Story Book

We are starting a new project in animation class. We are taking a children's cardboard book and animating the story from the book at the end of the project the books and animations will be donated to children's mercy hospital so that they can enjoy the stories. The book I have decided to do is
"The Best Mouse Cookie" by Laura Numeroff and Felicia Bond. So far I have the voice recordings done for the book. I also have decided to try and create the animation in 3d so I have modeled the mouse, The kitchen, and the outside of the house.

This is the outside of mouses house.

This is what the kitchen looks like so far. 

This is what mouse looks like in Mudbox with color and more polygons.

This is mouse with his skeleton and eyes ready to be animated and textured. 

This is what the skeleton for mouse looks like I am using Humanik within Maya.

(I have more on Humanik on my other post)

The next steps is to get the kitchen textured and ready for animation. Then key framing the animation of mouse outside the house, and in the kitchen. The only other big thing that I will have to start will be modeling all the small details like the things mouse will be cooking with for example: eggs, pans, etc...

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I have started texturing the kitchen and modeling the different objects that mouse will be using to make cookies. I also have added mouse into the scene.

Mouse In the Kitchen

Stop Motion Animation

My part:

I recently helped out a group on a stop motion animation in class, I helped them come up with a solid concept/idea, made story boards, and helped them turn it into an animation. I was gone for most of the time that they filmed due to health issues. but I was able to help the group out when they needed me. That included creating the video which included helping set up the camera shots and moving the "models" into the correct positions between frames and helped them with editing the final video. The finished animation is down below.

The process:

Our group started out by researching stop motion animations online to try and get an idea started. We came across a video where they mixed a live action with stop motion animation. Next we went through different ideas and stories to use. We started narrowing down which idea seemed the best and then started creating story boards to plan out exactly what we were going to film.

Shooting:

Next we went out to find places to shoot for the stop motion the first place we chose we could only have access for an hour of our time. We ended up going to film in a different location that we could use for both hours to make good use of our time. Using the story boards we set up our actors and started shooting each frame by using a crane that we were able to borrow from the video department.

Editing:

After we were done filming all of the frames for the stop motion we brought it back to the class room and started putting all the frames together into after effects. We then began the editing process which included mixing the live action with the stop motion frames, doing color correction, adding sound effects, and then rendering it all out for our final video. 

Homecoming Animation

My HumanIK project was put on hold for about 2 weeks. I was asked by the school to create a homecoming animation that would reveal each of the spirit days during homecoming week. They told me the theme of homecoming was Vegas/ casino themed. They thought of possibly animating a slot machine that would spin and tell people the spirit day via logo or something. The rest was up to me to fill in the ideas that they were vague on. This is the process that I went through to create this animation.

First I talked to my teacher to see if he had any recommendations of what I should do and also what program I should use for this project.(I mainly deal with 3d animation in Maya) He was able to show me a new plugin that our school acquired for Adobe Aftereffects called Element 3d created by the people at video copilot. What Element 3d does is it takes low polygon, high resolution 3d models and incorporates it into Aftereffects and lets it run smoothly and renders quickly.

Then I took started watching the tutorial videos that are provided online by video copilot to learn how to use Element 3d.

After that I jumped right into aftereffects and got my feet wet with Element 3d by first creating an opening scene of money floating around. This was easy to do with the particle replicator that element uses. Next I added the slot machines in the background and was able to put a custom texture on it that my teacher ended up creating.(It ended up looking amazing in the final render!)

One of the problems that I had to brainstorm was how I was going to animate the slot machine because Element did not allow you to animate or move any pieces in/on the 3d model. With the help of my teacher we came up with using a mask that lined up perfectly with the windows on the slot machine and animating a long strip about 200 x 2000 that would scroll through and restart seamlessly. Also by using multiple compositions within each other I was able to create 1 animation and be able to make slight changes so that I could create an animation for each spirit day for a total of 5 days.

After all the setting up was done I was now in the final touch ups of the animation that included adding a simple fade in, lights, text, and the timing of the animation so it all would run smoothly.

So the idea is that it would fade in to the animation you would see text fly by the camera that says "Spirit day" while money is falling down and the camera zooms in on one of the slot machines then starts playing the animation and stopping to show the spirit day by a logo then to clarify I added text that said the spirit day and a short description of what to wear.

The final rendered animation are down below:

                                                                           Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

First outline

This is my outline for my first project of my senior year. I plan on continuing my project from last year before summer started. I have made some progress already and I will continue to blog on the previous blog that you can find here. Dates down below are my original outline and when I plan on having them done but they may be subject to change as other animations may become priority I will blog the other animations that I will be working on so that I have something to show.

• September 10:
• Finish outlining character animation movements.

• September 20:
• watch lynda for learning ncloth(3h 26m) but I don't need to watch all of it.
• Add cloth to model.

• September 30:
• Adding textures to clothes, person, and to the background.
• Might go over to graphic design and ask one of them to make textures.

• October 10:
• This is when I plan to be completely done with the animation
• Applying final touch ups, might add scenery around the character.

Human IK project

I have been working on modeling, rigging, texturing, and animating a character in low-res/low polygons. I have decided to create a guy with a hood and cargo pants. I have based my character off of a super soldier, assassin, and being able to do stunts like parkour/free running, which all these are things that interest me. I have also been helping other members/ groups in my class come up with ideas and give suggestions to their story lines. The goal I have in mind is to have the character rigged and animated to be running and doing a few stunts, a few example videos that inspired me and gave me the idea is down below. Also it is my hope to have my final rendered animation to look like the video below. Click Me!


