There’s a chance - final animation
Here is my final animation
I am quite happy of what I have done but as always there are things which I could do better.
For example, when the Floyd screams ‘yeaah!’ at the end of the movie I think the body language does not really match the voice. Also Marry in some parts could be animated better.
But there are some things that I like. I like the silence when Marry is telling Floyd that his chances are not good. Floyd did not move for a moment as if he could not believe it. I also like the moment when he smiles after Marry told him his got one chance in a million. The idea was to make it funny and I think I achieved this objective.
Character animation was my favourite module in this semester. I love working on animations, bringing characters to life and make my own movie. I like the responsibility and challenge that making the animation brings. It was also a great opportunity to me to make something funny as I never did anything like that before (except ‘cartoon network’ idents which I did for ‘3D modelling and animation’ module, but they were only couple of seconds long each).
I wish I could have more time to make it better. The problems that I had with my computer caused that most of the time I had to spend on my final project.
Like never before, many people asked me for feedbacks and also how to deal with some technical problems. I remember my first steps into 3D world and animation and I remember how difficult it was (and still is) so I am glad that I could help my colleagues with my knowledge and experience.
And that would be over :)
Take care guys! I wish you all good :)
Saturday, 1 May 2010
walking
In the first shot of the movie I wanted to have two characters which were walking, so that the shot was more vivid.
I used just one model of a character but I changed the colours so finally they look different. To create a character’s move I used the biped option ‘footsteps’. Both of my characters have different walk speed which was set up in ‘time to next footstep’ window.
To separate their walking, one of the characters turns and then descends from the pavement. Now they are walking in different planes..
I used just one model of a character but I changed the colours so finally they look different. To create a character’s move I used the biped option ‘footsteps’. Both of my characters have different walk speed which was set up in ‘time to next footstep’ window.
To separate their walking, one of the characters turns and then descends from the pavement. Now they are walking in different planes..
animation
I started my character animation from face.
To animate the face I decided to use ‘Morpher’. Morpher is not as easy to use as many people think. The problem to do with morpher can appear when an object (in this case character) has many channels and they are to be used with morpher option.
Floyd has seven basic morpher positions
Each face of a model has a different purpose. My models have different lips so that they could imitate ‘u’, ‘a&i’, ‘e’, ‘o’ and others. There was also a model with closed eyes, smile, with opened mouth and so on. Having all the models completed I was ready to animate the face.
It was very important to me to keep the lips moving according to the sound. To simplify the process of animation in 3ds Max I went to ‘track View’, then on the list (on the left) I clicked the ‘sound’ and I imported the original video soundtrack (with characters talking to each other)
Thanks to this I was able to match the mouth motion and the sound very easily.
The head was animated by ‘bones’ which allowed me very easily to rotate the face (with biped it could take more time). The eyes as always were linked to the dummy object by ‘look At constraint’ option.
The rest of the body was attached to the ‘biped’. With biped it was easy to animate hands and walking (for another characters).
The same thing was with Marry.
The face animation is over one minute long (1500 frames). Floyd’s face animation contains over 800 key frames.
When the mouth animating was completed (for both characters) the next step was to take care of the eyes. They are extremely important because the viewer actually looks at character’s eyes during watching. The eyes can make a character be more distinct.. To make the animation faster, Mary’s eyes were set up to fallow Floyd’s face. Thanks to this her eyes were animated automatically.
To animate the face I decided to use ‘Morpher’. Morpher is not as easy to use as many people think. The problem to do with morpher can appear when an object (in this case character) has many channels and they are to be used with morpher option.
Floyd has seven basic morpher positions
Each face of a model has a different purpose. My models have different lips so that they could imitate ‘u’, ‘a&i’, ‘e’, ‘o’ and others. There was also a model with closed eyes, smile, with opened mouth and so on. Having all the models completed I was ready to animate the face.
It was very important to me to keep the lips moving according to the sound. To simplify the process of animation in 3ds Max I went to ‘track View’, then on the list (on the left) I clicked the ‘sound’ and I imported the original video soundtrack (with characters talking to each other)
Thanks to this I was able to match the mouth motion and the sound very easily.
The head was animated by ‘bones’ which allowed me very easily to rotate the face (with biped it could take more time). The eyes as always were linked to the dummy object by ‘look At constraint’ option.
The rest of the body was attached to the ‘biped’. With biped it was easy to animate hands and walking (for another characters).
The same thing was with Marry.
The face animation is over one minute long (1500 frames). Floyd’s face animation contains over 800 key frames.
When the mouth animating was completed (for both characters) the next step was to take care of the eyes. They are extremely important because the viewer actually looks at character’s eyes during watching. The eyes can make a character be more distinct.. To make the animation faster, Mary’s eyes were set up to fallow Floyd’s face. Thanks to this her eyes were animated automatically.
Preparing for animation - storyboard&soundtrack
As always before starting any animation it is good to prepare a good storyboard. In this case, the process took me little time because the storyboard was based on the real movie.
At the beginning of my movie I wanted to have a long shot of the city, when camera goes down to finally stop above the ground in the front of a pub.
Because I wanted my characters to talk to each other I downloaded a reference movie. The sound in this movie (both music and speech) was very helpful when I started working on the character lips.
At the beginning of my movie I wanted to have a long shot of the city, when camera goes down to finally stop above the ground in the front of a pub.
Because I wanted my characters to talk to each other I downloaded a reference movie. The sound in this movie (both music and speech) was very helpful when I started working on the character lips.
Reference point
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcGj57cQIeg&feature=related
This is the movie I’m going with.
Before I started my animation I had observed the art of acting to learn how to show emotions, movement and body language.
As it can be seen, Floyd is a little nervous when asking what his chances are with her. When he hears ‘not good’ his quite shocked. It become difficult to him to speak. After hearing that his chances are like one to million, he explains to himself that anyway he has a chance. Then he screams of joy.
When we look at Marry we just can say that she tries not to hurt Floyd. She does not feel comfortable when she gives Floyd an honest answer. On the other hand, she gently tries to tell him that she’s not interested in him.
My intention was not to copy every move of the actor and incorporate it into the CG character (as it could take a long time), but to use some of the key areas (problem areas) as a reference point and create something on my own. The idea from the beginning was the same – to make a funny movie.
I had problems with my computer, as a result I lost character models and the scene. There was no way out; they had to be modelled again with the same principle as described before. Visual differences are minor.
This is the movie I’m going with.
Before I started my animation I had observed the art of acting to learn how to show emotions, movement and body language.
As it can be seen, Floyd is a little nervous when asking what his chances are with her. When he hears ‘not good’ his quite shocked. It become difficult to him to speak. After hearing that his chances are like one to million, he explains to himself that anyway he has a chance. Then he screams of joy.
When we look at Marry we just can say that she tries not to hurt Floyd. She does not feel comfortable when she gives Floyd an honest answer. On the other hand, she gently tries to tell him that she’s not interested in him.
My intention was not to copy every move of the actor and incorporate it into the CG character (as it could take a long time), but to use some of the key areas (problem areas) as a reference point and create something on my own. The idea from the beginning was the same – to make a funny movie.
I had problems with my computer, as a result I lost character models and the scene. There was no way out; they had to be modelled again with the same principle as described before. Visual differences are minor.
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