Yu 3D Animation

FMP showreel:

Summary:

In the FMP project, I created the model, mapping, binding and animation. The lighting rendering was relatively simple basic lighting and rendering. My goal for the FMP project was to complete the entire process of 3D animation by using software such as MAYA, Zbrush, and Substance Painter. I did as much work as I could in the limited time available and understood the 3D animation process better. One small regret was that I didn’t set my rendering parameters very high due to time constraints.

I really gained a lot of knowledge during my time at UAL. I learned Maya, ZB, Houdini, 3DE and other software. And my research skills have improved a lot compared to before. I now make it a habit to start researching pre-production work before starting any task. This has saved me a lot of time in the subsequent production work.

Thanks to my teachers, Alan and Luke, for supporting me with many ideas for the final FMP. Whenever I was confused, they were always on hand to answer my questions in tutorials and help me think about things in a new way. Fortunately, through the FMP program, I have a more concrete idea of what I want to do with my work.

I am grateful to my classmates and friends for encouraging each other and giving me more courage to take on the project. I am also grateful to my family for their constant encouragement when I felt anxious due to the pressure of work and school and for telling me to keep trying harder.

Plans for the future.

I am currently working as a teaching assistant at university, so I will continue to work in the field of 3D computer animation in the future. After working on FMP, I have become more familiar with the whole animation process. My university’s basic 3D animation course currently includes modeling, materials, binding, animation, lighting, and rendering. As I am now a support teacher for the foundation course, I need to be very familiar with the whole process of 3D computer-generated animation to help students when they have problems. I also realize that I am very interested in character animation, so that I will be focusing more on character animation in the future.

Although the FMP project is over, I will continue to learn new 3D computer animation techniques to improve my professional skills in my future work and life. My time at UAL is not the end of my studies. I will take the knowledge I have gained and the research mindset I have developed with me and move on!

Start to work on light rendering!

Because if you only render the model, the picture will not look very beautiful. So I imported a shared scene resource, imported the animation, and then recreated the lights.

I used a lot of area light in the light rendering part and used skylight for auxiliary lighting. Considering that the scene’s lighting wants to feel a little foggy, I turned on the atmosphere value in the rendering settings.

Because one side of my scene is a wall and the other side is transparent glass. So I use the side of the glass as the main light source for light production, and the light in other parts will be relatively weak.

Setting diagram of some lights:

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Atmosphere setup diagram:

Scene light model display diagram:

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Considering that the rendering time cannot be too long, my rendering parameters are not very high.

Render settings:

Render presentation:

The following job is to edit and synthesize the video!

Start making the third animation!

This animation is a character’s personalized walk.

Video reference:

I’m going to make a cycle animation for the walking animation so that I can make only one cycle of walking and then let the animation cycle by itself.

Notes of the walk animation:

(1) Contact: This is the start of an artificially set up step process. At this moment, both of the character’s feet touch the ground. The body leans forward and the arms swing naturally, with each arm swinging in good coordination with the movement of the corresponding leg to maintain balance and thrust.

(2) Drop Point:In this phase, the character’s legs are slightly bent and the body and center of gravity drop. The heel of the hindfoot is lifted. The speed is accelerated due to gravity. The descent is a process of releasing energy. The character’s arms are at their furthest point and then swing in the opposite direction.

(3) Pass poss: In this process, the character’s front legs are straightened and the weight shifts to the front legs. The body and center of gravity rise. The body leans forward and tends to fall forward soon. The hindfoot leaves the ground and steps forward. It is natural to conserve energy when walking, so the character’s feet are raised as low as possible. The double continues to swing

(4) Highest point:At this moment, the character’s body and centre of gravity are highest and the leg supporting the centre of gravity is straightened (i.e. the front leg in the previous phase). The original back leg will continue to step forward, and as the body leans forward and is about to lose its balance, the heel of that foot lands and the body maintains its balance. As the body rises, the speed slows down and the character builds up potential energy.

(5) Ending point: This is the end of the step process. At this point our feet slide downwards and our heels will land gently on the ground first, keeping the body balanced without falling over. At the end of this process, the feet land on the ground and the body and weight return to the contact state again, but in the opposite position. The moment it ends is also the beginning of the next step, which differs from the previous one in that the next step takes the other leg.

(6) This stage is the descent of the other leg. As we walk, our lower leg provides us with momentum.

Step length of the character:

We usually consider the stride length of a normal person walking normally in his natural state to be equal to his shoulder width. However, this is not a definitive figure and will vary to a greater or lesser extent for each individual. Some characters or cartoonish characters may vary more than others, so it is important to consider each case on its own merits. In some cases, the length of a character’s stride or other characteristics of the walk are specifically set by the designer to express a certain personality or mood.