I started with modeling the character in zbrush on my surface tablet that offers pressure sensitivity. I started with a default model that zbrush provided and made significant changes to facial features, I mainly used it as a base model. I drew a layout of what I wanted my character to look like on paper before moving over to zbrush. I then modeled the character and all of the clothing in low-res, this provides it with as little amount of polygons as possible. This way I was able to keep the details without the excessive poly count this will make animating go faster and not be bogged down.

                                              The surface tablet that I have been working on.

Next I exported all the items separately into maya (character, shirt, pants, belt, etc...). I then went on to add all the different parts on separate layers in maya, this let me keep all items separate so they wouldn't be messed up during the rigging phase. Before I was able to start rigging the model I needed to do some changes to the arms in order for Humanik to work properly (the model needed to be in a perfect T pose), to fix the problem I combined the shirt and character together and moved the arms into a T pose. I then separated the shirt from character and hide the layer, so I could focus on the character. Now I am ready to start rigging.

With the help of lynda.com I was able to learn how to use Humanik rigging system in maya. This type of rigging system in maya is wonderful to use (if done correctly) it makes animating more realistic and easier to do (it does most of the work for you). I started with opening Humanik and creating a new skeleton, then it was just a matter of aligning all of the joints and bones into the correct places on the mesh (A trick that I used is to lock the mesh/character layer so you can use it as a reference without accidentally moving the mesh and ultimately messing it up). After that is done I locked the preferences in place and started on skinning the mesh.
                             This is the menu where you would find and create a Humanik rig.

     Once the bones are places in the correct places, if done correctly this should be entirely green.

This is what the skeleton in maya would look like.

Now that the skeleton is put into place I added skin which required me to select the mesh (just the character, none of the clothes or extras) and the skeleton and select skin - bind skin - smooth bind this created a default skin that was quick and easy to create giving me the result I wanted in a short amount of time.
                   This is the menu for adding skin also includes which one I chose for this project.

I then started on creating the control rig. This is the step that I am at right now. So far all that I have done is created the control rig using Humanik (it was just like making the skeleton but it was a control rig instead) this gave Humanik its "power" or "magic". This allows Humanik to, if you moved the wrist down then Humanik would effect the rest of the joints in the body ex: if the wrist was moved down then the knees would bend and the character would lean to the side of the lower wrist. Also after Humanik is setup you can use default "skeletons/animation" in maya so that your skeleton and mesh mimics the default provided ex: a cartwheel.


                                            This is what the control rig looks like in Humanik

The next step after rigging would be to add textures to the character/ mesh. To do this step I would export uv maps of the mesh to photoshop where I can create detailed texture maps that I would be able to add to the existing mesh in maya. After that it is just a matter of fine tuning the texture to fit correctly to the mesh. I would repeat this process for each individual piece (shirt, pants, belt, character, etc...). I have not yet begun on this step but I plan on getting it done over the summer so that I can move on to other projects and further progress the current one. Although this project is taking awhile I am hoping to add this project to my portfolio for college or to possibly get an internship (that would be awesome).

                                             The software used for texturing the character.

My plans for the future will be to complete the control rig and have a successful character that I can animate a scene. The next steps that I have to get done include texturing and animating the character. I plan on working on it over the summer, my goal would be to have a rendered out scene/short animation before school starts again. I will try blog and  keep up with my progress through blogger. I can also later on go back on to blogger and show others what work I have done in the past. I have also been providing help to other students in my class, helping them with ideas and suggestions but also helping them with difficulties and obstacles that they have come across.

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AUG-27 UPDATE:

I have started animating the model that I have made using humanik, I have also quickly modeled out an obstacle course for him to do that is temporary to get the rough animation movements down, it will hopefully end up being textured and have a nice buildings around it to make it look nice and professional.
                                                           Animation of the model.

The obstacle course so far.

I am about halfway through key framing the scene. I have not yet begun to texture the clothes, skin, or background. I will probably go and ask someone from graphic design to have them make me the textures needed. I also plan on later on making the scene in the background around more detailed. I will start posting when I get a bit further in the project.

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NOVEMBER 17th UPDATE:

Its been awhile since I have done an update and I have made much progress on the animation. I have added clothes to the model, added a new background and turned it into more of a scene, refined the animation, started added textures and cameras and getting ready for the final render.

                                                              Character with clothing

In order for me to get the clothing to work correctly since I couldn't get maya nCloth to work without crashing or having other issues I ended up creating another skeleton for just the clothing and was able to apply it and then set the skeleton to follow the first skeleton with all the key frames.

Characters Clothing rig

Parenting rig

I have now added buildings to create an alleyway so that it looks much better than it did before. I still have to add a sky dome and finish the textures then its just a matter of creating all the cameras and setting them up to show the scene and rendering it out.

This is what the scene looks like now                                          

Created a small city 

Today I worked on lighting the scene I created street lamps and messed around with lighting settings to get the scene to have a night time feel to it. I achieved this by making the lights have a color tinge to them.

The scene with lights

Now I am just waiting to render out all of the camera angles. I have a total of 7 different camera angles. I have been having trouble with getting mental ray to work correctly for some strange reason with me having 2 different rigs (one for the character and one for the clothes) mental ray with render the clothes going through the key frames but not the character. So instead of using mental ray I have been just using maya software to render out all of my scenes. Then its just of matter of putting all of the scenes together and adding effects.