Final Project (Stairs walking up and jumping)

This is the next part of the project, the climbing of stairs, then jumping off it. This was the part which I enjoyed most about the project. I used the first four steps from the ordinary walk cycle file but made changes to it. For example, I moved the spine a little to the back as I wanted the character to appear proud and tall until he reaches the top of the stairs. Then, the character jumps and tries to flap his wings to prevent him from falling but ends up landing safely. To acknowledge the fact that he lands safely, he waves his hands towards the crowd in a cute manner. Honestly, I believe that I have achieved what I wanted to see in this part of the animation.
Below are the three views of the animation. Enjoy!

FRONT VIEW



PERSPECTIVE VIEW



SIDE VIEW

Final Project (Walk cycle)

This is the final project part 1, the normal walk cycle. Basically, for this part of the project, I moved on with the project by separating my job of the walk cycle by concentrating on the different parts of the body at one at a time. Below are the different views of this project. The steps I followed for the walk cycle are as listed.

1) Legs
2) Hips
3) Spine
4) Hands
5) Head

1) As for the legs, I spent about three lessons just trying to perfect the movement of the legs. I also made use of the graph editor to make the animation much smoother.

2) The basic concept I used for the hips was to move the hips in accordance to the movement of the legs. This was not as challenging as the legs.

3) I wanted to achieve a normal walk of the joe rig so few changes were made to the spine.

4) The hands were one of the hardest parts of the animation as the movement of the hands have to be synchronized in opposite manner of the legs. Besides, I had to make three keyframes for each hand movement; one moving to the back/front, one in the middle, then one moving to the front/back. This way, the animation of the hand becomes more realistic.

5) My head animation was pretty much fulfilling the requirement of realism so I placed keyframes when there is pressure on the legs, when stepping hard on the ground, where the head will look down.

BACK VIEW



FRONT VIEW



SIDE VIEW

Character design (Head design)

This are my designs for the character design starting with the head.

Front

Beginning sketches of the head, the usual style of using proportions.

This is after the main features are sketched out with guidelines.

This was taken right after the minor details of the eyes, nose and ears were completed.

This was taken right after the hair was completed and some shading was done. However, some erasing and shading still remains.

And finally my character's head is done. As you can see, my character has earrings on as it is part of his badass character.

Side

This is the side view of my character. My side view drawing isn't very good as I am not accustomed to it. But the basic features are still the same as that of the frontal view.

The whole body design as well as the characterisation of my character will be uploaded soon.

Week 4 Weight shift (Big dog)

This is the animation video of the big dog exercise.

This exercise was somewhat a follow up of the weight shift exercise on the Joe rig. However, this one was slightly harder as there were four legs to coordinate the movement with. Besides, there was weight strain on the legs and body itself since the scenario is whereby the dog is kicked away and it has to lose its balance. This means that the animation has to include the factor of tension in it. I think that I have done an ok job but could have been better at making the animation smoother.

Week 4 Weight shift (Joe Rig)

This is the video of weight shift done using the Joe rig.

This exercise was more to emphasizing on the details of animation like weight applied on a character's legs. In this case, the weight has to be seen as being transferred from one leg to another while the hip moves in the same direction.

Week 4 Rigging

This is the final rigged model in different views:

Front:

Front view, showing joints. IK handles:

Side view:

Top view:

Below are the three poses I did using this rigged model:

Pose 1:

This pose shows the model stepping onto a red box. My aim of this pose is to show that the rigging was successful for the leg areas as there is a smooth pose as seen in the legs. There is coordination between the hip movements and the leg movements.

Pose 2:

This pose shows the model doing a stance on both legs with the hands tilted towards her body in an inwards manner. This way, it can be seen that there is no major screw up in the joints or else the pose would have looked awkward. However, I feel that the hip has a minor problem which I can't seem to solve.

Pose 3:

This pose portrays the model lifting her hands to the sky and looking up. From this angle of the pose, it can be seen that the model's spine has been tilted back a little to show that the function works. The control for the neck area till the head has also been tilted to show it works. Lastly, the toe area has been rotated to give a feel that she is on her toes, which is a natural feeling if you are reaching up to the sky.

Reflection

Among all the exercises from previous weeks, this has to be the most tedious, probably the hardest to achieve. Firstly, I took a long time off this exercise on trying to get the XYZ axis perfect for all the joints. I learnt alot from this exercise such as the binding of the joints as a skeleton to the model, handlers, attributes of the model and various controls. However, I encountered minor problems through the way but managed to solve them in time.

Week 2 Cowbody

This screenshot was taken when the main frame of the body was formed, that is using a rectangular cuboid, then extruding the legs then the hands from the right points. This step was extremely straight forward.

This screenshot was taken right after I extruded some of the faces of the stomach and back to give the shape of the real cow body. However, I realised that the points were still quite rough and decided to use vertex points to make it more sharp in terms of quality.

