Finn's MGA Work

Motion Graphics & Animation

[finnymga]

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This is my final evaluation for my final major project.

Overall it has been a successful project.

[finnymga]

This is the final render of my final major project animation in 720HD. I am happy with the overall render.

If I had time I would’ve liked to add sound effects, however I need to evaluate my entire project and only have until friday to complete everything.

I will be evaluating this post and summarising the entire project in my evaluation next session.

[finnymga]

This is my first test render in 540 HD of my final animation of which I am happy with the camera shots and movements.

In my last session I finished off my animation adding facial expressions to my main character based on his anger, pain and breathing of which was done with ease as I simply had to add numbers in the channel box to either the eyebrows, nose, mouth, jaw and eyelids.

I then added a camera into the animation and started auto key framing the camera from the camera perspective, this way it is easier to see what the camera is actually filming. I stayed with using one camera so I could make the rendering less complicated and not have to edit all the shots together my self. Instead I either panned the camera from one shot to another or I simply snapped the camera to each shot by adding a keyframe in before the shot so I could create a fast action packed fight scene.

I then finally rendered it out in 540 HD of which took about 4 hours where there is 725 frames and was rendering at 1 frame every 10-15 seconds. Once it rendered I then had to open the first keyframe into After Effects where it automatically simulated all of the keyframes into the programme.

I then had to ensure the fps was set to 24 rather than by default 30, however this complicated it slightly so I had to right click on the composition, and unlock time scale so I could expand the composition to the exact amount of seconds my animation actually is, of which is approximately 30.5 seconds.

Once this was adjusted I then had to add the composition to render queue and adjust the render settings such as resolution, file type and also set where it will be saved to. Simply clicked render and then it was converted into a quicktime.mov and the test render was complete.

I only came across one problem after this render where some reason the light went black around the environment of which I will simply have to adjust the lighting before my final render.

This session I will render my animation out in 720 HD and finally evaluate my project overall.  

[finnymga]

This is a play blast of the last part of my animation before adding cameras and lighting; showing the brutally beaten, secondary character getting thrown into mid-air. Then showing the main character finally ending the animation off with a brutal stomp to the head, killing him or not, that’s up to the audience to decide.

I found this part of the animation surprisingly easier than some of the other maneuvers throughout. However, it obviously doesn't come without it’s difficulties and along with the simple character rigs it is hard not to make the animation look so stiff and unprofessional. Again this will be majorly improved as soon as the cameras are added to the scene showing a variety of different shots such as close ups, mid-shots, long shots and even extreme close ups cutting out certain movements that aren't as fluent at they could be. 

I am slightly behind my proposal concerning leaving a week to render and evaluate, however I will have to add the cameras and render it out in my next session and start my evaluation during the render process.

Again, I will be too behind in my schedule and planning to add sound effects to the overall animation. I now have until Friday to finish off this final major project and I am looking forward to seeing the final outcome.

[finnymga]

This is my progress so far on my final major project 3D animation.

I have made major progress today and I am now up to date with my schedule of which I am currently finish off the last touches before adding the cameras in to the animation.

I have created shots 13 to 17 this session which involves a headbutt and also my main character throwing my secondary character into the air. I am still adjusting and refining the throw manoeuvre of which will finish my animation off for good.

Again I haven’t had many difficulties during this project other than fluency and timing of the keyframes due to the basic rigs and difficult manoeuvres throughout the animation. Creating the animation showing all the principles is quite difficult especially having to show a lot of follow through and overlapping action on impact of the fight manoeuvres throughout the entire animation. 

I plan to finish this throw sequence, adding facial expressions and finally adding the cameras and lighting in my next session to finish the animation off overall.

I will not have anymore time to add sound effects to the animation as I will have to save time for rendering and evaluating my entire project.  

[finnymga]

This is my progress from my last session working on my final major project.

I have made a lot of progress today due to a full day of access to software to work through my animation.

I created a few more maneuvers in Maya with my main character kneeing his enemy in the stomach. With this I have had to adjust key frames and timing to make it as fluent as possible also showing the effect it has on impact of my secondary character.

Due to long hours of tedious work throughout the day it is as fluent as I had hope it to be. However, I am still yet to add camera shots at all different angles which will cut out some of the rough animation and hopefully overall look professional with the lighting and HD render.

I have a week and one day to complete this project including rendering and evaluating my work. Therefore I plan to finish my animation by Friday so I can start adding the cameras and lighting to finally create a professional overall animation.

So far I have realized the timing of each shot will be a lot shorter than planned and so all the shots will actually come to a maximum of 40 seconds rather than a minute. 

I haven’t experience many difficulties other than again difficulty with fluent motions and timing. The basic character rigs are also a limitation when creating this fluent maneuvers. However, I have managed to work around these complications and eventually finish my project within the week.

[finnymga]

This is my progress so far this week, I am finally up to date with my plan and should be able to complete the animation side of the project by next session.

I have created shot 13 from my storyboard however, I have improvised by making the main character grab his enemy’s arm and pulling the weapon deeper into his chest. I thought of The Lord of the Rings and it inspired me to add a little part from the end of the Fellowship of the Ring.

I had difficulties with timing and fluency today and ending up deleting parts of my work of which took 40 mins to create. There were too many keyframes to work around and adjust so I thought it would be more efficient to just delete them and start again.

Therefore I have been setback slightly and my outcome from today’s session is as much as I planned to create.

