MSc Animation and VFX @artbykarly - Tumblr Blog

This is a version of an early composite pass for the final scene.

There’s a little hiccup towards the end while the creature is lying on the branch that needs to be fixed and the flight at the beginning is going way too fast, so I’ll be slowing that bit down.

Some things that I would want to change, but won’t be are some of the hand and feet placements, and the material I used on the wings. This scene of all the scenes really reflects the lights in the scene. Could be a combination of the texture and how intense the lights were.

There’s a little more work I’d like to do with the composite, but pretty happy with where it is now.

#composite #photography #caught in the wild #creature #creature animation #nuke #uod #university of dundee #MSc Animation & VFX #djcad #nearly there #timing is everything #frame rate #froggo flies #these places

This is the final version of my second scene.

I altered the colour to match the cool light from the previous scene a bit better.

#uod #university of dundee #djcad #only a few days left #MSc Animation & VFX #froggo #creature animation #maya #nuke #final project #these places #sneakers #chilly

These are the first two sequences edited together to get a feel for the whole process. In this version, there are changes to the model textures between the first and second scene. And there’s an odd camera rotation before the creature hops off the rock.

Changes made to this version would be the texture settings. Looking over and comparing that was a difference in the specular that was an easy fix. The camera rotation was a bit more of a struggle to find, because all the values were the same, there wasn’t a change in the rotation. It ended up being a setting called Twist adding a very slight rotation.

Another challenge was the render settings and finding the AOVs I would need. There was a slight issue where the render settings wouldn’t hold once I closed the tab they would go back to what they were before I changed them. I kept the render settings window and that seemed to fix the problem.

#uod #university of dundee #dundee #MSc Animation & VFX #djcad #animation #getting there #few weeks left #these places #froggo #sleepless nights #creature #creature animation #hit and miss #maya

This is the set up for my second sequence. Given the time I had left, I kept everything on the simpler side.

This scene shows some of the final look for the creature, but the lighting in the scene has changed from this version, as does the camera, but only slightly. Something I would have changes would be the creature size versus the environment. I think of it was a small cave, but there’s not enough room from him to open his wings properly so that was a challenge that could have been avoided. Again the HDR is from CGAxis

#uod #university of dundee #MSc Animation & VFX #djcad #almost there #snow mountains #maya #animation #textures #lighting #creature animation #these places #cold

This is the last part of the opening sequence.

Again, this is close the last version of the scene. But some of the major changes from this version is the speed of the jumps and editing some of the wing movements.

Between this scene and the scene in the forest I was getting a better understand of the timing of this creature’s hops. At first I had the hops spaced out 15 frames for each jump, but soon realized that not only was that fast, but it left little room to get some important poses down. I ended making the spacing larger than I thought I would need and then bringing the keys closer together.

At this point, I haven’t started the last scene needed (2nd scene). An alternate idea for the final project was to start in the forest and he falls off the branch into the desert, ending with the creature hopping into the blue light.

#animation #creature animation #creature model #froggo #MSc Animation & VFX #uod #university of dundee #djcad #lighting #maya #hop hop #what's that light

Added the next portion of the first sequence. A rotation to see the environment around the creature. In this version, I don’t like how it cuts to a backward position, so I will edit the camera’s start position to a more forward pose!

#uod #university of dundee #djcad #MSc Animation & VFX #scene one #the beginning #temp title is places #froggo flies #final project #i think im forgetting something

This is the opening scene for the final project. This is close to the final product in terms of animation and camera setup/movement. There are some changes from the lighting in this version to the final version. Some of the changes I would make if I were to spent a bit more time on this would be to add some subtle movements to the hands and feet as the creature is falling and edit the speed he’s falling. There are times I watch it and think the fall is fast enough and others when I look at it and think it could be fast. Another change I would make would be to the landing. Adding more movements to the wings to help show he’s trying to slow himself down.

#animation #maya #creature #creature animation #no textures #uod #university of dundee #djcad #desert #opening scene #soft landing #maybe it's time to find a title

After some set up with the desert scene, I moved back to some animation. This is one of the passes of animation for the last scene in the final short. Before this moment one of the major problems was the hands and feet slipping/sliding. After this some of the fixes I made was the jump speed/smoothness, and some tweaks with some of the poses once I applied the textures and could see through the wings.

This scene doesn’t have a light set up, that would come a bit later. The intention with this scene was to composite it into the branch photo from an earlier post. So the branch has an aiShadowMatte texture applied to it to capture the shadows that the lights would project once they’re added!

#maya #animation #uod #university of dundee #djcad #third times the charm #this must be what insomnia feels like #froggo #still no title #final project #MSc Animation & VFX #it might be 6am

I started with the set up of the desert environment. The first image without the texture applied was the original idea of the environment.

In this first version, I imagined the the creature falling and hitting the sand creating a dust and sand clouds. Again, as much as particle and that sort of VFX interest me, I didn’t have the time to learn for this project. Which led to the set up in the second image where everything is situated much closer together. An issue with this set up was that it lacked an effective middle ground. If I were to do this again, I would build up a middle ground.