This part of the exercise was focused on making the hooves for the cow and it was pretty easy. By extruding from the face of the bottom of the foot, it forms a rectangular base then we need to extrude once again to form the front 'ramp'.

This was after the neck has been formed. This part is probably the most important considering the fact that the head has to sit comfortably on the neck later, so it has to be formed well. Firstly, the hole on the neck has to be deleted through faces. Then using vertices, I extruded the neck upwards then repeat the process till it seems perfect.

One of the final parts of this exercise was the hands. Here there is nothing more than more extrusion to form the perfect fingers and thumb, though I think mine could have been improved if given another chance.

This is the final product of the cow body. As you can see, the body details have become more smoother. The reason is because the Polygons have been changed to Subdivs. The head has also been properly fit into the neck joint which is very important. In all, this advertisement will help greatly during the pre process of making an animation, which is the modelling component.

Week 5 Animation

ANIMATION

The three important factors that you need to look out for in animation are KEYFRAME, TIMING and CURVE.

Keyframe: To mark the keyframes you plan to do in your animation

Timing: To time the movement, we must firstly understand the motion of the movement and the rig itself.

Curve: Upon deciding on the timing of the animation, we must ensure that factors such as anticipation, stretch and squash and easing in and out are taken into consideration. For an example, a bouncing ball will eventually slow down so the animator has to plan the curve based on the motion of the ball.

Week 2 Human poses

In this lesson, we were supposed to download a human rig from a certain website link that was given to us in class, then position the rig according to the poses in the pictures the teacher asked us to follow.

1st pose (actual picture)

1st pose (Human rig)

As for this pose, I found it quite easy to open the jaws, close the fingers and bring the hand closer to the chest. However, I spent a huge chunk of this exercise trying to perfect the eyebrows, especially since I failed to achieve it in my first attempt.

2nd pose (actual picture)

2nd pose (Human rig)

This pose was much harder than the 1st because of the arm area. It was hard to maintain the original size of the arm as I enabled the Arm Stretch node to enable the arm to touch the ground. Other than that, the only other hard part was reducing the size of the rig's eyes as the 2nd pose shows the model with a look as such. Fun exercise in all!

Week 2 Spiderman poses

This week, we learned how to place models into various poses which was very fun. So for the first exercise, we used a Spiderman rig to pose. Here are my poses, enjoy!

This was the pose that we were supposed to duplicate using the Spiderman rig.

This was the rendered image of the pose shown above. It was pretty hard at first since this was our first time posing a character model. It was fun to learn how the position of the joints affect the rig totally.

This is a pose of Spiderman on the ground ready to shoot his web at a certain location and grab it before flying. Here, I learnt the positioning and adjustments you can make to the character's fingers to represent his/her qualities.

This pose was my personal favourite as it shows exactly how Spiderman prepares his jump before being airborne then shooting his web to fly. In this pose, I faced initial problems, not with the rig, but with the pose. Mainly because, I had to pose him in a way whereby the stretch and tension is visible in his legs as he times his jump. I also had to adjust his three spinal joints in a way that portrays him as squatting and preparing for a jump. Awesome exercise in conclusion!

Week 1 Cowhead

This screenshot was taken right after the basic shape of the cowhead was done.

I experienced initial problems when editing the vertex points of the frontal area of the head.

However, I managed to get my problems solved eventually with ease when I read through the

tutorials once again.

This screenshot was taken right after the right eye was done. Deleting the faces were easy and done with ease.

This screenshot was taken right after the right ear was done. I felt that this technique was very useful since this form of ears will be used for most animal models, if we do any in the future.

This screenshot was taken just before deleting the left symmetrical side of faces and doing Mirror Geometry. I found this part of the exercise EXTREMELY useful since we will be doing a similar step for our project model at the end of the term. Besides, now I will be able to do some character modelling with ease during my free time.

This is my final rendered image of the cow head after various steps such as smoothening. I really enjoyed this exercise as it introduced many new techniques that would enhance my level of understanding of Maya so as to improve my further projects. Lastly, I really appreciate this tutorial because of the last step, the Mirror Geometry tool. However, I encountered a minor problem upon using the Mirror Geometry tool. Upon pressing the tool button, the 'eye-holes' closed. I had to change it from Object to Faces mode to delete the unnecessary faces. Other than that, every part of the tutorial went smoothly. Loved this exercise!

Choosing a character and describing it

Name : Thor -2.0

Tagline : You dare mess with the Beard of Fury!

Catchphrase : Whatsup Viking bros!

Backstory: Born in the early generations where Gods existed, Thor -2.0 has always dreamt of becoming the real God of Thunder, Thor. Trying to save his folksman from danger had become his main goal; except that he has always been leading them to danger instead. Will he be able to turn his fortunes

around and impress his fellow Viking brothers?