Category: 4.2 project 2

The final version

In the last version I added mouth movements and adjusted the movement curve to make the character move more smoothly.

This week I finished lighting and rendering, and edited the video.
Regarding the rendering, we used Deadline, the school’s render farm, which helped a lot and it took about three days to complete the rendering.

Summary

During the production process, we face many difficulties but we solved them by trying and supporting each other. For example, acting out animation references and adjusting the animation to them, and how to use movement patterns to make the character’s movements look more natural, as well as how to light the character (a flat light on the front gives the character a circle of light in the eyes to make them look more alive).

I also enjoyed designing the ship and building it. I have designed similar sci-fi scenes and vehicles before, but this was the first time I had the opportunity to do it in 3D, and I had a lot of challenges in the process, for example, there were a lot of mechanical parts on the ship that needed to be put together tightly, and it was a challenge to adjust the edges of the different objects to fit together properly. Last semester’s mechanical modelling course helped me a lot.There are many ways in which an effect can be achieved in modelling.

In group work, we all had different problems and we helped each other solve them, Jiaruo and Tang helped me when we were stuck, we analysed the subplots together, recorded the performance video and once a week we had a meeting to check each other’s work and give comments and feedback.

This is my production process which in the order of my workflow.

Finished animating the first ten shots this week, making the character movements. The movements of the little boy are more difficult than that of the robot. However, the performance reference video recorded earlier helped me a lot, and I was able to animate the character based on the reference video. However, there are still some details that can be improved.

For example, the speed of the character’s motion is too fast and needs to be slowed down. I use the motion curve to change the motion first, and then pull the time axis to slow down the motion speed.

Also, after the first time, the little boy’s expression looked stiff, but it got better after adding the blinking movement.

When the little boy walks and stops, he increases the inertial swing, not only the center of gravity of the body will change, but also the arms will change accordingly.

In this version, I did not hide the character. It can be seen that the model of the protagonist should be hidden when the first shot is rendered, and the same is true for the robot in the fourth shot. This will be resolved in the final render, next week I will look at the lighting effects of each shot in detail, fix the problems found this week, and start rendering.

Based on last week’s revision suggestions, the animations were improved, splines were made and lip shapes were added.

This week I learned how to make mouth shapes. When a character pronounces a word in the animation, it is not necessary to make animations completely according to the mouth shapes in real life, because sometimes it is necessary to capture key pronunciations to make it look smoother.

For example, when saying fine, the movement of the lips is to purse the mouth first, then move the corners of the mouth backwards, open the mouth but not fully open, revealing the upper and lower rows of teeth, and finally close the mouth, the corners of the mouth retract a little, and the lips do not seem to be drawn. A tense action.

Pay attention to the mouth movements of key syllables every time. It is helpful to animate the words as you say them. Because in this way, you can clearly know how the mouth moves during pronunciation.

This week we merged all the scenes, cleaned up all the history and sorted out the grouping and naming format of the files. I consolidated the indoor scenes, merged the spaceships, tunnels, all together, and reassigned the texture paths.

We have a huge number of maps in our group and if each object was specified in turn, each object would need to be re-patterned in each of the primaries, glow channels, reflections, normals etc. and repeated once for each object. This takes a lot of time, so here is a quick way to specify a texture, select File Import Editor under Window Options and select all files that need to be replaced, select a new path in the refresh, and then complete the batch assignment of textures, which can save a lot of time.

After that we started to animate, we divided the whole short film into three parts according to the workload, and I was responsible for the first ten shots. I finished the first four this week, and here’s the preview video for the export, and over the weekend we talked about what details we needed to add to each other’s shots, and it was really helpful for both of us. Don suggested that I could add the blink detail to the surprised shot of the boy.

The camera movement method of the second lens also needs to be adjusted. The lens is rotated in this version, and I will change it to pan and zoom out in a later version.

At the same time, the speed of the first four shots is generally a bit faster.

Next step, I will change the speed and continue to complete the remaining 6 shots.

I made blocking and this time is much better, but there are areas that could be optimised.

For example the character’s hand movement curve could be smoother and I think there are two areas that are difficult

The first is the movement of the eyes. When the character pulls out the key, she should focus on it, and when she shows it, she looks at the interlocutor. When she is finally ready to drop the key, one habitually confirms what is in her hand, and at this point her gaze should also be focused on the key.

The second point is the movement curve of the character. During the flipping of the wrist, attention should also be paid to the overall movement curve of the arm and the key.
And try not to adjust the

This blocking didn’t quite fit the reference, for example. when say fine my body moves down in my reference but in blocking the character does not do that. Geoger provided helpful advice and help me ted the keys which should be keying. and I will reblock the key poses and keep it simple next week.

Otimised the interior of the ship

1. Display
   The original display was specified by means of a luminous material channel and was directly attached to the original screen model, which was opaque and blurred and did not hit our desired effect.
   So I took reference from the hover screen in Iron Man and copied all the display planes, I guess it is possible to achieve the effect of transparent mapping by adapting the mapping of the transparency channel, I discussed this with the group and after many layers of attempts this is what I finally came up with

Methods

1. First don’t move the original model, make a separate copy of the face on top of the model
2. have a dark face (for the bottom)
3. copy or creat a new face (for the transparent mapping)
4. polygon with transparent mapping (base color, blue glow and transparent bottom, black and white channel: black base, glow part is white in geometry’s opacity)

Eeach screen can be detached and moved, and can be rotated. It is even possible to modify the light intensity to create a screen that appears and lights up as the ship starts up.

The interior of the ship without the display

The first version of the display looks blurred and does not rotate or move

Created a glowing material for the keyboard

Split the UV of the button and painted the material

Performance reference video

To create the reference video, I was mainly responsible for acting out the boy’s movements, using many of the elements taught in Geoger’s course, and we tried to be as concise and accurate as possible in representing the emotions and storylines of the characters.

Also recording a green screen reference video help us to create dynamic split shots, so that we can have a clearer idea of how to design and fine-tune the movements and angles of each shot later on in the animation process.

Recording of references and selection of lines

Idea: choose a film line production.

A mischievous character gets hold of a key prop and when the crowd surrounds him/her, the character throws away the object the crowd wants (something like a key).

I found this line from Pirates of the Caribbean and broke it down, I envisioned in my head time and time again the emotions and actions the character might have when saying the line and marked it over the top of the passage.
When the character says ‘fine’ she is helpless, but she pretends to compromise and then shows the key prop (the key) to the people around her, then the plot takes a turn as the character says ‘since it’s useless then I won’t keep it any longer’, after which the audio appears with people shouting ‘no’ I guess the main character might have lost the key and gives a smug look

Here is the reference video I recorded

and a two-dimensional draft of the drawing

This week I made the textures and lighting for the scenes, finished the textures for the tunnels and merged the interior scenes and tunnels together. Here I had a problem with how to apply the udemy mapping.I also added detail to the interior of the ship by modelling a launch button that the protagonist can press, adding buttons to the front of the ship’s dashboard, and after discussion with the group I decided to change the material of the buttons to a glowing material.

The interior of the tunnel is also illuminated, with a ring of light just enough to illuminate the scene inside the tunnel as the ship passes through.

• The lighting for this scene is divided into four sections:
• three planes of light on the roof
• The self-luminous wall on the left
• Glass on the right, through which the light from the outdoor scene (trees) comes in
• In addition to this there is a spherical scene light.

I made a model of the button and I wanted it to be able to be placed stably on top of the control panel, right in the middle. This fits the lens when the little boy shoots down.

Next I will split the UVs of these models and continue to create the spaceship display