This week, I mainly added skeletons to the cloak and refine the skin weights.
Initially, I added 8 skeletons to his cloak. After discussing with Sean and Yann, We reached a consensus view that there were too much and it was inconvenient for the animators to animate.
And then we deleted 4 of them and distributed them equally in space to achieve basically the same size of the range they control. Furthermore, because the chest part of the cloak was rarely about to move, we omitted the upper part of the skeletons and connected them to the joint of the belly part.
With the help of Sean, I also added some circles(controls) and made them establish a parent-child relationship so that as the father joint rotates, the child joint will follow along.
Finally, I erased some irrelevant weights, for example, the joints of the chin may not affect the movement of the clothes, etc.
This week, my job was to rig out a new character of our collaborative project which was modelled by Sean. With the experience of the former character, this time I found that things were much easier.
Because the arm of this male character is asymmetrical, I cannot create one side skeleton and then just generate another side automatically.
The correct way to build an asymmetrical skeleton is to first select the asymmetrical joints, and then add attribute ‘noMirror’, and then duplicate the joints to the other side. Finally, after placing the joints in the proper position, click on the button ‘Build AdvancedSkeleton’.
This character is different from the female one, his clothes and body are not separated, but the most tricky part is the cloak. His right arm is wrapped in a cloak and his left arm is a machine, and it has many components on his body. Therefore, when painting skin weights, I should do it little by little.
This week, I continued rigging the female character and mainly focussed on skinning and painting skin weights.
It was the first time that I had dealt with a model whose clothes were made separately. In this case, skinning by merely selecting the whole body and the skeleton was impossible.
Initially, I was thinking that I could hide the legs as they were inside the trousers and couldn’t be seen. So, I hid the leg and bound skin by selecting the trousers. However, When I was going through painting skin weights, as she lifted her foot, a hole appeared in her crotch, that’s a bug. Moreover, the trousers have two layers of thickness, it’s very difficult to paint skin weights accurately.
After searching for related information online and asking other students of the course. Luke told me that joints should always be based on the body as the clothes skinning weights could be copied over from the body to them. The main thing to always think about with joint placement is they should be the pivot points of where bones would be inside the body.
This week, I mainly practised creating skeleton, using the female character which was modelled by Yann.
When I was creating skeleton, after I clicked on the button ‘Bulid AdvancedSkeleton’, something went wrong. The knee joint didn’t face to the right direction. Even I tried to rebuild, the orientation was still incorrect.
After that, I asked Luke about why this happened and he replied to me very quickly. The reason why this happened was the knee was not far enough forward to define which direction the leg was pointing. There should always be a bit of bend in the knee to allow the IK pole vector to calculate which direction the bend is prominent.
After refinement, the skeleton was correctly built.
This week, I mainly learn about how to rig up character with maya tool AdvancedSkeleton.
Create skeleton
Lower half of body
Root joint should be in the middle of the hip
Draw a triangle on the hip, and hip joints should in the middle of the two sides of the triangle
Knee joint should not be directly moved by changing the value of translate, only can be moved by rotating the hip joint
From hip to ankle, the bones should stay in a straight line
Knee joint should be in the middle and a little bit close to the knee.
Rotate ankle joint till it matches the direction of foot.
Torso
Position of chest:
Neck and head
In terms of eyes, first of all we need to return the centre pivot to the eyes, and then display local rotation axes, and then pressing V key with middle click, we are able to stick the joint to the centre pivot of eyes.
Arm
Under rigging mode, go to skeleton – create joints, we are able to create custom joints.
After completing half of skeleton creating, click on the button Build AdvanceSkeleton, it will copy and paste the other half of skeleton.
Bind skin
Click on the button AdvancedSkeleton – Body – Deform (option1) – Select DeformJoints and then shift with left click select the main body part (DO NOT select ornament), and then go to Bind Skin, follow the setting below (bind to selected joints, normalise weights should be interactive).
This week, we learned about destruction simulation in Houdini.
Below is three ways to create object fracture.
To simulate a object falls freely under the influence of gravity, and rebounds after touching the ground.
Destruction:
In node view, we need to tell dopnet that we are going to use fragment rather than just one complete object, so we need to add assemble node.
rbdmaterialfracture is similar to rbdinteriordetail, rbdinteriordetail has the same parameters as rbdmaterialfracture does. By changing the value, we are able to add details inside the object.
This week, we mainly confirmed our team members, the outline of our story and what everyone is responsible for.
Our project is to create a fighting animation.
