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.

Week: 15 – 21 March

I’m very busy with the collaborative project that I spent less time on the character performance animation work.

This week I managed to find some time to finish the blocking until the end of the audio clip and did a bit of splining animation to some parts of the character actions.

Below is the playblast of the work

Week: 1 – 7 March

I proceeded with the blocking stage for the character performance animation. I followed the reference video footages closely with some minor adjustments.

Scene Preparation

For this animation, I used David and Sam character from the Luke’s resource share.

I made some adjustments to the Sam’s face and head shape to turn him from handsome to somewhat a bit of crazy person. I made him bald by hidden his hair so his head now resembled the original character (Kane) from the audio clip.

As I practiced in the collaborative project, I used referencing system when importing both characters into the scene so that any changes to the character models will be applied back automatically to the animation file.

I also setup a quick select set for each David and Sam. This is sort of like a bookmarking system where I can quickly select the main or frequently use bones and controllers when posing the characters in the blocking and animation stage.

Finally I created a camera and a simple plane as the floor. I locked both the camera and plane so they would not accidently move or change when I’m doing the character blocking and animation.

Blocking

After everything ready, I started by blocking out Sam character first. I used the quick select function very much during the process. I keyed all his bones for every key pose that I referred from the reference video. This method was to lock the exact pose and prevent it from changing when I alter any next or previous key poses.

After I got about 2/3 duration of Sam blocking, I moved to block David character. David is a secondary character in this performance animation and he’s not moving much throughout the scene. But when he moves I want to make him standout a little with his facial expressions, hand gestures and the use of prop which in this case, a cigar.

Speaking about the cigar, this little prop will swap the places its attach several times in the scene. The cigar will go from mouth to fingers and back to mouth again. I cannot simply use the standard constrain / parent as it will attach to one place only. I also cannot manually animate the cigar to follow the movement of the head, mouth and hand because it’s quite impossible to get perfect animation for that.

One way to do it is to use ‘dynamic constraint’ where it can attach and change to different parent at certain frames. I knew how to do this trick in 3dsmax since I used this technique quite a lot in my previous projects, but I’m clueless how to do it in Maya. So I headed to YouTube and search a tutorial about this matter and I found one that clearly showing just that. I tested it in my scene and it works!

Below is the first blocking for the character performance animation. I didn’t managed to finish all the blocking before this week class. So I uploaded what I have so far to Ftrack so Luke can give his feedback during the class session.

Playblast