The timing and tempo of the walk:

When we set 24 frames per second for animation, it is customary to think of a normal walk as 12 frames per step, or half a second.

This is two steps per second. For a slightly faster walk, it could also be 16 frames. The pace of the walking time depends on the specific characteristics of the character and the actual situation. For example, a rushed walk will have a faster pace than a leisurely stroll, a shorter person will have a faster pace than a taller person, etc.

Animation Layout:

Feedback:

Alan suggested that the curve of the upper body’s spine could be a little more curved when the character personalizes his walk. This would make the character’s upper body look more flexible. Although I have adjusted the curve of the spine for the animation, it still doesn’t look that obvious. But the curve is very easy to adjust, I just need to rotate the controller of the upper body. And I’m animating a loop! This way I only need to modify the first keyframes and then the rest of the animation will be the modified animation.

The reworked animation:

Animation layout after importing the scene:

Summary:

This time, I always remind myself to remember to make the arc curve of the controller animation of the waist and crotch. In this way, my female anti-hero model can become more charming when walking. Although I also made the radian curve of the upper body, it didn’t look very obvious at first. Therefore, when making animation, we need to rationalize and exaggerate the state of real performance so that the animation can be more ‘active.’

Start making the second animation.

The second animation I want to make is a cool kick animation. Yes, it’s a continuous kick. I once made an animation that only kicked once. It’s really hard. At that time, the keyframe of my kick was not made accurately, and there was a problem with the IK controller of the model leg, so I basically animated every frame of all controllers at that time. So this time, I challenge kick animation again.

This is the reference video I found:

References：

The moves I want to make [kick], [spinning jump kick] and [stored kick]. These three kicks would look great together. The Taekwondo video footage I found was perfect for the animation style I wanted to create. The kick animation also needs to focus on the rhythm of the movements, as the rhythm when storing the force needs to be slightly slower so that there is a slight pause in the force. On the other hand, the kicks need to be a bit more rhythmic, so that the legs kick out quickly, which gives the movement a more powerful feel.

As with the previous parkour animation, it was impossible to animate the controller’s movement under the character’s feet (the controller that controls full-body movement). So I needed to animate the movement of the character model’s foot controllers and waist controllers for the character itself.

Once I had imported the reference material into Maya, I started to plan the keyframes that I needed to create. I planned to create keyframes 1, 8, 9, 12, 17, 22, 25, 29, 34, 37, 41,48, 50, 54, 65 first.

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The keyframe animation is not natural at this point. This is because the keyframes have not been added and the animation curve has not been adjusted. As long as I don’t add keyframes and adjust the animation curve, the character animation is missing a lot of power. So I will continue to polish my character’s animated kicking motion.

This time I added more keyframes than the last parkour animation because the jumping kick was a bit of a pain. Sometimes the leg seems out of the controller’s control and there’s always a jitter. So I had to check it frame by frame and then make changes. The most annoying thing was that when I finished all the animations and used the animation curve panel to adjust the rhythm of the movements, some of the controllers would have problems like the body would twist unnaturally a bit, the leg would shake and so on. So I modified it again for ages and ages.

The final animation curve panel:

Animation layout:

Animation layout after importing the scene:

Summary:

Kick animation is actually very challenging. Because I need to rotate the character model and adjust the controller. I also need to adjust the position of keys on the timeline on the animation curve panel. Sometimes there will be strange animation errors, so I have to modify them over and over again.

As a little additional knowledge, the kicks of the characters in my reference video are basically the same height the first two times, but in the process of making animation, I found that the animation of kicking at the same height twice is very strange. Just like the character’s leg is controlled by the line and can only kick this height. So I decided to increase the first kick’s height and the second kick’s speed. In this way, the character animation of kicking looks more vivid and interesting.

Begin animating!

I am starting my first animation!

I’m going to film my character tumbling and jumping in action. I wanted to make this animation because my character should have a cool aerial tumble. Then I remembered parkour and the tumbling action of the Avengers’ Black Widow character.

This is the reference I discovered:

I am going to take one of the movements and make it. The movement I want to make is a combination of [run] [jump] [crouch] [roll] and other movements.

References：

After importing the reference material in Maya, I started to plan the keyframes I needed to create. From my previous experience of animating, I knew that I could not animate the movement of the character’s foot controller (the controller that controls the displacement of the whole body). So I needed to animate the movement of the character model’s foot controller and waist controller for the character itself.

I plan to start by creating 0,3,8,12,18,21,24,28,31,34,38,42,47,51,56,62,76 keyframes.

