Rendering, rigging and how to make a Normal Map (22/5/2014)

For this session I generally worked on rendering all the type of images that the assignment required including textured and wire frame renders.
Some examples include...

I then continued to work on the rigging, making sure everything bent correctly.

* Working on the maps, I forgot how to make a Normal Map. Therefore, I made sure to make notes of my lecturer's instructions.

First, bring up your texture and make sure it is no longer a non editable background layer. Then, click 'Image', 'Adjustments' and finally 'Desaturate'.

Then go into 'Filter' and scroll down to 'NVIDIA Tools' and select 'NormalMapFilter...'

Here you must make sure that you set the 'Scale' to 6 and 'Set to 1.0' the 'Alpha Field' so as to get the best quality and as a result a Normal Map.

For my fabrics however, I had to bring the 'Scale' up to 15 or 20 to have a noticeable effect whilst at the same time not making them look like lumpy custard or something.

* I also decided today to add texture to the goggles and necklace as seen below.

I then made sure to add semi transparent white spots to the metal for the Specular maps so as to make the 3D models of them look shiny.

General work (19/5/2015)

* Before doing anything, I made sure to ask my lecturer about every aspect of the hand in so as to make sure I completed all the tasks correctly. This included asking whether he wanted the work to be on word documents within each folder we needed to hand in (thus I would be able to include some written work on my process for each one), or just a collection of images since the work is marked on our practical evidence alone.

Asking about the folders, he said that he just wanted them to be a collection of JPEG's and different video formats. Each folder should be named after their area and I should create a 6th one for animation.

With the above in mind, I then worked on the rigging by tweaking the odd bit before working on the folders themselves.

I also rendered images of the model I have so far for the 5th folder. Looking over them I decided to delete the ones that pointed out the biggest inconsistencies with my work, as despite knowing I have those in my animation, I didn't want to point them out in the renders I hand in.

Further rigging (13/5/2014)

After doing animation, I then atempted the rigging from yesterday again.

* First I concentrated on making sure the t-shirt's sleeve bent correctly and didn't go through the waistcoat.  

As you can see, the sleeve still bends into itself, but at least the waist coat and t-shirt look more like two separate entities.

* I then attempted to animate the head by turning it, only to get the following results.

However, I fixed the above by selecting all the vertexes and setting them to 0 on the 'Weight Tool'.

* I then worked on the other arms and making its hand turn and fingers bend. I especially tried to fix the bend in the character's arm by adding weight to it, which now looks a lot better.

Unfortunately, now the trousers are acting up and like an ocean's wave keep seeping through the waist coat and moving unnaturally (something that is hard to capture on the screen grab below).
I will have to try and rectify this at some point before the deadline if, I find the time and method.

* Overall, I have a new found appreciation for game developers, mainly riggers who job it is to make sure every bit of animation a character model does is correct and functional. As they are helping to bring a character to life.

I also feel, that from pushing myself to do this for most of the day, I now feel as if I have something to show for my efforts. Granted, it's not perfect, but it's a lot more than I started with and therefore that makes me happy.

* I was also able to catch the lecturer today and ask him about the hand in. Despite other modules he does not want an evaluation as he feels animation should be graded on practical work and not so much written. Therefore, I will need to provide him with digital folders that contain all my work, including my blog which he said would be ok to include as it includes my research. I may wish to include it's contents in the research folder as a word document instead, as the whole point of my blog was to try and boost my marks and show my research, especially since I feel my practical work may let me down.

Animating (13/5/2014)

* Having spent yesterday on rigging, today I focused on animation using lynda.com's video tutorials in order to help me.

I also used the lecturer's online tutorial 'Animating a CAT rig' so as to follow a spoken tutorial which I find easier.

First I added an animation layer under 'Layer Manager' in 'Motion'. This is so as to save all the the CAT rig's data and make the animation go more smoothly. As always the red button stands for 'Setup/Animation Mode Toggle' and has to be switched on to green so as to correctly animate the model without changing its original proportions. Making sure to also include a 'Key Frame' as that's important to include in all your animation on frame 0.

Selecting 'Auto Key' so as to save each change in the animation. I started to work on the walk cycle.

Originally I was going for a sneaking animation, by putting each foot in front of one another a bit at a time.

 
However, I found when doing this that the back legs animate/slide into their next position too soon. Luckily I remembered however, that I needed to keep setting keys so as to make sure each limb stayed in place until animated later.

Doing this slowly, I tried to animate it bit by bit so as to avoid the limbs dragging across the floor, however, they still did so as seen below.

Unable to get the walking animation quite right, I decided to try a different animation. First I tried one with the CAT rig yawning before waving at the audience, however, I couldn't get the stretch, shoulder movements and head turning quite right.

Therefore, I decided to take some inspiration from the last CAT rig by bending this one's legs as well. Only I will then make them jump afterwards.

Enjoying playing around with the jump I tried to make him turn in the air before landing on his feet.

However, I realised that making him land would be boring and predictable. Therefore, I decided to do something fun and cool by making the CAT rig turn in mid air before flying off into the distance like a super hero!

I especially like the flying idea since the CAT rig jumps, spins and remains in the air for a couple of seconds before stretching out its arm and launching forwards, similar to something Iron Man might do.

I then spent some time tweaking it so as to stop the feet from spinning in when the legs bend in the air, and make the hand stretch out with purpose, as if it is needed to help direct the flight, similar to Superman.

* Adding a background after some further tweaking, you can see my process so far in the video below.

* Overall, I had some good fun today doing the aspect of this module I was most looking forward to. Although I recognise that I still have a long way to go and that I need to alter the legs slightly as I found those the most difficult to animate, I feel more confident in my skills thanks to taking it easy today and producing something interesting.

Rigging (12/5/2014)

* I decided to try and really crack on with rigging during this session as that way I could ask for help from the available lecturer and my fellow colleagues.

First, I re-textured my model in order to have a correct point of reference for my model.

Looking back at my notes from last week, I then tried my best to rig the model correctly by going into the Modifier List, Skin, Envelope and then selecting the button Edit Envelopes and having the Weight Tool on the screen (wrench symbol).

As you can see, I also selected the vertexes and looped them before setting them to 1, as the lecturer told me to last week. Thus I slowly, but surely repaired the wrist band as seen below.

I then did the same for the waist coat.

I realise that I may have to go back and edit the sleeves as, after fixing them, they no longer move with the arm, therefore I will need to go back and edit this.

My lecturer helped me fix the sleeve as much as possible by adding weight, a tip he showed me last week. However, one thing he pointed out was that the shoulders on my original CAT parent's rig were too low. Therefore, even though they were fine when the arms were straight down, bending them made it look as if my character model had really big shoulder pads. Thus reflecting on my model, I realise that if I were to ever rig a model again I would need to raise the shoulders, so as to avoid this feature and allow the arms to bend completely perfectly.

Finally, I decided to move the limbs about so as to make sure they bend correctly throughout the first 25 frames as seen below, though the overall rigging is still work in progress.

Also, asking about the brief, I raised the question of whether or not it would be ok to show my textures on just one JPEG rather than four. The lecturer said that this would be fine, as I need to focus now of getting the main aspects of the project done e.g. rigging and animation.

* Throughout my process I also encountered quite a few problems which I had to laugh at considering that's what you get throughout the learning process.

* On another note, I found out that the deadline for animation is actually on the 29th of May and not the 26th.