Animation Blog Summary

i am very proud of my lip sync sequence as paired with the audio it looks like the model is saying the words, although parts of the sentence are slow i think i did a good job editing the audio file to sync with the video.

secondly i am very happy with how realistic the horse walk sequence is. although i still see imperfections with it and would like to correct if time wasnt a limitation.

understanding how the cameras worked and how to use the camera to my advantage was challenging for me but in the end i think that i have used them to great effect. especially with dodgy sections of the animation.


i have already talked about what i found difficult in previous post.

but the main parts were.

various sections of the animation constantly changed if i made changes to frames which were after it on the time line which got annoying and wasted lots of time.

and the camera movement which in a way was related to the above issue allowed me to break the animation into seperate section, but involved alot of coping and pasting x,y and z value to get the camera into the correct position to follow on from the previous one.

i have 2 things that are on my storyboard but not in the final animation.

1: rector- i planned on having the cart roll throught the puddle and the wheel causes the water to ripple and splash. i was unable to do this as the scene had to be animated due to the problems i was having with the horse.

2: the final scene of the waggoner leaving, i couldnt see any way that i could animate the man getting back on the cart and riding away as it was very complex.

also there were things that i had intended on including in the scene such as trees. but after failing to get them to move with the scene when animating i had to remove them. secondly the render time took a massive hit with the trees included.

render time was a massive hinderance to getting more detailed animation and model, due to the amount of time it took.

there are many things in the animtion i am not happy with but with good camera work i have managed to hide.

the skinning on the waggoner around the crotch is quite poor when he is sitting on the cart his lap is very deformed and doesnt look very good. also his uvw map has parts on it where it is patchy and the skin tone changes with a visable line.

the skining on the horse is very good but i possitioned the bone incorrectly so in when i animated it and possitioned the limb properly the mesh is stretched, also as i said in the creation post the material isnt the most detailed and could be made more realistic.

i would like to explore further into animaiting the partical effects as i think that would have made the lip syc section look realy cool. where as the current way of doing it doesnt look as i wanted it to. also the video of the lip sync sequence is very slow and it would have been more effective if i had made the video match the sound not the sound matcht he video.

my lighting is very basic which is one of the main areas i would like to improve, there are very limited lighting effects on the main scene, where as the ones on the cloud is very advanced and help to create realism to the clouds. the rest of the scene just doesnt get that feeling.

Animation

i dont have any screenshot for the rest of the animation.

Problems i encountered during the rest:

when i animated the horse i had to do it all manually and in doing so had the horse walking on the spot. when it came to moving the horse in the scene no matter how/ how many times i moved it every time i tried to animate it, it jumped back to the middle of the scene. this was very frustrating as the only way i could see how to solve it was to do the walk sequence again, which as i had already done 3 times that day wasnt a favorable option.
instead richard suggested animating the scene creating the same effect.
this was releaving and also competed easily and probly required less work than if i had tried to animate the horse and cart movement. matching the speed of the horse walk and wheel rotation was easy as i coudl track the points incontact with the ground easier.

another problem i was having involved the cameras moving eratically once i introduced a 3rd keyframe to their timeline. it would make it travel way past the keyframe i set to them come back. sometimes this was rectified using the curve editor but not always. i got around the problem by using multiple cameras and possitioning the next one once the animation was changing from the path i wanted it too.

hercules animation.

for the hercules sequence i moved the transparent face through the cloud.

i added the morpher modifier. and copied the face a few times. and did the following letter mouth movements: m/b/p, a/i, n (which also covers most of the remaining alphabet), O, W, E and L






each time i crated a new keyframe i had to go back through the scenes to set the values back to the ones i set as they kept changing. this was the most time consuming/ frustrating part. i ended up writing the values for each key frame down as i kept forgetting what was at each frame.

hercules

i imported my hercules face into the scene to set it up for the lip sync section.









as its not possible to animate anything with the cloud partical effect on it i have decided to duplicate the face and apply it to that and with the original have it at a high transparency level so you can still see the outline but the clouds are visable through it.






i scaled the border on the face to where i wanted the cloud to be.










and then applied the partical effect











due to the shape not being as large as the cloud tunnel i reduced the partical size and amount accordingly.

horse animation

i found some reference images on google of the horse walk cycle which helped alot.
i did this sequence 3 times. the first time i had problems with the planted foot keyframes and it kept lifting the foot off of the floor. the second attempt was a problem with the bipeds possition due to the movement the sholder joint allows it kept swinging outwards and kicking the legs up in the air.
the 3rd attempt does look the most natural.


on the left is the reference image i used to position the horses limbs.

i chose 5-10 frames per keyframe to allow the animation to flow as shorter would have looked jerky.

































the thing i found the most challenging was possitioning the rear legs properly as they dont move the same as a human, and bend both ways.

horse uvw map cont.

i opened the uvw editor and scaled the faces down.










i then used the names i had given them to select each seperate section, and scaled them to fit the grid.








this is the map after editing in photoshop.

















and applied to the mesh.

i added a noise effect to help make it look like fur, as the horse isnt featuring too heavily in the animation i didnt put too much detail into it.

i created a spline to attach the cart and horse together i then made it into a bar



the waggoner cart and horse in the scene.

horse uvw map

i decided to label each section of the mesh like i did with my panda in the 1st semester as the shape is very complex.


by highlighting and faces it enables me to give them a name which i can then select in the uvw map editor.

horse biped

i decided to use the preset biped as it seemed too complicated with the boning tool.
i possitioned the pelvis in the correct place and possitioned the legs in the rear legs.







i bent the biped over and scaled each bone to get it to fit the mesh. i used the 2 pony tail bones for the ears.








i scaled the bone to the very surface of the mesh as this would help with the skinning.










testing the ear shows that it works well in controlling the ear.

horse cont. 5

after applying a symetry modifier and mesh smooth i noticed there were a couple of seams on my model.









one on the neck









and one on the back.









i discovered i had missed a few verticies when welding and welding them fixed the problem.

horse cont. 4

i selected the polys around where the leg is and beveled them a small amount.









i then copied the edges down to create the leg. and addded some details such as the knee and hoof.








and did the same for the front leg.

horse cont. 3

once i got the back of the horse i needed to scale the polys alot to get themm to fit.











it was also easier to create polys than copy the edges












after fillign the hole i did alot of moivng of vertiecs to give th horses body and neck a natural realistic shape.








just the legs to do.

horse cont. 2

head modelled












i then created the ear

i did this by pulling the edge up and creatign extra polys within that shape









i then used the same technique that i used on the head to progress down the neck to the body










each time i copied the edge i welded the outer vertices to the border.

horse cont.

once i pulled the edges down enough times i welded the vertices together on the other side.













after each time i copied the edges i rotated to the front and moved the vertices to the shape of the horse head. this was difficult without a decent reference






















i then created polys to finish the head.









after finishing the head i moved the vertices to shape the horse head better.