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However, at this point, the keyframe animation looked very strange and the model appeared to stall when it flipped in the air. After checking, I found that I hadn’t added intermediate frames, which caused my model to move horizontally in a straight line. During a tutorial with Alan, he told me that the model’s jumping, crouching and rolling movements felt underpowered. The movement of the characters felt light and airy. After some discussion, I continued to polish my animation. I increased the height curve of my character’s jumps and more carefully adjusted the rhythm of my character’s animations. The character movement rate was too even and did not have a compressed burst of power when jumping. So! Work began on the animation curve too!

This time I focused more on the rhythm and power of my character’s movements and added a lot of keyframes.

The final animation curve panel:

Animation layout:

Animation layout after importing the scene:

Summary:

The jump + flip character animation was extremely difficult to create. Almost the entire character must be reversed. The character in the animation I just finished didn’t feel powerful when crouching or jumping up, which was a major issue. It was extremely difficult for me to modify. The character’s model would pass through if I crouched a little deeper. After observing my character, I discovered that her legs were too long, causing the animation to falter when she crouched due to the folding of the legs. My first concern when designing the character was the model’s aesthetics (yes, I had a lot of fun creating the character’s long legs when I first modeled it because I liked the design). So the entire animation process taught me a lot, such as how model creation and binding affect character animation. I will be more meticulous when creating character models in the future. Fortunately, I discovered a solution in which I could rotate the character model’s crotch down through the crotch controller and move the total controller for the waist backward before moving it down. This gives it a more natural appearance.

Start rigging the model.

Because I’m going to use the advanced selection 5 for rigging, I can basically follow the plug-in tutorial.

Select biped.ma in the fit column. This option is the human bone structure. Click Import to generate half of the bones. Then I began to adjust the position of bones and characters.

Advanced selection 5 plug-in tutorial:

This process is repeated modification and adjustment. Let the automatically generated skeleton match to the model, and then adjust the position.

Adjust the position of bones and characters. After adjustment, click [build advanceskeleton] to create bones and controllers.

Generated symmetrical bones and controllers:

Later, I readjusted the rigging creation of my model because I needed to add bone rigging to the hair of my model.

Select the character model, click [+select deformjoints] in [Deform], and then click[set smooth bind options]to open the skin settings.

In the [normalize weights] option turn to [post] and click [apply]. If you adjust the controller at this point, you will see that the model has moved with it.

I also made controllers for the character’s facial expressions along the way. But this time my FMP project will focus more on the body animation of the model, so I’ll add more details on the expression binding when I get a chance.

Next up was the happy time of brushing up on the weights.

As you can see, in the properties bar include options such as, sort by: default by level; mode: draw, select, draw select; and draw operation. In the drawing mode is mainly to switch the operation mode reasonably, with the brush size, depth and the size of the weight opacity, value to repeat the operation. To achieve the final desired model suitable for animation.

When we select the need to paint skin weight, the box at the top of the properties bar will show the bones of the model corresponding to the skin. Click on any bone and the model controlled by the bone will be displayed in the model. Select each bone to see the corresponding skin range and use the brush to adjust it. Since painting skin weight takes a long time and is basically a repetitive task all the time, let’s show how it looks after painting the weights.

Some video tutorials of paint skin weight on the Internet:

Method of brushing weights:

Replace in the weighting panel is to replace; it is to replace the original value with the value below. Add in the weighting panel is to add; it is to add the following value to the original one. Scale is subtracted in the weighting panel; this means subtracting the following values from the original. smooth in the brush weights panel; this is to smooth over the original, so that the weights are not too stiff. The brush size can be adjusted by pressing and holding the B button and then using the left mouse button. One thing to note: brush from lower levels to higher levels.

After making the model of skin weight:

Shoulders:

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Legs:

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Rigging display:

The rigging of the model is basically completed. Let’s start animation part!

The basic creation of the character model has now been completed.

Next, I will complete the UV’s and the painting of the materials.

Three views of the model：

The process of making UVs is rather tedious. It is a constant cutting on the face of the model like a tailor. I’m aware that the rizomuv software can also easily create UVs (I used rizomuv when creating building UVs before, which is really convenient). This time, however, I created the UV in Maya myself. In fact, both methods can produce perfect UV images; it all comes down to personal creative habits.

Character UVs :

Clothes UV:

I paint materials for the character and clothes in Substance Painter and PS.

https://youtu.be/05ZvvhceRCE

Material mapping of character models and costumes:

Anyway, finished texture and UVing of the character!

