Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Maya Animation Tutorial's & Helpful Video's

I am still working away on some animation passes for my animation show case and I dont think I will have any big animation update's since I have just been working on my thesis the past two week's but I have been looking up some animation video's and though i would share my find's. I hope you find them as helpful and insightful as I did.

Animation Talks

first video, is from animschool's blog you should really check it out "Click Here" .
This is really how I like to approach animation, I try not to get to obsessed with keeping any animation because if it does not fit with the scene, motivation of the character or if it just is not on par with the rest of the animation dont be afraid to delete it ! Or if you have some nice animation but make's no sense for your scene you can always save it and keep it for your show reel as a separate piece of animation. But this video really get's that idea across. 


[Above - Tom Roberts Talks about animation and his process of learning 3D Animation]


This one is also from AnimSchool and you can find more video's simaler to this over on the animschool blog but its a great critic of some one's work and will give you an idea of how to think about your animation from many different aspect's. Its a long video but well worth watching. Also its by Mark Harris from pixar so pay close attention.



3D Animation Classes 

Kyle Balda 3d Animation Master-class

If you want to be a 3d animator you really need to watch this video, I found this really helpful in my preparation to do my own 3d character acting piece's for my animation showcase. 


Another very helpfull video, From Kyle Balda cover's the use of the f curve's/ graph editor for use in creating a walk cycle. This video has a lot of information the graph editor and dope sheet and how you can use the dope sheet to copy the animation from one limb to the other. 




If i come across any more good one's i will update this post or if i come across enough il make a new one at some stage

General Tutorial Recommendations 

So i will leave it at this and i would also like to recommend this you tube channel it cover's a lot of things in maya to do with dynamic's and other general thing's that are not geared towards character animation, Youtube/DeepfriedEctoplasem also the PolyFace guy is awesome haven't tried any of his tutorials myself but friends have recommended it, and it is a good resource if your trying to figure out how to rig and model. 



Monday, January 16, 2012

Before & After

This is my reworked action sequence number one again, Its a low res render i banged out to show my teachers/tutor people. Here's the previous versions and what will hopefully be my final one but i see one problem with it already the reaction to the door slamming seems a bit delayed but thats down to the darkness on the door you cant really see it hitting in the door frame, Also i didn't put the camera shakes back into this final one yet il kinda forgot about that oops. I re done some of his facial expressions.
The time code stamp is wrong on the re worked video =/ time stamps dont seem to like me.

Previous version


Version After Feedback Last Tuesday Jan 10th


(you tube seems to have sucked all the light out of the video) 

Saturday, January 14, 2012

Yawn 3 am




[did a little bit more on it this morning and rendered it out low res to see how it was looking]

Since I got the go ahead to scrap the third one (eh i think i did anyway) im fixing up these two a bit more, I hate hateeeee the run i had at the start of the second action sequence so i start to re do the start of it today so its coming along nicely, the 3rd part above looks kind bad in the video but its actually really nice or maybe im just tierd cause its 3am and ive just been drinking coffee and animating the past night or two. 

Anyway gonna try get another chunk of my thesis done tomorrow so il leave this for a few days unless i get animation itch. New run in the next update hopefully i made some refrence video's for it this time.

 Oww and im am such an idiot its not even funny the entire time i was using this model i thought i had no controles for the direction of the knee's so i was trying to move them by manipulating the feet, as they follow the foot control but then.. today... i found two little controls around his waste that rotate the knee's >_< .. sigh. 

Thursday, January 12, 2012

I guess i wasnt finished after all.


Feed back on this if you have any would helpfull thanks.


Right ok so After a meeting with one of my tutor's got some good feedback and recommended change's I cut a lot out like the big scratchy (pointless) part i had in and the hand wagging part towards the end but it wasnt a waste of because I can just render them out as separate bits of animation and stick it in with the final showcase. So this is some changes i made probably going to do a quick pass on the face before i go to bed. I like it but im not sure it has the character of the previous one i tried to make him look more scared cause the guy is walking into a dark room so he goes from yeahh what ever kind of pose to scared. 

