rahmel-raven

[rahmel-raven]

Character Development: Life Drawing EANI181

Week 1 Monday 8th October 2018

Today we were doing life drawings and creating character backgrounds and features. Firstly we in small groups in the class did the five W’s on making up a new character. I made three of them with a friend and went further by asking about its persona on one of them. I liked the little task but its something I'm always thinking about whenever I create a character anyway, so it was nothing new to me. Then we went on to life drawing. We had new faces meaning they had to learn the basics of life drawing again and so I had to go with it too. Knowing already the life drawing techniques, we went through similar tasks like before; through naming the action or feeling of the pose. The different task we did lastly was creating characters from shapes, which was an interesting turn for me. I didn't take it seriously because I'm so used to drawing the human body and “slightly exaggerating it”, but I guess it’s something new to take on. Didn’t learn much other than the same stuff I already know, but the tasks are fun so that's something. I still wonder whether I should do character design or animation, I always blinded myself thinking I could do both which is possible but reliable. 

[rahmel-raven]

Character Modelling & Rigging ANI18202

Week 1  Thursday 4th October 2018

Well, After a long break from Ravensbourne, its time to kick outta my relaxing seat and start workin’.  I love creating characters, its what I do on a daily basis. either from pre-existing characters to my own. Today we were tasked after class to take pictures of an object that is subjected to be a potential character. To then add those images to the program called Regard3D that will bring those singular images of that object into the 3D realm in which we can manipulate later in Maya.  

In this lesson, I learned the careful steps to doing this, I found it slow at first but I but it was easier to get to understand things faster. And of course, with simple steps comes with complicated problems when a step goes wrong. That's when I applied my object photos into Regard3D.

Later in the day, I found out that the problem was the size of the focal length of the images. I was told I can edit each images focal length in the program but that didn't seem to solve the problem. 

And with that, I have to put this task on hold and move on to the other task I was set to do for next lesson and that was documenting my testing on the new tool announced to me called Quad Draw in Maya.  

Using this tool felt fun to use and I can't wait to use it on the objects I will be using for characters. I just messed around with lines and used the shortcuts that I was told I could use to create a funny looking face on the sphere. Also before this post comes to an end here is an image of one of the objects I'm trying to make work in Regard3D.

I haven't done a process like this before. I still believe I'm new to 3D as I originate from 2D animation but It’s good to step out of my comfort zone once in a while. Plus I think doing this would be fun to do considering I find using the Quad Draw tool fun and flexible to use. I believe this tool is for sculpting other than using ZBrush and think this will be useful to me a whole whenever want a quick 3D character I would look at this tool. I would definitely use this tool in the future when the time comes for it, consider it noted.

[rahmel-raven]

The Animation Industry: Final Idle Animation Evaluation

Week 7 Tuesday 29th May 2018

Its been a long-term and finally, everything is warming up for summer break. I believe I did a good job of this small rig idle animation given how much other work I had to keep myself on top of. Knowing how to animate a rig already doing this little animation was a walk in the park but I wish I gave myself a challenge but given how much the other projects were taking from just couldn’t do that. Of course even in this animation I there would be a few tweaks I would have done but there's no time now. There is subtle movement in the animation mainly because the character is spinning and you cant really capture what the character is doing. Maybe I could have exaggerated the characters movement a little more, or even slow the spin around slightly so you can see what the rig is doing.

As for me and my path in the future, I hope the research has made it clear that I want to do Character animation for either the Film Industry or Gaming Industry. This is because mainly my role can work in both industries and I can choose which one settle in the future. I think this project really helped me see my view on what exactly I’m going to do after this course and that is to look for the companies I’ve been inspired by and work for them. Later on, after that, I would like to be an independent animator where clients will look up my portfolio and ask me to a commission for them. My presentation goes into further detail about my role in character animation of the future.

Overall I believe that I’ve managed my work pretty well for a passing grade not to mention the third project getting in the way of my two projects but it is what it is. At the end of the day, It’s what you gain from the project not what grade you get and I think I gain a lot from I can see ahead in my future after the course of Ravensbourne. 