Next session I will have a full day to complete my animation so I can finally start adding cameras to make it look so much better and exciting.

[finnymga]

This is another short play blast of my current progress of which I achieve in todays session.

I have started on the actually fight moves today, which so far it has ran smoother than I expected and I am pleased with the outcome.

I only faced problems again with the elbow and knee joint rigs not being in the right position causing the arms and legs to twist. However, it is very easy to adjust and keyframe back into a normal position, it is just very irritating.

I plan to animate more combat manoeuvres in my next session and hopefully finish my animation by the end of the week.

With two weeks left for this project I doubt I will be able to complete the animation by adding sound effects to it. 

[finnymga]

This is a short play blast from my last session to show my progress so far in Maya.

I found this part slightly difficult to make a fluent motion between the characters moving diagonally as it’s hard to use the x,y and z with the move tool to move objects diagonally. However, I am not too worried concerning some parts of the animation when it comes to fluency as they won’t even be visible once I have added my cameras to the final render.

Now I have got through this tricky part of the animation I will now be able to efficiently work through my storyboard and finish my animation by the set deadline which is in two weeks.

[finnymga]

This is another short play blast showing my progress so far for my final major project. I have animated my main character falling to the floor to quickly turn around and block my secondary character’s attack.

I also animated my secondary character to dodge out of the way of my main character of which I found difficult as I had to move and rotate the character diagonally. It ended up being quite basic and rough and would usually need adjusting, however in this case when I add a camera into the animation it won’t shoot certain parts and will hopefully look fluent in my final render.

I also had trouble with flipping my main character onto his back as the rigs decided to twist the arm. I fixed this easily my simply finding the elbow joint rig to untwist his arm, however it still took some time to figure the manoeuvre out.

I didn’t realise how difficult this manoeuvre would be and so it took longer than I expected making me still behind on my schedule. I expect to get up to date with my work during my next session where I will be creating actual melee combat moves.

[finnymga]

I have come across a problem with the character rig where most the rigs are ahead of the main body circle control that move the entire rig.

Therefor I tried moving back most of the rigs to centre them back within the circle control so I can animate the rig slightly easier. However, when I selected the rigs and moved them back the rig decides to stretch itself as if I haven’t selected all of the rigs.

I am currently still trying to fix this problem and will update my tumblr with the progress I have made.

[finnymga]

This is a play blast to show the progress of my final major project so far, of which I have finished animating the jump scene in preparation for my main character to miss the antagonist and fall to the floor.

I have created the jump sequence showing an exaggerated force of gravity also taking the weight of the character into consideration. Some of the animation is bit rusty in some parts, which I will adjust using F-curves to accelerate and slow down certain keyframes later on the in the project. 

I don’t have to worry entirely about the entire animation being completely fluent as I will be adding cameras that won’t even show parts of the movements due to shots such as close ups.

This means I am 3 pages out of 10 into my storyboard and that I am finally catching up with my originally planned schedule. My next session I should be able to complete the next two pages of which will bring me to a half way point into my project.

I have come across a difficulty with the character rig of which I will explain in my next post.  

[finnymga]

Modeled and Textured the Black Gate of Mordor from The Lord of the Rings for a small side project that is still a work in progress.

[finnymga]

I have finished my run cycle today in preparation for the big jump of my main character.

I have found it difficult to show acceleration during this cycle however, I have discovered a tool called an F-curve that allows me to speed up and slow down certain parts of the animation without affecting the positioning of the keyframes.

I will learn to use this tool in my next session and improve my running cycle hopefully making it more fluent with better acceleration.

I have completed the first quarter of my animation which means I am very close to catching up with my original schedule and therefore I will be able to complete my animation by deadline.

[finnymga]

This is a play blast of the first few seconds of my final animation including a walk cycle and a taunt commencing before the run cycle I plan to animate.

Since the last session I haven’t encountered any technical difficulties and I am making some progress on my work using my storyboard as a guideline.

I have copy and pasted a few keyframes during the walk cycle to save time and with a few alterations to the positions of the arms, hands and legs, it worked out well creating a nice and fluent walk cycle.

[finnymga]

While moving my characters around before animating I kept accidentally moving the environment which would become very irritating when actually animating the fight scene. Therefore I simply had to lock the object by selecting all the Translate, Scale and Rotate, X,Y and Z’s in the channel box, right click and select lock selected.

I also came across something very simple that is very useful when animation and that is the auto-key button. The icon showing an image of a key in the bottom right will turn on simply by clicking it.                                                       This simply allows my to select somewhere on the timeline and animate my character without have to press ‘S’ to key frame that specific movement. Therefore I can easily adjust each key frame without have to press ‘S’ every single time.

[finnymga]

This is a short play blast showing the progression of my work throughout the final major project so far.

Today I finally started on my main animation by creating a walk cycle for the first shot of my storyboard. I will be following my storyboard throughout to ensure I understand what moves I will be animating with each character.

I also created a very basic environment in Maya using basic polygons and extruding them out to make the pavements and buildings, just to show a concept of the surroundings/ setting the characters are fighting in.

 I have ten pages of my storyboard and roughly a month left to complete this project including rendering and evaluation, therefore in order to complete my animation I will have to create one page of my storyboard a session or I may unfortunately have to cut the storyboard down by a few shots. 

I only experience one problem so far while creating my environment as the move tool decided to disappear when adjusting the pavements. Therefore I simply click on the move tool settings and reset it to appear as normal.