up of twelve different animations which will be blended together seamlessly. Our idea is based on the game Uncharted which features different "parkour" style animations. The different moves our character will follow are climbing up ledges, vaulting over walls and sliding across zip-lines. This is very much Uncharted influenced and games such as this and Tomb Raider will prove as excellent reference material throughout.