[rahmel-raven]

Digital Environments:Final Diner Shots and Evaluation

Week 7 Monday 28th May 2018

These are my two final shots for the diner for the project. Let's start off by saying this wasn’t easy to do and I did struggle to get to this final piece but with help from my teacher and friends, I was able to get by. I’ll go over what I want my audience to view with these shots. Firstly, this is a diner when its closing up shop which is why plates and cups are stacked ready to be put away for tomorrow. The diner is a modern diner with a semi-futuristic aesthetic to it. The exaggerated black and red colours were inspired by how colourful the future is seen in movies and series in general. This diner is located on the high way which is why it’d exposed to the sunset so much from the windows and the reason why its small. 

The reason this was hard for me was mainly because I had a third project that was taking most of my time and it delayed me from catching up on this project. I know my research is weak and one-sided but I had to make it that way so that I had more time the other projects at hand. I know I’m going to get a low grade compared to the other projects I did from last time but what really matters is the experience in which I believe I gain a lot from this project. I learned the basics of making prop from scratch from the simple shapes to complex to me making them on my own. I learned about technical tools that helped me get better results on shapes I can't quite capture without using them. I learned how lay out a 3D diner from a 2D floor plan. I was able to capture the importance of planning but realising how easy it was to fit in all the final assets from using the 3D diner layout (that was reference off my 2D floor plan) as a reference of where to place the final assets.

There is room for improvements on this If I had time. I would have liked to have added the jukebox but given the narrative, you wouldn’t be able to admire it as much as you’d like to. I would also put more effort on the toilet doors as there is no modelled handle for it. For research, I would have looked more into futuristic diners or ones in movies such as star wars or series like Rick and Morty.    

I think overall I did a good job of completing the project that is decent for a passing grade in which I was aiming for. I know if it wasn’t for the third project, I would have been able to pump more effort into to this but unfortunately, that wasn't the case. In the end, I had fun creating this and I'm happy with the results from it. Since I’ll be using Maya in the future I think I’ll know these new found skills to be embedded in my head and will be used and improved next time I have a project.  

[rahmel-raven]

Digital Environments:Diner Lighting Process

Week 6 Saturday-Sunday 26th-27th May 2018

By the way, I didn't use the chair asset as it wasn't in my two final shots so I didn't include them in layout but think of them replacing the booth or being stacked up somewhere in the back of the diner. Now what I wanted for the lighting in my diner for the final shots was sunlight coming out of the window not just any sunlight sunset light. which is a dark yellow-orange I applied this to my direction light.  I also sorted out the two cameras I was going to use and positioned them while referencing the two coloured thumbnails from week 5. These shots needed a ceiling so I created on real quick since it was just a cuboid.

What these two cameras show are my two final shots for my digital environments project.

Of course, there will still be lights inside along with the directional light which was the point lights acting as dim backlights of diner. (lights are what are selected in Maya (green and white))

I know this all doesn't look like there's any light that's because its only shown in the renderer. The white and green selected are just placement icons to know where the light is going to be shown in the shot. The other lights other than the direction lights were a dim white, they’re not that noticeable in the render but its good to have plus the sunlight make them orange and yellow-ish anyway.

[rahmel-raven]

Digital Environments: Diner Process

Week 6 Thursday-Friday  24th-25th May 2018

After finalising and publishing all the assets I needed for my diner, it was time to start building my diner. Following class as well as the presentation guide I was able to apply my assets from my old diner layout from week 2. Firstly I started with the booth and table. I was able to quickly duplicate them by creating the reference that refers back to the published files and created a shortcut button that duplicates anything from the reference assets I made. With that, I was able to lay out the booths and tables. I also made the original layout faded so that I can have an idea of where to place them and scale them if need be if they don't fit the size of the human bodies in my layout. 

In my coloured thumbnail, it included a bigger version of the booth chair and table which I didn't model. So I had to improvise and edit the original so that it fitted the reference layout in the scene and it turned out better than expected. I also didn't realise I didn't make the checkered floor so I did that too. 

I had to edit the UV colour sheet though because it the black buttons stitched where stretch too much so I took them off. I know the side booths are clipping but it won't be seen in the final shot, so it should be okay.

From there I added stacks of plates and cups on the big table. This is because it needs to fit the idea narrative that the diner is closing up shop so everything is getting ready to be put away.

I realised my second thumbnail included the counter so I had to colour that in the UV editor quickly, like sow.