Time: postmodern, science fiction, cyberpunk
Location: a deserted alley in a modern city with several small shops and signs
Character: a girl whose profession is a bounty hunter and a cyborg man whose profession is a killer
Story outline:
The cyborg man is destroying the robot in the alley, hitting it vigorously and smashing the wall out of the hole. Then the man throws it into the trash can. There are some robot limbs scatter around the trash can. The mechanical man takes out a cigar and lights it, takes a deep breath and then raises his head to puff out smoke. Looking up, he sees a masked girl holding a short knife standing on the roof. The girl squats and rushes towards the mechanical man. The man dodges hurriedly, and the cigar is cut into two pieces. The girl falls and rolls, her back turns to the man.
The man stabilises his flustered figure and spits his cigar aside. The girl slowly gets up, revealing the sign behind. After seeing this, the man showed an expression of disdain and says ‘bounty hunter’.
They face each other in a calm stance before the battle…
My job is to rig up those two characters and research to achieve the effect of wall breaking. If there is time left, I will study adding 2D effects to 3D fighting scene.
Term 2 get started and Medhi who is a Houdini artist is going to teach us Houdini. I never worker with Houdini before, I don’t know anything about this software, which worries me the most.
Week 1 tutorial is almost introduction about Houdini.
Mouse in viewport, left click/ middle button/ right click can be able to rotate/ move/ scale the scene
Mouse in the network, press tab can create node
Press entre can translate rotate scale the object (T/ R/ S)
Mouse in viewport, press D can open display options, here we can change preference such as the colour of scheme
The blue eye button controls of showing and hiding the object, while the purple one can show the wireframe
By copying one parameter, and then in another attribute pasting relative references can create relative relationship. If the parameter of primitive attribute changes, the related attribute will change based on the expression. And the attribute which has expression can not change itself due to constraint.
Finally, our task is to create a cabin, and below is my work.
My Topic is “The development and main style of 3D animation” .（PPT1）
What you see here is Claymation, Claymation is one of the origins of 3D animation, which every 3D animation enthusiast should understand and master. Among them, outstanding works include: “Gumby”, “Wallace and Gromit”, “A Close Shave”, “Robot Chicken”, “Pingu”, “The Nightmare Before Christmas”. “Robot Chicken” is a work of the 21st century; the others are masterpieces of the 20th century. (PPT2, 3)
There is no doubt that the Claymation 3D technique is extraordinarily primitive and does not require CGI. It fully reflects the wisdom of animation designers. (PPT4)
With the introduction of CGI technology, the visual effects of 3D animation have gradually improved. In the 80s and 90s there appeared “Luxo Jr”, “Tin Toy”, “Knick Knack” and “Toy Story”. 3D technology gradually replaced 2D technology (PPT5)
The 21st century, 3D animation showed a blossoming posture. The increase in computer processing speed and software development is indispensable. (PPT6)
The following are some of the well-known works in 3D animation at the beginning of the 21st century. Most of these works come from DreamWorks Animation LLC, Pixar Animation Studios, Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. (PPT6)
The excellent visual effects of 3D animation are used in various fields. In the 1960s, William Fetter used 3D technology to complete the Boeing Co. pilot design. As early as 2009, Power has summarized the application of 3D animation. The case on the right reflects the results and efficacy of the specific application of 3D animation. (PPT7)
Hyun et al. (2016) show that 3D animation production is not as simple as people have guessed. So, we need to keep learning. Next, I want to share with you my favourite creative style. Kress and Van Leeuwen (2006) proposed Visual judgment as the standard of identification has become naturalists’ consensus. Due to that, both realism and naturalism are recognized as the leading theories of 3D animation technology. (PPT8)
In naturalism or realism, authenticity and expression are two styles with noticeable differences but frequently appearing. 3D animation attempts to achieve an expression of various complex content in the form of imitation. Imitation may be real or beyond. As mentioned in Power (2009), animators are continually trying to use different expression styles to achieve outstanding expression of the character’s psychology, emotions, and actions.
Affected by this concept, I think that expressiveness tends to the style of most 3D animations, and authenticity is more concerned in 3D film. Terzidis (2003: 58) implies that expressiveness has more advantages than authenticity; expressiveness stems from reality but transcends reality. Davis (1999) once described that expressiveness uses a specific exaggerated technique to make it easier for people to gather in the creative mind. The difference between them is like dancing and walking (P. 3). This undoubtedly strengthened my belief in using expressiveness.
(PPT9)
In terms of plot focus, I believe the New Romantic Theory of Expression. The plot should be fast and slow, light and heavy, with ups and downs. There are rough description and precise rendering. (PPT10)
Criticism
Many of the 3D animations we see belong to the category of supernaturalism and surrealism. (PPT11)
From phenomenology, surrealism and overly exaggerated expressiveness have affected the educational significance of the work, which has caused strong misleading. (PPT12)