Summary:

Although making UVs was complex, but painting textures was really interesting. I enjoy making textures for characters, this step makes the character looks better.

Starting work on character modeling. My plan is to use MAYA and Zbrush to create the model.

Here is a three-view of my previously designed character.

Videos to assist in learning to create character models:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voQnBl4QO5k

Creation of the character’s body:

I created a basic body model of the character in Zbrush and then imported it into MAYA. It looks pretty good.

Because we can create the desired human model with the hand-painting pad, it is very simple to create basic character models in Zbrush. It saves a significant amount of time when compared to creating models in Maya (or maybe not so much).

Next, I created the hair for my model, again in ZB, and then used the topology to reduce the number of faces of the hair.

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Final basic model:

Briefly review the Maya body model creation notes.

1. Create a polygon and adjust the shape of the chest and abdomen in sections,

2. Use [insert edge loop tool] in [edit mesh] to add a circular line on the torso surface to adjust the radian of the whole body. Then select the field lattice of the chest and execute [extract] to form the chest shape.

3. Add line segments on the torso, extrude the body’s big arms, and adjust the shape.

4. Extrude the jib under the boom

5. Add a chest segment and adjust the shape. Modify the abdominal segment and adjust the shape.

6. Add segments and extrude hips

7. Add segments and extrude legs

8. After adjusting the overall shape of the trunk and limbs extrude the position of joints

9. Adjust the wiring of the whole torso

Summary： ZB can directly carve and topology model, it’s really convenient!

Creation of the character’s clothing:

Because the character costumes I design are basically symmetrical, I usually create only half of them later in the creation process, and then [Ctrl+Shift+D] the clothes model to do the symmetrical processing after the symmetrical model is connected. The character’s costume is basically fitted, so it is possible to create the character’s costume in MAYA. I also tried using Marvelous Designer to create the trousers. As the character’s shoes are close-fitting boots, I extracted the calf’s face from the character’s body model to create the shoes to facilitate the subsequent binding. Similarly, as the character’s gloves are also fitted, I extracted the part of the character’s arms for the gloves.

Marvelous Designer Jeans Reference:

Display of character cloth model:

Creation of models for character accessories (forehead ornaments and necklaces):

Three views of the character modeling:

Character modeling video:

Summary:

This week’s model creation went not bad. (However, a lot of changes were made.) I’m still struggling with the model’s hair because the bindings and animations will be difficult to create afterward (as there are more controllers and animation keyframes to create). But I really like the design of this character model, so I’ll try to overcome the production difficulties as much as possible! The next step is to draw the texture in SP software.

I have completed my character set up and this time, I will be looking for some reference drawings to complete the design and three views of my FMP project character.

A brief review of my FMP character set up.

FMP’s character design.

Name: Amodei

Gender: Female

Age: 22

Characteristics: Has a broken demon horn on her head

Character Backstory: Amodei was born into a tribe of demons. Amodei’s father is the chief of the demon tribe and uses his power to protect the tribe, and he has always taught Amodei to grow up as soon as possible so that she can take over the task of the chief. But Amodei prefers to be an adventurer, exploring the interesting things around her, and she doesn’t like to be tied down to anything, preferring to live a life of freedom. An enemy attack killed Amodei’s father and there was no one left to protect Amodei and her tribe, but Amodei grieves as she remembers her father telling her to grow up and defend her tribe. As she watched her tribe suffer, Amodei’s anger made her more powerful. As Amodei fought her enemies, she managed to repel all the attacking tribes, but she also lost one of her demon horns. The horn is the source of a demon’s power and with the loss, Amodei was no longer the strongest demon in the tribe. But Amodei realises her responsibility and is ready to take her tribe with her to find a new home.

I found some references:

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Because I wanted to create an anti-hero character, the hallmark of (most) anti-heroes is that the character doesn’t look like a good guy or even like a villainous character. So I will focus more on designs that are more criminal or unjust for my material collection.

I will focus on the demon characters. I like the design part of the demon horns in this part of the reference artwork.

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I think the second of these images is more appropriate for me to refer to the one-horned demon. I could design the character as if the hair covered the other side of the broken horn.

I really like the hair on this character. She has ornaments like cat ears on her hair. If I design a character that needs to hide the broken horn, I can use this hairstyle to help hide her weaknesses.

But worn hair can easily cause little problems for the character during their adventures. For example, tidying up their hair can become more of a problem. So I would prefer a neater hairstyle. (But I still want the character to have a long hair design.) I found a reference picture that I really like, which shows the character with her hair braided to make it look easier to move around.

The forehead ornament style of this character’s design is magical and mystical, and I could also add a gemstone ornament to the character’s forehead.

