FINAL ASSIGNMENT SUBMISSION
If I were to go back and restart this assessment, the first thing I would do is choose another rig. Perhaps even choose another character option and make my own rig. I feel like that what I did with this piece shows that I am lazy and what I did I only belted out in a couple of days. If I were to make my own rig I believe that I would have taken more time and more care in how I presented it in the final production. If I were to go back to the start of this assignment without choosing another stream or a rig, I would have taken more care and done more research on how I wanted to present my dragon. I think that I would have researched more on movements of dragons in media like Game of Thrones and Merlin, and perhaps some 2D animated features to see how they do it differently. If I could start again I would do more research on movements of the legs, like was suggested to me, as well as the tails. I did very minimal research by only looking at how my cat moved.
I would use the Unreal Engine a lot more to test my animation, the timings and how I wanted everything to look. I would use Unreal a lot more to build a better greybox that would properly convey what I wanted to because as it stands right now it’s a disappointment to me. By using Unreal and Maya in conjunction, rather than just doing everything in Maya and then throwing it in I believe that I could have made a better final product and I know now for the future that this is what I must do to make sure everything runs smoothly.
I need to use Unreal a lot more, in general, to get used to the functions and the tools, and see what I can make it do with more than just a day, as was the case here as I didn’t stick to my week by week plan. I had issues with this as other subjects were creeping on me which forced me to put this on the back burner when I know how important it is to me to get this final result.
I do want to start again, and I was tempted to do so, but I know how much time it takes to animate, and I didn’t want to risk not being ready.
I am very disappointed in my animation as it stands. When I imported it into Unreal, the eyes (and I believe the mouth) didn’t smooth properly which left me with the strange floating things that I couldn’t get rid of. I looked in the Unreal editor, but I didn’t re-import the Alembic file because it has taken me a lot of time to be able to get it into Unreal in the first place. I was upset with this development, but I worked through it. It was my intention with the camera pass to be able to have those be hidden when the camera was moving, but as I animated the rig inside the Unreal Engine I realised that I had screwed myself by not testing the animation weeks beforehand. The flying sequence was far too short, compared to how it looked in Maya and I had to improvise to be able to get it to work properly.
My intention for the greybox was for it to be high up in the sky, a mountain with a big leg out into open air that the dragon would walk on. I was unable to do this properly with the tools I knew how to use, and I think using Unreal more would benefit me greatly, and if I had more time, which was my own fault, I believe that I could have produced the greybox that I had envisioned.
At one point with animating in Unreal, I noticed a major issue – I didn’t consider how the tail would move in the environment. The tail was my major, major issue with this rig. I didn’t know how to work the thing, how to make it move, how to let it do anything without it screwing the whole rig up and look useless. I should have realised earlier my issue with the tail and chosen a more simplistic rig that I could have done something so much better in. Again, my own fault, because I was silly enough to not plan ahead for this rig, and the final production.
I know that what I’ve done is nowhere near industry standard, and while I’m not happy with the final result, I did enjoy the pipeline – if only next time I could do it to a better, higher standard.
I’m happy with the final animation, in Maya (except for the tail) and if I had spent more time planning rather than go at it willy-nilly I think I could have done something so much better with smoother, cleaner animation.
Hopefully next time it’ll be a rig without a tail.
Rig is owned by Robert Campbell
available at: https://www.highend3d.com/maya/downloads/character-rigs/c/dragon-rig-for-maya-65689