#unit 67- GC3

[noirkleinneko]

Evaluation

I produced a 16 second long animation of a dragon swallowing an apple. I downloaded an excellent rig from creative crash and played around with it in maya, however it did have a few issues such as being unable to keyframe certain aspects  of the tongue in the attribute editor.

Overall, I am mostly happy with the way my animation turned out, especially with my cameras and the dragons mannerisms. I did run into trouble when trying to animate the apple, however. Although constraints such as parenting exist, I was unable to use these to allow the apple to remain in the right position inside the dragons mouth, as parenting would have meant the apple would have moved off of the pedestal when the dragon tries to take a bite. I could not keyframe parenting either, so the only way that I could get the apple to remain in the dragon’s mouth was keyframing it every two frames or so, trying to keep the location consistent.

In hindsight, I wish I had practised with the rig a bit more to learn its intricacies before I commited to my final animation as only certain parts of the model worked in IK and some only in FK.

I also used a skybox, however for some reason it did not appear in my final render, even though the light from the sun did. I could not find any reason for this or any way to fix it, so I just kept the black background, which is ok, because it nicely contrasts with the bright gold dragon.

[alexridgleymga-blog]

3D animation Evaluation

My 3D animation that lasts for 720 frames has been rendered. It was a project of mixed feelings all of the time, but my final feelings are possitive.

What went well?

I feel the even though it was a simple idea, my execution was everything I imagined it would be and more. I thought I would never understand how to use the graph editor, but I feel that once I was reminded once or twice I got the hang of it really quickly. 

What went wrong, what problems did I encounter?

There were no real problems that I encountered in terms of the modelling and animating that could not be fixed by exploring Tumblr or asking my lecturer. The real problems were with the final render. Perhaps something that could have been avoided had I fixed the problems on the mesh and rendered it again. The first problem was with the lighting, on both the medieval village and the skyscraper there were moments where the model was in almost complete darkness. Even with the street lights in the night scene. The second problem was that the birds I had for the meival scene; I had a fade in and fade out option for each one so they would not just be flapping stationary for the first few seconds at the beginning, and they would not be in the way for the next scene and mesh. Unfortunately there were still reflections where the transparent meshes were that were visable throughout. 

What my peers thought. 

Sophie said: This is amazing Alex! It all works so well together! The lighting works really well with it as well!

Michaela said: Awesome animation, well done :p I especially like the positioning of the birds (like the one that comes directly from the camera) and the way the skyscraper rises as the road and lights build themselves around it, it was very well planned.

Frankie said: Good pacing, camera works really well with the constant 360 pan. And birds in the begging give a great sense of perspective. And the day and night cycle help give a nice sense of time. Nice job.

Paris said: Wow! Looks great! You have used several effects really well the camera and lighting looks well done. I like it! :)

Grant said: Amazing sequence Alex it turned out awesome, there always something going on and it doesn’t disappoint either, awesome job!!!

Charlie said: I like the way the land transforms very clever and I also like the rotation while it happens with the birds and the lights :D Good job!

Jake said: It looks very good. I like it.

Michael said: Tis top notch. It might be a bit too dark at some points, but other than that, it’s really good.

Evaluation of the feedback. 

All in all it seems that everyone I asked enjoyed it. None of them picked up on the birds being visible all of the time, however the lighting was picked up on and even though this is not a modelling project, it is important to have the animation visiable all of the time. 

What would I change?

I would have something like a physical sun and sky for the first half of the animation, only with the first half because it is not such a problem with the second half as it is meant to represent night, and I would have more textures so there is less solid colour and nothing else.

[pml456]

3D Animation Evaluation

The purpose of this project was to create a 10-30 second 3D animation using techniques we have researched and practiced and planned with a proposal and story board.

I researched: key framing, graph editors, dynamics, ndynamics, cameras, constraints, parenting and using rigged models in addition to how all this is used in industry. This went well as I understood what they did and how to use them, I did a practice model using ndynamics of my bedroom that I then practiced putting cameras in which keyframing is required to do.

I feel as I though I have planned well for this, I knew exactly what I wanted to do and how I was going to do it using techniques I have researched, I wrote this all up in the form of a proposal and put in the story board I drew. I also had a production schedule to plan when I was going to do each bit, the rendering is taking longer than I had hope and probably won’t be finished rendering by this Saturday or Sunday.

In my opinion production went well for my first animation, I found it kind of easy to animate my rigged models, I found modelling easy and texturing them easy and using cameras was quite simple. The only problems that occurred was rendering, maya said completed on frame 591 of 720 so not everything rendered... Gonna try rendering it all again from frame 590 onwards in another folder see how that works... The other problem was one one of my rigged model, I accidentally undone some of the rigging somehow which caused little malfunctions in performance which you can see in the arm as one of the rigged models turns around. Turning the body round was a difficult movement to animate and I only managed to get the drop kick movement well I found a YouTube video that showed a drop kick in slow motion. However the actual model flying off the board landing in water was just an educated guess. The run up to the jump was based of a picture I found of running frames however for a reason doesn’t look too right maybe because I have it running too fast for a short distance. I gave it my best shot and that’s the outcome. I am pleased with the outcome except that the view in the windows didn’t render they just appeared black... The window view was meant to be sun and sky lighting.

[noirkleinneko]

Final render! It went through a lot of changes which will be detailed in the next post.

[alexridgleymga-blog]

Here is my finished render of my 3D animation including it’s textures and colours.