From there I added the stools; using the coloured thumbnail from week 5 as a reference of where to place them. There was more space in the model so I added more.  I added cups and plates on the counter too.

Then lastly I coloured the walls referencing once again to the coloured thumbnail. This had me making a UV sheet for the wall with the toilets for man and woman. 

That was all the building process for my diner and I got to say, I didn't expect it to look this great.  The planning back in week 2 was really helpful when returning back to it this week. Comes to show how important planning is for creating an environment. This part of building the diner was fun to put together, creating the environment you desire, feels great and satisfying once you finish all the assets and seeing the end result of them all together.

[rahmel-raven]

The Animation Industry: Holo Lens Test

Week 6 Wednesday 23rd May 2018

Today in class we had a chance to try out our idle animations in a 3D space using the gaming program called unity. This was a test to see people interacting with the animation in real life. Sadly during the lesson, it took most of the class a long time to download unity for the lesson and we didn't have much time on how to do the process of putting your rig into the program either. Since we didn‘t have much time before our deadline the head of this lesson decided to do the holo lens for us who didn't get a chance to do it. But unfortunately our rigs did not par with the unity and the joints and rig controls were all over the place once it played out on the holo lens.

Next time, if I ever do this again will use a rig that actually works with unity and uses that for the holo lens; using the steps the holo lens leader gave us. At the end of the day, I had fun watching my funny looking animation come to life in Ravensbourne. Plus a learned a new way of incorporating 3D work into real 3D space, maybe I could incorporate 2D as well? But that's for another time and place. This can be something that could do in the future though as it involves character animation. I could create a character that interacts with reality. Either it is through a moody character to a happy character, they will all have their little quirks to entertain the audience.

[rahmel-raven]

Digital Environments:Lighting

Week 6 Wednesday 23rd May 2018

I forgot we had a lesson about lighting objects in Maya and haven't mentioned it on my blog so here it is. It's really simple at the end of the day but its good to note it down as there is some complexity towards it. We were as to put a plane down and a couple of shapes. From there we went into the rendering shelf where it has a wide variety of light tools to use and each one speaks for itself really: Ambient light, Directional light, point light, spotlight, area light and volume light. What we’re going to use for our final shot in our diner will mainly be the directional light, point light and spotlight. In the test during the lesson, I played around the directional light. 

You can increase how bright you want it in the attribute editor.

You can change the colour of the light too.

After some playing around, I got the grasp of the basics of how to use the render options for lighting and how complex it can get depending what environment you after in a scene.  I learned that there are many lights in one scene even if it's not noticeable it still benefits the scene such as getting off the right reflective light off of something, This is all considered in animation. 

[rahmel-raven]

Digital Environments: Cup

Week 6 Monday-Tuesday 21st-22nd May 2018

Just before I get to put everything together I had one las asset to make which was my own selection. Since I was still catching up on this project I had to cut off my jukebox idea and made it into a cup to save myself time to catch up. With that said, the process of making the cup was fairly easy so, I'm going to show the model and UV colours. As the steps are pretty similar to the other assets I’ve done.

I simply made a cylinder and made it into the shape of a cup, then I created a hole in the middle using the multi-cut tool and using the face tool expand the hole downwards while using the bridge tool to connect it at the bottom. From there I made another cylinder for the rim of the cup and support rim at the bottom. I used the bevel tool to smoothen out the edges of the rims and parented the polygons together and the model was finished.  Then it was on to colouring the cup in the black and red style of my diner.

After unwrapping the cup I went ahead and filled in the UV sheet and added in subtle shading at the bottom of the cup.

And there you go, all my assets done for the digital environment project. Whats left is to put all these assets together for the final shot of my diner.  Since this was the last asset, it was a walk in the park because all the mistakes and knowledge gained from the previous assets helped make this one without any errors. Knowing this I believe leaving this project; I won't forget the basic skills I learned from it. 

[rahmel-raven]

The Animation Idustry: 2D in 3D space

Week 5 Friday-Sunday 18th-20th May 2018

More research on 2D in 3D space. I simply love the idea of 2D characters interacting in a 3D space, but the process to make that has so many layers of developing and planning especially the animations that have great effort put into it. After watching some animations that were 2D in 3D I came back to the animation called Back to the Moon and realised they had a behind the scenes version of it.