While I set up the environments, my creature was in the scene and I used him to set up cameras. I looked into cameras with aim constraints and constraining the camera to a motion path. Which led to the third image. I found that if I constrained my camera to a path, once I animated the camera past those frames the motion path would work. (Towards the end of the project I found a way around this, but was too late to apply it to this scene) But my solution in that moment was to divide the scene and in the third image only one rock is present because that’s all that is seen by the camera so I figured deleting the other rocks would make the scene easier to process.

Models (rocks and creatures) credit to me; the HDR in the scene was from CGAxis

#maya camera #3d #uod #university of dundee #MSc Animation & VFX #djcad #its almost 6am #final project #desert #photogrammery #scene 1 #still don't have a title

Art and photo credit to me! After testing some of the animation and rig, it was time to refocus on the environments. The very first idea of the story had four environments (Modern room, desert, snow, and forest), but early on I realized that was too many for the time I had so I picked the two environments that could reuse assets from each place (desert and snow) and to follow the pattern of colour choices I chose the forest.

I had an idea in the back of my mind to cut the snow environment as the deadline got closer, but I managed to finish the scene. These are earlier concepts and photo that I would use to help start the 3D scene construction.

#concepts #photography #nature #art #concept art #uod #university of dundee #MSc Animation & VFX #its 6am #dundee #djcad #final project

Once the rig and everything was in good place, I started to do some test animations. Earlier in the year, I spoke with some animators and asked for some advice about how to animation efficiently for someone who has never animated. One of the common suggestions was to create a library of animations to reuse and alter.

These animations where going to be the start of that library, but unfortunately, due to the time left in the semester I had to cut these short. That being said, through these tests I learned some things about the rig that, if given the time, would have gone back to fix, or alter. Mostly in the areas on the wrists when they are completely flat against the ground and the ankles when the feet are in the air. There’s some deformed shapes in the model.

In the future, I would heed the advice of picking a different pose to model this creature in, but the reason I didn’t was my knowledge and confidence when it came to rigging. I was more familiar with rigging from a ‘T’ pose rather than say an ‘H’ pose.

There is the start of a flight test and an idle animation test above! c:

#animation #MSc Animation & VFX #uod #university of dundee #djcad #creature animation #3d #creature #froggo #final project #i still don't have a title #dundee

With the rigging came a lot of issues that ranged from IK handles not working, fingers bending along the wrong axis, and forgetting to freeze transform the joints. All the problems were resolved through either watching more tutorials, re-watching tutorials, reading forums, and asking classmates/teachers. After the rig was done, I added some controls, and painted weights. There was a problem with weights, where I added influence to one joint that shouldn’t have been there causing some deformed shapes when the body rotated. When I looked into the problem I also found some arm joints wouldn’t rotate. So I found a tool that would save the new fixed weights while I edited the rig and then allowed me to import the weights back on to the model saving a lot of time. Once the rig, weights, and controls were good to go, I added some blend shapes for some basic expressions and a little breathing movements (shown in the video)!

#blend shapes #3d #model #creature #froggo #frog with wings #uod #university of dundee #djcad #MSc Animation & VFX #maya #mudbox

After the textures were done, or closer to done, I moved on rigging.

I followed tutorials from class, and those covered most of the model, the only areas that the class tutorial didn’t cover were the wings and long toes without shoes on. For the feet, I treated each toes like an individual shoed foot, using the class tutorial of a foot on each toe. It seemed to work fine when I was playing around with in this pose, but in the future, I would probably treat the toes more like the fingers in this case.

The wings on the other hand, I treated like the fingers. I watched several tutorials on wings, there were very few tutorial that I found with wings like these. Most of the wings were like bird wings. But again, after I started to animate I found the way I rigged the wings to be too simple for some of the movements I tried to achieve.

Once I realized I wanted to edit the rig it was too late in the timeline and I couldn’t afford to take the time to change the rig because I had some animation done.

#rig #rigging #maya #3d rig #3d #model #creature #uod #university of dundee #djcad #MSc Animation & VFX #final project

After I redesigned the wing and was getting it ready to sent to substance painter, I edited the creature’s textures some more, following some tutorials to use a high poly version to create a normal map.

I was much happier with the redesign of the wing, but when I brought it over to substance painter I had an issue of getting the effect on the wings that I wanted. I wanted the wings to have the iridescent look that some insect wings have.

I found a tutorial for substance designer to create a texture that would have worked really well for the wings, but given the amount of time I had left for the project I decided to for a simpler transparent effect (no example on this post).

#creature model #model #3d #uod #university of dundee #djcad #MSc Animation & VFX #final project #textures

Once the retopo and UVs were done, I moved on to the textures. The textures were painted in Substance Painter. I haven’t used substance painter before, so I watched a handful of tutorials on youtube about smart materials and some beginner guides to the program. Aside from the textures, I had an issue with the wing model being too bulky. My initial plan for the wings was something more delicate looking. So I took some time out of the schedule I had planned to redesign them!