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.