I liked these characters’ styles and felt that something in their design had a sense of conviction alongside the evil villain. (I felt that way). Through the different character design styles, I had more ideas on how to portray my character. I designed my character as a man who needs to lead his people on migration to find a new place to live. So for my character’s costume design, I wanted to make her wear something easier to move around in or a less flowy costume. I didn’t want to design a character who would go on an adventure in a dress. I would also focus the costume design more on trouser suits.

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I have found two reference images of demons in trouser suits. This costume obviously makes the character look more adventurous or makes the character look less flashy.

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Final design draft:

The character design retains a few of the most important elements I wanted: broken horns, long hair, and trouser suits. For the reference of the character’s colour design, I decided to refer mainly to the following images:

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The purple skin with the silvery-white hair looks more like a demon with great power now. But the broken horn reflects the character’s weakness or imperfection in power.

Summary:

I was always thinking over the process of designing the character and felt that this anti-hero character was set up to be more of a villain in terms of image. Elements such as demons, for example. The anti-hero nature is brought out more in the character’s own experiences or growth. I have discussed a lot of research on anti-heroes in the thesis, including anti-heroes’ behavioral and linguistic manifestations. For the FMP project, I would like to focus more on the whole process of 3D animation (character design, model creation, binding, animation, lighting, rendering).

I will be working on the initial setup for FMP.

Initially, I intended to create an animation of an anti-hero character in order to better represent my portrayal of the anti-hero character on screen, using the story content as a vehicle. However, due to the short amount of time available to complete the project, I chose to create the modeling, material, rigging, and animation for my FMP project.

For my FMP project, I wanted to create a female demon character. The anime initially inspired me, ‘Re:Life in a different world from zero’, the character of Ram. Ram was once a genius and the strongest being of the demon clan, but he lost his only horn to protect his sister Rem and was unable to fight for long, known as the “hornless ‘demon god’.

Inspired by this, I wanted to create a female demon character with a broken demon horn on her head to act as an anti-hero. In my thesis research, I mentioned that an anti-hero is a character who does not meet traditional heroic standards in certain areas, such as spirit, qualities and abilities. However, the character also has heroic qualities or behaves in a way that meets heroic standards. So I wanted to create a demon character, using characteristics such as evil itself to contrast with the traditional righteous hero. But the character would also have some heroic actions of his own, such as protecting others or being brave enough to sacrifice, which would meet the heroic criteria.

FMP’s character design.

Name: Amodei

Gender: Female

Age: 22

Characteristics: Has a broken demon horn on her head

Character Backstory: Amodei was born into a tribe of demons. Amodei’s father is the chief of the demon tribe and uses his power to protect the tribe, and he has always taught Amodei to grow up as soon as possible so that she can take over the task of the chief. But Amodei prefers to be an adventurer, exploring the interesting things around her, and she doesn’t like to be tied down to anything, preferring to live a life of freedom. An enemy attack killed Amodei’s father and there was no one left to protect Amodei and her tribe, but Amodei grieves as she remembers her father telling her to grow up and defend her tribe. As she watched her tribe suffer, Amodei’s anger made her more powerful. As Amodei fought her enemies, she managed to repel all the attacking tribes, but she also lost one of her demon horns. The horn is the source of a demon’s power and with the loss, Amodei was no longer the strongest demon in the tribe. But Amodei realises her responsibility and is ready to take her tribe with her to find a new home.

Characterisation ideas:

The character of Amodei is designed to be more of a naughty character, I think. She doesn’t realise in the beginning what she needs to protect or accomplish, or even that she doesn’t care what others think. But after great danger and shock make Amodei realise that her life has changed drastically, she is forced to grow up, or rather act in her way to complete the heroic act of protecting her tribe.

The anti-hero should be reflected more in the setting of the character’s character behaviour. I wanted to set the character up as negative, unmotivated, and often retreating when encountering difficulties. The character knows what she needs to accomplish, but she is not a perfectionist or heroic character because of her nature. She is not strong or spiritual, and this can easily lead to her retreating.

Feedback:

I reported back to Alan on my planning for the FMP project. He thought I was doing too much content. He suggested that I should focus more on one area of research, such as animation or modelling. But because of the demands of my job, I may need to be more familiar and conversant with the whole process of animation production in future. Only when I am familiar with the whole animation process will I be able to be involved in teaching at the school or help my students make animations. So I still wanted to show in my FMP project that I could complete the whole animation process.

In fact, after some discussion, I decided that there wasn’t enough time to do a full animation film. So I will finish the character modelling, material mapping, binding, lighting and rendering first, and then do some simple character animation.