Week: 24 – 30 May

Early this week, I managed to re-shoot the video plates to replace the rejected version recorded last week. I get up early in the morning at 5 o’clock as last time to avoid the crowds that coming out to go to work and school.

This time, I chose another place near my flat that was visible to the early morning light and not covered by the building’s shadow. This is to prevent the problem with the last videos where I need to increase the camera brightness which cause over expose to the other already bright areas in the video. With properly lit location, I can also get lower ISO as possible to prevent grainy videos.

I carefully shoot the videos. The location of the video is actually one of the main path for people to walk to go to work as there are several offices around this place. There is also a gym that is open early in the morning, and during the shooting there were already several people coming to exercise there. I cannot spend too much time to shoot as more and more people started passing by. I shoot as many variations as possible when there is no / not many people around.

After the shooting, I did a quick editing on my computer to check the scene. This time I’m very satisfied with the result as it has good camera angles, movements and overall, consistent brightness throughout the videos.

I cut each shot with the intended duration and exported them with extra 10 to 15 frames each as a safe frames for final cutting later. I will use this version of background plates for the camera tracking process in Blender next.

Week: 17 – 23 May

This week, I didn’t spent much time working on my personal project since I’m a bit busy with the collaborative indie film project.

I actually planned to (and should have) finalise the scenes and actions for the storyboard as soon as possible so I can shoot the background plates (video footages) for the camera tracking process. I thought long and hard to design a good actions sequence for the story but I still don’t have any concreate idea for this. I felt a bit stuck that I finally decided to follow some of the actions and shots from the old Killer Bean animation since the motive of my project was not to design the choreography but to do character animation and camera tracking.

I quickly referred the Killer Bean animation and drew a new rough story sketches to finalise the actions, the number of shots, angle and camera movement for the video shooting. There will be 12 shots, and I targeted it to have a duration of 30 seconds maximum for whole animation.

I woke up as early as 5 am in the morning to shoot the background plate videos to avoid the crowds and people that coming out in the morning to go to work and school. I shoot the videos using my iPhone only since I don’t have any better camera equipments. The angles were based from the story sketches I did last night. I made several variations and alternatives for each shot as backup.

Right after the shooting, I went to my computer and I made a quick editing see the result and how the shots coming together. Honestly, I’m not satisfied with the video. The location was not very good and since it was in between two buildings, the area was under the shadow which forced me to increase the camera brightness during shooting and made the other already bright areas to become over exposed.

I planned to do a re-shoot in another day, probably during the weekend or early next week.

Week: 10 – 16 May

As planned for this week, I proceeded with the character rigging stage after the 1 to 1 session with Luke.

Model cleanup & finalisation

Before the rigging process begin, I decided to make several changes and improvement to the both character models. The previous models were actually quite rushed with some of their topologies look a bit messy. So I fixed the meshes to have more quad shapes rather than triangles, added necessary loop cuts to some areas such as on the arms, body and cloth, and ensured that layered objects to have aligned segments so they can be bent at the right area without the meshes overlapping to each other.

The most noticeable changes were the shoes models where I modified their lower and front shapes. I also removed the shoelaces on Zeo’s shoes to make the design to look cleaner. I didn’t changed the Agent character as much since both of them shared the same body components, other than few tweaks to the topologies of his cloth.

I changed and finalised the color of the characters as well. And for this project, I want the characters to have a simple material color style so I didn’t apply any heavy textures to them.

For the last part, I combined some the character parts which supposed to be together into 1 object to make the rigging process easier. I also reorganised all the final objects in the outliner and renamed them properly so I can easily identify and find them during the rigging process later.

Honestly, it has been almost a year since I last did a character rigging in Blender. I didn’t used Blender as much compared to my main 3d software, 3dsmax. So I have forgotten several crucial parts of rigging in Blender like setting up IK, pole target and controllers. I quickly headed to Youtube and watched several rigging tutorials to refresh my memory.

Bone & controller placements

With everything ready, I started the rigging process. For this project, I decided to build the skeletal bone manually rather than using a template from the Blender’s Rigify plugin. Rigify is actually great which offers variety of skeletal templates for biped, bird and quadruped character, but I want to have more direct and flexible bone structure for my characters.

With my experience with Rigify several times before, the system will create proxy and instances when generating final skeletal which can be a bit tricky to revert to edit and generating the bone again. On the plus side, Rigify will make all the controllers and automate some of its bone position when posing the character such as the arm twist for example. While its great to have that, I think I prefer to create much simpler bone for this project.

I began by creating the main bone structure first which covers all the character’s body parts.

After the main bone structure was completed, I created the controller bones for the root, pelvis, hands, foots, elbows and knees.

I then setup the IK the arms and legs, and Pole Target for the elbows and knees.

Lastly, I added the facial bones for the eyebrows, eyelids, eyeballs and lip.

Skinning and vertex weight

During the skinning process, I used the manual vertex value instead of the standard weight painting method. I prefer the manual value method especially when the object has a low-poly state since we can select the vertices easily.

For me it is multiple time faster to skin this way. We can just select the vertices and enter the intended weight to quickly make them follow which bone we want, compared to using weight painting brush where we keep painting again and again to get the correct values for each body parts.

