Post 24 - Narrative in stills

(Animation sequence in 12 stills)

Here is the roughed out narrative in stills. These are labeled with the same 'shot' names as the previous post. These stills have been taken from the roughed out, early version of the animation. (These can be made full screen by clicking on the images)

At this stage, about 40% of the animation has been roughed out, with the remaining 60% to be established. A lot of the roughed out animation has been created using the timing and pace of the camera I am using in the scene. No that I have got the angles and timing of the camera worked out, my work flow is as follows:

1) Rough out animation, according to where and when the camera in the scene is positioned.
2) Stage one of refining movements and rough playback using the time-line playback function (attention to be made towards facial, secondary limb and joint orientation).
3) Create a short render of the sequence (usually between 5 and 15 seconds long for study).
4) Analyse clip, pick out any flaws and begin stage two of refining / tweaking of key frames / timing.
5) Repeat three and four until I am happy with the outcome (although towards the final stage of polishing and tweaking the animation, several additional stages of tweaking will take place).

Post 23 - Initial Animation: The Narratvie

I have ironed out the basic plot of this animation. 

Shot  One
Essentially the animation starts in the middle of a battle, where a simple last resort objective must be fulfilled. The 'human' character (protagonist) has the objective of reaching a lever labeled 'SELF DESTRUCT' and initiating the process. This is located in the center of the scene and much of the plot revolves around this spot. The camera will pan and rotate, showing the robot (enemy) character on the other side of the war torn environment. The robot will be patrolling the surroundings (possibly in the search for the protagonist). shot one shows both characters, the lever and that they are armed with the same rifle. 

Shot Two
The human runs for the lever. He runs down some steps, where the camera simply pulls out from his facial expression and rotates to see him running for the lever. 

Shot Three
He is spotted by the robot, who then takes several steps, kneels to take aim and fire. 

Shot Four 
A brief shot, featuring the protagonist reaching the lever, pausing for a moment before initiating a 'SELF DESTRUCT' sequence. This will feature several facial expressions from the rushing towards the lever to just before pulling it. 

Shot Five 
Slight pan, then front view of the robot. It fires the gun and the camera follows the bullet across the scene. The bullet hits the human when a slow motion 'death' sequence is shown (hopefully showing an understanding of key framing in relation to timing and movement). This rotates aroun the character until he hits the ground. 

Shot Six 
Shot from a low angle with the dead human character in the foreground and shows the robot in the background throwing it's gun the ground (slight panning to establish the scene. Just as this happens, a projectile falls from sky, hits the planets surface and causes a huge explosion, which engulfs all in the scene. The robot will be shown to acknowledge this with its arms in the air and will be engulfed just before the main character. This will be shown using artificial 'camera shake' and will grow in strength as the explosion wave gets closer to the camera. This is where the scene will end.

In total, the animation will be made up of six short sequences. Two options which will be considered for this are as follows:

1) Uses different cameras for each sequence, render them out in different clips and then edit them in a video/audio editing application. This would allow for several versions of the scene to be saved out and different scenes to be managed in each file. In turn, this would allow for a smaller time-line and a more bite size structure to the work flow.

2) Use the same scene/file and camera and create different sequences by having the end of one sequence at key frame 100 and the beginning of the second sequence at key  frame 101, thus creating the illusion of an edited video. This would mean that a much longer, single time line would need to be worked on, requiring the need to stretch, shrink and scroll the time line.

After looking into both methods, I have decided to opted for option two. Although this means that I will need to navigate across a much longer time-line, I believe that this will make it easier to manage the scene by using one camera, does not require a separate program to edit the clip/s, and means that all movements and assets will be in the same file. This will keep the whole project within 3ds Max.


The next post will show this shot by shot using several screen grab images.

Post 22 - Scene and Costume Construction

Constructed scene (best viewed with the 'full screen' mode)



This is my scene that I shall be using as the backdrop for my animation. As mentioned previously, all elements have been sourced and the buildings have been manipulated / modified in order to create a semi-war torn surrounding. I have also created a simple 'Self Destruct' lever in the middle of the scene, which will drive the narrative. 

Using the skills gained from the previous tasks, I will begin to animate the scene. The scene will have two characters. One will be a regular Dee character, and the other shall be a robot (low res version of the same character). I have created several costumes for the main character, seen in this post, but I have chosen to go with the blue trousers and black t-shirt costume.