I dont camera shakes in this one just because i havent redone that yet. And i spent god dam ages fixing the leg's. why do people need legg's anyway !! My momma always told .. she said
 "John Boy animaaamaatation would be a lotta easaaRrr if people had no limbs "

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Yay speed issue fixed

But nothing is ever that simple, a new problem has rared its ugly head i need to go in and fix some frames  where he turns to look behind him after the door slam's its way to stiff and THE FINGERRR that looks like an erect penis at some point. But i dont have time to do this right now but it wont take long to change and re render those few frame's i can also fix the speed issue on the second action sequence now, All thanks to Mo for showing me how to sort the image sequence in premier ( I was using after effects) but the dimensions came out wrong on and it has some odd line's in the quality of the video. But the speed is fine.

Sunday, January 8, 2012

Action Seq 01 Finished Rendered - more change's

Done dusted Decided to change the lighting spent all morning fiddling around with the render settings. It was to bright before and I think this is a nicer looking render. 

Animation change's: Slowed down the swing of his arm's went in and deleted some frames and that type of thing.
Facial Animation: I  done a second pass on his facial animation.
And fixed the Leg coming down at some point it was fairly off in the previous video. 


Action Sequence 2 : This is the version which i did not edit in after effect's the one in the last entry i used the trial version of tv paint and after effect's but tv paint kept screwing up the proportions of the image sequence so it looks kind of squished and blurry.  Anyway i just thought i would put this up aswell.


So right now i have 2/3 action sequence done. And 0/3 acting dialogue sequence done and a thesis to write by the 27th YAY  fun time's to come....

Saturday, January 7, 2012

Action Seq No2 again finished? kinda i think .. who knows.


Action Sequence 02 : Story Boards

These were part of the original action sequence story boards, As I said before i broke it into three smaller sequence's so I kept this part from the original one. I have currently just rendered from one view of a moving camera, I'l  need to render some different shot's but I kind of just like it from front view but im having a problems animating the camera. 

I have sketched out newer ones for this and the first action sequence as i was working on it I just haven't scanned them in I will just add them into this bog entry at some point but they are just loose etchings so you are not missing much.




Last Blast
 I change the running part and held some poses fixed some hands change some of the landing pose and held it a bit longer and change some other poses for better transitions from each key pose. I dont think anyone but would even notice them cause it goes kind of fast.I did animate him going all the way onto the top of the other pillar but the rig once again spazzing out so i decided to just leave it out. 

Render & Composited with After Effect's

Im a bit worried about the brightness I tried to bring it down, I never noticed how bright it got on the right side at some points and I think it may be taking away from the animation and the camera work could be better but I will have to edit this up with other shot's when i get the time.
Most likely I will do some more composting edits for this and see which is best I do like this one but in hind sight having the character's model white and the background light grey was idiotic and I dont know why I rendered all this out AGAIN WITH OUT COPPING ON....... I'l put it down a s. stressful and expensive Christmastime "holiday". Anyway that is all. 


Also watch the render and the playblast I am still loosing time from batch render's when I composite them with the same fps.

Thursday, January 5, 2012

The Animation Sweat Shop

Well ... still haven't touched my thesis .. ... . but eh.
Here are the story boards i worked of for the first action sequence i took them from my original idea which was a longer piece but then i  broke it down into 3 separate pieces keeping two piece's from the original story board and doing a entirely different third piece.




I started doing work last night thought I would make those changes to the first animation which i showed way back at our first animation showing, Going from some feed back from IADT's resident Overlord of animation Barry and basking in his advice for a while I tried do most of what we talked about but since im a bastard for using to many key frames so some things got a bit messy but i am happy with this now and wont be touching it again.

Also i uploaded this video last night after i rendered the entire thing out but decided this morning that it was shite and the shadows kept coming out blocky but thanks to some pro tip from my pal Ryan I was able to sort out the shadow issue's which you can see in the video below. After that video I added more to the animation because I wasnt really happy with it.

Still dont have a fecking clue why my batch render is playing at just under twice the speed of the playblast's.

Also here is the original one which I showed months ago




And this is the final animation for the first action sequence I dont think il make any change to this the scratching seem stupid but i was told if i was doing to do it to the extreme so i made it more extreme im happy with it although door slightly R tarded for want of a better word and I will have to render this out again at some point.




This is a rendered frame with the fixed shadow's



And now im tempted to try and talk my way into just having two action sequences because they are like 20 seconds each almost and I only need 30 seconds, Also the kid was using for the 3rd one has the crotch of an atomic donkey and just does not move well with the poses i set up so eh bleh il just work it out.