Advanced Animation - Project 3
INSTRUCTIONS
Project 3 - Action Animation
For the third and final project of advance animation, we are tasked with animating characters action based on references online, and it can be action such as being chased, combat etc. I decide to choose an obstacle course animation. In order to fulfil the minimum time limit, I choose two separate action and clip the two movement into one complete animation.
Here are the two reference I plan to animate:
Analysis
The first stage of animating this final project is to do a proper analysis based on the given reference above and determine which pose is the main pose, contact and which one is the in-between. I first download two of the reference videos online and the put it in a video editor of blender.
Since the reference material has also shown actions in different view points, I clip three view into the same scene to make thing's easier to refer to.
Using the blender feature, I marked the main poses as well as the contact poses to get them animated. Just like other character animation projects, I use Snow as my character for my animation. Here is the link where I got the character:
https://studio.blender.org/characters/snow/v4/
I create an extra display on the side and begin my animation.
Animation
The next part of the project is start animate the character themselves. It is split into further two stages: blocking and polish. Blocking is where the animations are arranged in specific poses, and polishing is when various adjustments and fixes are made.
In addition, I also use the annotate feature of blender to pinpoint certain parts of the body in the previous frame and then create a pose accordingly. I also use this method during the polishing stage. I personally find that using annotation can be rather useful.
For each of the markings I have made, I create a pose for them. Here is the result of my very rough blocking animation.
The next stage of the animation is the polishing of the animation to ensure the animation goes smoother. It could be adding an in-between action between poses to ensure certain body parts stays in place throughout the animation, which is especially tricky when using a FK (Forward Kinematics) appendages and has to be used for the arm swing and that it's not possible to switch FK to IK (Inverse Kinematics) in the same scene.
In addition to that, I also have to ensure that the body does not clip through solid objects such as the floor, the obstacle and other body parts.
One of the most common issue I have encounter during the polishing stage is
where the body parts rotate more than 360 degrees due to a rotation range
being two large in between frames.
Here is the result after a long polishing process:
Background Assets and Lighting Setup
The last stage of this final projetc is to add in the props for the background and render some lighting for the animation. My first idea for this animation is to do something similar to a mobile game call temple run where the character got chase. Due to the time constraints, I readjust my idea into something else instead but I decide to find what is closest to a temple.
I went to look for a stylized environment that could fit the character design and this is what I have found:
Once I have imported the file into blender, I came across my first problem in the background assets stage, the entire scene is pink and white with no textures.
A solution to this problem is to simply open up the texture node and connect the texture images that comes with the download and connect to specific items. I also connect the roughness maps and the normal texture map (creates a detailed look when shine in certain angles).
Once I'm done, I create a long hallway for the character to run in, as well as applying the provided texture to objects that isn't part of the downloaded scene (the obstacle that Snow has to jump over).
Then I come upon the next problem: the flames in the torch does not match any of the textures provided. So I decide to make the flame from scratch. Here is the tutorial I found online that helps me create the flame.
Once I am done with adding the fire to the scene and adding light wherever is appropriate, I went ahead and some more objects to the scene like a simple trip wire to give the character a reason to dive roll.
Then I add camera movement to the scene. According to Mr. Kamal, I should keep the camera movement simple so that it would not distract the viewer from the character's action. So I keep the movement simple and have it follow the character's movement, but also momentarily have the camera focus on the trip wire to indicate what the character sees before dive rolling. I also made some further adjustment, such as making sure body parts didn't touch the trip wire etc.
Final Result
REFLECTION
This project maybe the one project I am the most satisfied in the final result in comparison to the other two project. There may also seem to be several factors that play into this, the first is that this project relies on video reference and feature several angles to view the same action. There is also the full rendering of the environments, camera movement and lighting that may have made the animation that pulls on the attention slightly from the animation itself. In doing this animation, it has given me some insights on what is the most lengthy part of the animation process. The process is the polishing. Initially, I thought that polishing animation will take a shorted amount of time than actual animation, but this project has taught me that it was vice versa. It does not give the full experience, but it does show me the glimpse of what animation is like.
In addition, this project also shows me the limitation of the character model when it comes to animating the character in a certain position, especially when the legs are close to the chest. There is also the problem with the foot bending, which also distorts the bottom of the pants, which makes the animation slightly weird.
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