After watching that, I believe a team would be needed to make a 2D animation be in a 3D space. Not to mention the number of programs you need to do so. I believe they used a program similar to toon boom that has 2D rigs in them, Maya, for the 3D environments and after effects and probably a lot more for post-production. But there are other ways around using different programs. There's a way to dumb it down to two. And that can an animation program and after effects. After effects can track camera motion with the 3D space provided and can sync your 2D character into space to make it feel like its grounded in the 3D space. A good representation of that can be seen from a famous band called Gorillaz with their latest music video (seen below). 

This isn't the only video they’ve done this on too they've done it in many other music videos they’ve made in the past. I believe in the future this will still be relevant and I’ll be one of them to take part in animations such as these. Especially with the ones where you can look around as the audience as if the world is your oyster. This all leads back to VR but it can also be seen in just the 2D space and the camera moves for you. It's up to the viewer to decide that; just like deciding to watch a movie in 2D or 3D.  Within 10 years time, these types of animations will still be there but would be a lot easier to execute once it becomes a lot more popular in usage. Of course, one of these summers I’ll try out this process and see for myself if its something I’d do in the future. Either way, I’m still doing character animation. 

As for this project I was willing to do an idle animation in 2D but given the time I had left along with me catching up with the project (because of the third project) left me to continue to do it 3D. If I had more time I’d love to do a process like this and will definitely do something like this in the future. 

[rahmel-raven]

The Animation Industry: Final Idle Animation

Week 5 Monday-Tuesday 14th-15th may 2018

The week before this was me trying to catch up with my third project as well as these projects. Good news is the director of the third project is also busy and is now putting this project on hold until we, as a whole, finish our main core work which is these projects. Now I had time to finally incorporate my final idle animation. As stated in my presentation I decided to change the rigs I had because the characters didn't fit the idea of my idle animation. So I chose a rig called Jin from the Jin and Joe rig. When imported into Maya the rig was colourless so, I ended up colouring it to my standards.

From there I started to pose the rig into the one I posed on the other rig from last week. It was kind of fiddly to move the rig because the IK controls were not ideal for my pose and it looked weird but in the end, I Managed to get the pose along with the bored and annoyed face expression off. In all the exported steps I did to the animation I put it into a video. Seen below.

I placed a flat cylinder to get look at how the character is sitting. Unfortunately, I couldn’t change the pivot of the rig as for some reason it messes up the characters legs and goes out place. So I could only have the character spin in the centre meaning to have her bottom and feet on the stool. Later on that day I completed my stool for the digital environments project and applied the stool the idle animation right after as demonstrated in the video. After that, I went ahead rendered it because I had extra time on my hands (seen below).

After that was done I believe the practical work for this project is almost done. whats left is to put this rig animation into the holo lens for experimentation. This was pretty easy to do but I believe it had to be because I had so much work to do during the past few weeks because of the third project and all but I can still say that I’ve gotten used to controlling different rigs and animating them to my desires. I did learn a couple of things though because Idle animation can be very complex in character animation, mainly because you to let the audience know what the character is doing and what their personality is through their actions. I hope if someone were to see my idle animation I want them to know that character has attitude and right now the character is bored and annoyed. Hers a rendered view of the rigs face expression.

[rahmel-raven]

Digital Environments: Concept Drawing

Week 5 Sunday 20th May 2018

I also did a coloured version of my thumbnails just to get an idea of how my diner will look.

These are what I’d like to see in my final shots that I chose. As explained before I want this scene to tell that Its a closed up shop diner with the dim lights along with the setting sun from outside coming outside the windows. That last part was something I wanted to add in to have more of a tone of setting in the scene to know what time the scene is in towards my audience.  looking at the stuff I have now I can see this playing out well for my diner. The jukebox isn't going to be on the scene in my final piece because I do not have the time to create the jukebox because of my other projects. But I still feel like the scene will still have its impact on its narrative. 

