Jumps Iterations

Whilst I understand this is meant to cover many iterations over many days on different posts. This is more to confirm that I have been doing this over many different animations, not just the girl skipping I first posted about

Curtsy Animation

In an earlier post I spoke about the workflow I have used. it was long winded and everyone just went TLDR.
So, here are some images and animation passes for reference and to show it in a more visual way.

first, is doing rough drawings of the Keyframes.

Then blocking out the Keyframes in max and doing a simple timing guesstimate with the keys.

Next comes adding some smooth motions.

and after many passes, iterations, and much feedback from teachers, it becomes a little better.

Animations

so after many iterations and passes, I have decided these are good enough to show people. one is a curtsy, the other a jump. Both took me about a day all up to animate, and have been rather fun to do as it has helped me learn a much better workflow.
the third, is a tutorial piece I followed, so it is not my original work, but it was a great learning curve none the less.

 

Workflow

so I have found a workflow I am actually really happy with for creating animations. I first started learning about it at college in some workshops, but I furthered my learning on digital tutors of how to refine and perfect that workflow.
It starts with working out what the animation is going to be. Such as a jump, skipping, running or so on. Then I find some reference material or video some if there is nothing that fits what I need.
next I do some simple drawings of the key frames and the idea of the pose needed in them on paper or in Photoshop. Then its time to open 3DS Max and get to blocking out the keyframes with the rig being used.
to do this properly I turn the auto tweening off and just make it stepped from frame to frame. this is done by changing the default in/out tangents on the bottom right of your screen near your key frame and auto key buttons to stepped (it literally looks like a step).
For the creating of the frames I do not try and put them in the right place on the timeline, I just make them on consecutive frames, so frame 0, 1, 2, 3 and so on depending on how many frames are needed.
After this its time to work out how long the sequence will be, then change the timeline to that long and start working out a rough idea of where each key frame needs to go. once they are placed I go into the curve editor, select everything and turn the tangents to auto.

This is where it starts to get really tricky, assuming I have done a decent job with the key frames and timing them out then it may look half decent. otherwise its time to watch it, do an animation preview, work out whats wrong and fix it again. this is just a matter of doing it over and over until I have it looking good enough to satisfy what I want.
If after this step I am still not satisfied I can go in and shorten the timeline to work on a specific point and finely polish it, doing this until I am happy with how the animation sequence looks and feels.

Rendering to specified specs

Have to render something out in 720P as a .PNG or TGA sequence and then use an encoder to compress it to .h264 mp4

 

Camera Work

So today we went and had someone teach us about cameras. like, real cameras, not your mobile phone kind. we learned things like what the shutter speed does and how to change it, what controls the natural lighting, or the aperture (also called the f-number)  and how you can also increase or decrease the artificial lighting with the ISO.

We went outside to take some photos, and I dropped the ISO to fairly low as it was a brighter day, overcast, but still bright so I left the F-Number a bit higher. The result was decent, but when I tried to take a photo of the river it totally failed due to the reflected light from the water.

Project Concept

Working with the game design students we came up with a game concept. In the game the player controls twins who have been left in the care of an older sibling for the firs time while the parents are out. The player then uses those twins to wreak havoc on the house and do as much damage as possible due to the fact that the older sibling has gone crazy with the power.
we decided that to make this work well, we would go with a mixture of 2D and 3D assets, making the character and interactive objects 2D to make them stand out a bit more. The background and environments will be 3D to give it some depth, and make the house seem different to the other objects.

Girls…thing after skipping…

Hands are fixed at the start, they move more smoothly to the end point.
Head turn is slower when looking around. I tried to turn the shoulders a bit with it, but its doing some strange bobbing thing so I need to fix that.
Bounce now dies off slowly, not abruptly like before.
Calculating look comes on more slowly at the end before she is still.

So far I am happy with it or now.

after skip

After skipping comes…um…this.
first problem is the hands move in waaaay to fast for the rest of her flowing movements.
I need to slow her head down when she looks around and make her shoulders, or the shirt shoulders, move when she turns her head.
her bounce ends too abruptly, adding in some more shorter bounces will make it look better.
and her face should take longer to turn to a smile and squinted eyes to make it more slow and considering.

Girl skipping finished (for now)

So  I have finished the skipping to a stop, for now.
its not the best animation ever, but its also as polished as I can make it in the time I have.

so far no problems with the skip animation have been found, but that is so far…