So far, I have found the Dee character to be extremely useful, versatile and manipulable. It has also been very easy to change the materials on the character to give it clothing (although I was a fan of the blue default, it looked too much like an alien and I felt a change would be a good decision).

Post 21 - Initial character poses

I have started to look into posing the base character rig (known as Dee, by Manuel Sierra) in a variety of poses. The reasoning behind this exercise is to help me visualise what the character is capable of conveying and how dynamic / successful certain poses could be when animated. 

Below is a short clip of the poses.

 

 

Dee character link: http://manny-cgcharacterart.com/Rig.html

Post 20 - Update to scene making

 UPDATE FROM THE LAST POST:


I attempted to create a scene from the book as mentioned in the previous post. It became apparent that at this stage, it would be wise to focus on the animation rather than spend a significant amount of time on modeling. For this reason, I have found a pre-made 'snowy mountain' scene. I then sourced a couple of buildings, which I feel match the look of my scene. these were from the same source (artist-3d.com). As my scene will involve weapons, I then sourced a rifle model (by Mikael Bowellan from 3dtotal.com). I believe that I would be able to model this, but again, I want to focus on animation and polishing. The specific links are available below.

I feel that it is a shame that I have not been able at this stage to make much in the scene, but I feel that the up side to this is that I can concentrate on getting the animation right. It is my aim in the future to learn how to fully rig and model characters.  

Scene link - http://artist-3d.com/free_3d_models/06nature_design.php?s=28&srt=

Buildings link - http://artist-3d.com/free_3d_models/01architecture_design.php?s=140&srt=

Weapon link - http://www.3dtotal.com/

Post 19 - Task Three Resources

I have decided to develop what I have learned from Tasks one and two and create a 30-40 second action sequence involving several characters. I will take a lot of inspiration from the full length live action advertisement for the XBox 360 game Halo Reach. I will be using the same character which I used in my Task one. The reason for this is because I am now familiar with it and it has been proven to be quick and intuitive to use.

I will customise the 'Dee' characters by giving them individual appearances. There will be a scene and other elements such as aircraft, guns and buildings. At this stage, I will be using pre-made buildings and weapons, but it is my aim to develop and create the scene. This will be a 'Snowy wasteland', inspired by both the recent downpour of snow, plus a tutorial from the book 'Deconstructing the Elements with 3Ds Max' by Pete Draper.

More info when I update.

Halo Reach Trailer Link - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKRlWLDWhGI

Post 18 - Task One Injury Animation & Evaluation

After a lot of research and working out the software, I have completed my Task One 'Main Animation'. This animation is 1000 frames long, which about 34 seconds in length. The sequence shows a walk cycle, which deteriorates into a limp and holding of the side. This then worsens with the other leg or knee becoming troublesome. This then finally ends with the character stumbling and falling. During the sequence, the character can also been seen to blink, and incorporates a level of facial expression, which adds to conveying distress, or injury.

In my opinion, I think that this is a success and fulfills the brief. It demonstrates a good understanding of what is involved in animating a full figure character and shows a brief knowledge of the effective use of a sweeping.rotating camera. However, as with any developmental work, there are some negative points. Firstly, in certain key frames the character's right hand (during the second phase of the walk cycle) appears to move away from the side of the body that it is suppose to be clenching. Although this was overcome by manipulating established key frames and adding additional  ones in, I personally still notice these little blips. Also, once I had a significant amount of key frames, I needed to extend the length of the time-line. However, when doing this the key frames were given a sort of 'squashed' look and made it much harder to separate frames which were close together. In addition, this animation technically only has four stages (walk, limp, severe limp, stumble/fall) I feel that it would of been more interesting to incorporate an additional stage (maybe a crawl cycle in between the third one and the stumble) Had I of had more time, this is what I would of looked into doing. Also, from looking into the 'Blade Runner' research, I feel that the character would of benefited from being injured s a reaction to something (i.e. shot or hit) This is something that I may develop in a later project.

To sum up, this process was a very intriguing one and allowed me to further my understanding of how to key frame a rigged model effectively. I picked up and built on knowledge about how to duplicate key frames and to manipulate facial and full figure motion. This task also helped me to understand the time line of 3Ds Max and how to gauge at what point to insert key frames. I have picked up a variety of methods for reducing the amount of time it takes to animate and was a very good insight into what considerations and planning are necessary; from acting out certain poses, to understanding the relationship and weight between a model's limbs and the situation they have been put into.

It is my hope that will learn from this task and continue to improve on my skills of this medium. I would also like to focus more attention to the motion capture and motion-builder route in the near future.