[rahmel-raven]

Digital Environments

Week 5 Sunday 20th May 2018

I realised I didn't show the textures made for my previous models, so here they are. I Unwrapped the shapes in the UV editor and made them more arranged to my liking so that I can colour over them. The reason why they aren't all shaded is that I can change the material of the object in Maya to make the shading for it change for when the light hits it when I create my scene for it.  I have one more asset to create and that is the cup. After that, I’ll be setting up my diner and put everything together.  As you can see, I am aiming for the red and black theme for my diner. And It is all coming together.

[rahmel-raven]

Digital Environments: Stool

Week 5 Tuesday-Sunday 15th-20th May 2018

Through this week I was just trying to catch up on my list of things I need to create for my dinner. This one I had to do myself as for the lessons for guidance on this wasn't there. Plus I can test my knowledge for creating props in Maya. For starters, I looked for a reference to a futuristic stool that can relate to my dinner.

From there I needed an actual 1950′s diner stool for reference and size so sorted one out in Photoshop.

With that, I put it into Maya.

I started out with a cone and placed it with the images on the side and front views. From there I started to use tools from my previous creations to craft out the stool referring back to the futuristic stool in mind. I used the Curve tools to extrude parts around my stool so that it has support legs and a spin rim at the bottom and top.

Moving to the UV editor, for the texturing I had to unwrap the polygons I made and sort them out so that it was easy for me to texture.

With a few shading to it, I managed to sort out the UV editor and colour it and the end result was this.

This result of this was surprising, although I didn't follow the reference images truly I kind of took my own take on this and it turned out great.  I believe I learned a lot from this, confirming my knowledge of basic skills in creating props from scratch using the right tools for certain areas to sorting out the UV editors and making textures. I did find some sense of satisfaction in doing this, I didn't believe I’d like creating props but I was mistaken. Once I got my bearings on the basics I can see myself actually creating some cool stuff in the future I remember these skills I’ve learned for this term. I'm Going to quicken the process of my creations because the steps are all similar to each other. 

[rahmel-raven]

Digital Environments: Booth Chair

week 4 Thursday-Friday 10th-11th May 2018

This week was the week where I had to catch up with work on both units. As said in my last post my third project was getting most of my time compared to these projects because it needed more attention. Now that its calm down, I was able to catch up with posts on my blog. Now for today, we started to model the booth chair. As usual, we planned on what type of both we wanted to make but I couldn't find any good references to a booth chair that had a front and side reference. In the end, I just had some images of them put together and decided to take the image that our teacher was working on. 

Looking at the white booth, in particular, I wanted those dot pattern in my design as well as having the seat part having two cushions with the dots on it too. But First, we had to sort out its flat shapes in the UV editor so that its easier to texture it. To make sure the surfaces are correct we were given a mod command that flattens any shape in real time rather than in the UV editor. This is a hand tool to tell if your shapes have any errors in it or not. Heres a demonstration.

If done right our textures prepared after the UV editing will have your textures placed perfectly. Just like my test version below. 

After organising the UV editors shapes I’ll use those shapes as a reference to craft out a texture for the model of that has been referenced off the image.

Right now the model is still looking blocky so what I did was make the seat have two cushions coming on the seat part. The way I did it was using the UV editor to cut the model in half so that I can use half of the seat block to be cushioned. After I would select the half and use the tool in the polygons option called extrude that allows me to morph the top half of the seat to look like a cushion. The result looks like this. 

I also added more curves to it using the tool called bevel. Bevel though affects the UV editor but not enough where it’ll make ur shapes look confusing. I learned that bevel affects the editor but the extrude tool doesn't. Make use extrude more as it, seems more convenient for situations such as this.  After that, I used that tool again for small cushioned padding on the front back seat for support on the back of course. These were the result. 

There was one last thing I wanted to add to make this model perfect for what I had in mind. That is the line support that goes around the bottom seat cushion. Knowing already learned on how to create a chair model, I used the curve tools to make a line that goes around the cushions (blue line in the image around seating area) and created a NURBS circle so that I can use the tool extrude once again to follow the path of the line I constructed. At first, it didn't look right so after so fiddling and fixing I Got it into place.  

What was left was the texturing. After exporting the shapes from the UV editor, I coloured over the areas of what I wanted and of course referring back to my Idea page and blog progress. I made the chair have a black and red theme so that it can relate to the black and red checkered floor of my ideal diner.

From there I added the textures in and it looked really great!