This manual value method is especially very effective when dealing with very narrow areas such as fingers. Using weight paint in this area instead can be very painful when it painted the wrong surfaces since they are very close to each other.

When using manual method, if I want the vertices around the character’s chest to follow 100% to the upper spine bone for example, I can just set those vertices weight value to 1.0 to that bone, and set the vertices loop between the upper and lower spine to the value of 0.2 so that it will follow the upper spine for 20% to create soft and smooth bend. It’s very fast and I can get consistent weight for all sides.

The only annoying part of using the manual value in Blender is that it will not automatically normalize the weight value to the sum of 1.0 between multiple bones that shared the same vertices. So I will need to use the ‘Normalize All’ function every time I entered new value to the selected vertices so it will deduct and calculate the balance weight values to the other bones. If I forgot to ‘normalize’, multiple bones can effect the same vertices with the same maximum weight which can cause the shapes to not properly follow the intended bones.

I used the manual vertex weight value when skinning in 3dsmax as well, but 3dsmax will automatically normalize the value. I’m not sure if I can do the same in Blender but I cannot find the way yet, other than to use the ‘Normalize All’ function.

Week: 3 – 9 May

Earlier this week I began modelling the characters in Blender based on the sketches that I did last week. The characters I designed have some similar body parts such as the body, eyebrows, mouth, hand and legs so I can use the same model for those. The major different between them are the eyes, cloth and color.

So the plan was to model the main character first, which is Zeo and reuse his model for the Agent character with additional props. I mostly used the basic and standard modeling tool such as extrude, bevel, cut and loop cut during the modeling.

I also used several modifiers such as ‘Mirror’ to make the character symmetry and the ‘Subdivision Surface’ to make the low poly shape smoother. At some parts like cloth and belt, I used the ‘Solidify’ modifier to create the depth for those models.

I managed to finish both character models within 3 days. I didn’t proceed to rig the characters yet because I want to show to Luke first during the 1 to 1 session with him tomorrow.

I managed to finish both character models within 3 days. I didn’t proceed to rig the characters yet because I want to show to Luke first during the 1 to 1 session with him tomorrow.

1 to 1 Session With Luke

During today’s evening (6^th May), I had a video call with Luke on Discord. I have prepared 3d models, tracking samples and rough storyboard (not final) for this session.

I shared my screen and showed him the reference for my idea first, which is Killer Bean. I planned to make a short action story like the Killer Bean animation but with real video footages as background. I then presented the 3d character models that I have finished in Blender. Luke was okay with the idea and characters. He gave a suggestion to improve the topology by making the elbow and knee to have a rounded cap shape so they can be bent properly.

Next, I showed my camera tracking test videos to demonstrate if I’m capable to do the 3d character on real footage project. The tracks were not 100% perfect, but I think I can improve it in the actual footages later.

I then presented the rough storyboard, as the initial idea for the story. I planned to make a very short animation, sort of like a TV advertisement. A battery ad to be exact. So it will be around 15 to 30 second long. Both characters will be shooting to each other like an action scene in The Matrix and Killer Bean with the ending tagline “The BatteriX: No other batteries could challenge”. I described the actions that I planned in the storyboard, and mentioned that the scenes probably will be changed since the story was not final yet. Luke gave suggestions to do a closer shot to some scenes and pick 2 to 3 shots that really show decent camera tracking and full body actions for the showreel.

Week: 26 Apr – 2 May

After I proposed my personal project to Luke last week, I started thinking more about the short animation story, the characters, actions and suitable places that I can shoot for the background footages.

I planned to use Blender for every part of this animation as I learned this software can do compositing and camera tracking as well. I have a limited experience for modelling and rigging in Blender, plus I never done any camera tracking in this software before. So I think this is a great opportunity for me to polish and learn new techniques in this software.

Concept & Characters

My main reference for the character is from a Killer Bean animations by Jeff Lew. I actually have done a very simple short animation inspired by Killer Bean as a test when I started learning 3D modeling & rigging several years ago. I made the character designs from a battery and called it ‘The BatteriX’ as a parody to the Matrix films.

The old animation was done in 3dsmax. So this time around, I want to redo everything again from scratch using Blender. While I’m at it, I’m improving the character design as well. I did some sketches as guides for the 3d modelling process and the main character is now wearing cloth. Finally!

I planned to start modelling the characters early next week and hopefully finish it before the 6th May session with Luke that I booked last week. I want to show them to Luke first to get his feedback before I rig the characters.

Camera Tracking Practice in Blender

I didn’t proceed for the modelling yet because I want to research and practice on the camera tracking first to see if I can do it properly in Blender since I never done it before. I watched several video tutorials on Youtube on how o do it. Below are some videos that really helped me understand the technique.

This last video is not really about camera tracking but I did watched it and learned few techniques and understand more about Blender tracking capabilities.

I then proceed to do some practices using footages that I shoot near my house and a test footage from the indie film project. I used both the manual and auto tracking function in Blender.

I actually did more test on several other videos but below are 3 of them which I think turned out quite good. They may not 100% accurate but I’m now understand how it works in Blender.