#progress update 3

[2017cgtoolkit]

Online Progress Update 3

1. Remaining work to be completed over the next few weeks:

Week 11:  Finish up Character Animation Polish

Week 12:  Unreal Engine 4

Week 13:  Unreal Engine 4

2. I’m still in the process of polishing the animation, making the movements smoother and a bit more realistic etc. This is it so far.

It’s not yet finished but I have put the animation into Unreal Engine 4 just to demonstrate that it will work. I just recorded the screen and played through a bit of the animation because Unreal crashed a few times when trying to render out a video.

3. I didn’t really encounter any obstacles this week, only that Maya and UE4 crashed unexpectedly quite a few times so I’d lose a bit of work. 

4. I think I’ll cut frames 0-299 and maybe 1046-1200 if I’m not done in Maya by the end of this week.

[cgtoolkitblogger]

Progress Update 3

Week 11 - Animation

Week 12 - Greyboxing and interpreting, maybe cutting down animation and changing timing.

Week 13 - Greyboxing, After Effects.

I don’t have any videos to show as of this update as I was afraid how long it would take to upload as the last playblast took a long time. Since the last update I’ve been able to add movements to the hip and the tail (although, the tail animation is god awful at this point and I will be removing it.)

I need to fix some of the animation with the walking. I have the foot lift and the step, but I need to add a different angle of the foot to make it look more realistic. I also need to change how the feet move while the dragon is flying.

I’ve been having a lot of trouble animating the tail. At this point of the animation I’m considering removing ALL animation that I have for the tail, and adding very little - perhaps using references from chicken with plungers on their tails, or dinosaurs (such as the ones on the P block boards at Garden’s Point) as the dinosaurs are similar to the dragons that I am imagining.

Should I be short on time, I’m going to cut the majority of the animation. I will remove the standing, walking, and the landing walking animation, and simply keep the taking off and flying around animation.

[samjduffy4]

Since the last update, I have worked on creating a high poly production version of the geometry. I did this by cleaning up the existing geometry, unwrapping it and smoothing, beveling and modifying the existing geometry. This puts me on track to finish the build on time. In the next week, I will be able to set up the deformation skeleton to work with this geometry, finish adding the ears and eyes and finish cleaning the model up for texturing at the end of week 12 and throughout week 13.