And here is the final Result from it. I'm proud of this one as I was able to remember the process of how to make things likes as well as knowing the ideal choice of tool to use for it. I believe I learned quite a lot this lesson mainly because I was asking to confirm the actions that I was doing today was right and I think I am. Now that I’ve done this I can now go back to the previous models I’ve made and texture them too with the same aesthetic as this booth chair, maybe even edit them a little more to the model with the newly found tools I’ve been taught.

[rahmel-raven]

Digital Environments : Chair Model/UV Textures and Minor set backs

Week 3 Thursday-Friday 3rd-4th May 2018

From these classes, I went through doing the chair model. This was supposed to be hard but with guidance from our teacher, we managed to get that asset done. As last time we had to plan out the shape of the chair by drawing out over a diner medium chair. This one sort of different as we had to draw our own chair rather than tracing over the source images reference. After that, we added the average values for it and used it for blocking out the chair in Maya. The other steps were kind of tricky to follow but in the end, I was able to understand the important part of creating a path for pole like a model for a chair. Using the curve tools to create the legs of the chair following the guide images of the chair we selected from google. From there we use a special curve tool called extrude which follows the curve line tool to create a pole-like structure. With that, I connected the dots and put the chair together with the seat and back rester.

For the other lesson, we briefly learned about texturing using the UV editor. I was still a little confused on how it works but, I believe I could get the hang of it after a couple of tries of my own. Here’s a preview of what it looks like.

The UV editor seems to make a flat template of the bases of the 3D model and we can put in textures/images behind it to show it on its surface in the perspective area. we’re going to more of this next week, so hopefully, I can get a grasp on how this works. 

The minor set back is that I can't really put much effort into the units as I’d like to as I took another project that is still going today and it’s getting in the way of these projects. To help my self I have to aim for the easy models and get done that need to be done to get by. same goes for the Animation Industry unit.  

[rahmel-raven]

Digital Environments: Brief model/props of Diner and Research

Week 2 Thursday-Sunday 26th-29th April 2018

Through this week I went into more detail about what I want my diner to look and feel like explaining its narrative through it all. As a summary, within a small street diner, I want to have one of the employees to finishing up shop and is having a quick cigarette before they leave the diner. In this environment, most of the lights are off and there's one warm on still on over the employee smoking as you can see the smoke disappear in the light. This will be based on a modern diner of today. An alternate narrative idea was suddenly made on Wednesday, where I could have a modern futuristic theme diner where there is a child that is annoyed by their parents and his sitting on one of the futuristic stools spinning around annoyed and bored. This environment would be an afternoon mood with dim light blue lights along with a black and white theme diner. Here is my Idea page there are a few things that have changed that, I have said above as their summary.

After that, we briefly laid out our diner in Maya. This was the first things I wanted in there which were the booth, chairs, stools and kitchen area along with toilets. So just like the floor plan, I did the same to the 3D version.

  This was just a brief version of how it’ll look and I think it looks good so far. there still a couple of things I still need to add in. such as the stools and booth chairs. After this, I created thumbnails of certain shot I’d like to see from my diner and even put some people in it for more of the feel of the diner overall.

In these shots, I sketched out what wasn't there in my 3D model to get more of the feeling that it’s a diner. After those sketches, we started modelling the props of what we were tasked to model and they both were a plate and table. There were a few problems making the table but we got there in the end with a few errors, but it was alright. The plate, however, was fairly easy to make once I got to know the step on makes props such as these. There were 4 more models we had to model and that would be the end of modelling then, ill be on to putting what we created into action. Here are my final table and plate.

I learned quite a lot about modelling, I think if I gave it more attention, I’ll be able to understand it more without asking for help if I got stuck. Hopefully, I can help myself when it comes to creating my own probs and bobs. What made this all easy to make and follow, was all the planning before modelling the props. We had to find references to the model its self and search its average size in the UK. From there we would use those values in Maya to make an actual size prop. We also draw necessary markings over the images we selected to get the simple shape of the model so that we can trace over using the curve tool and polygon shapes to bring the model to life.

  I had to use my teacher's demonstration for the table because I’ve lost my version of it, either way, it all leads to the same model. But we use these markings to block out the shapes in Maya and I think, I've learned to understand them well.