Category: 3D Computer Animation Fundamental

Summary（3D animation）

I have gained a lot of new knowledge this semester. As a student studying animation for three years as an undergrad, I thought I had a good grasp of the fundamentals of 3d animation. Still, through this semester, I have discovered that I have many areas for improvement, including some of the most basic animation movements and the binding and setting of models in Maya. The most surprising thing is the use of blend shape. At one time, I was not too fond of this feature. It was tedious and fatiguing for me. But in this term, I learned the most basic mouth animation, and the moment the animation played out, I got an unparalleled sense of satisfaction.
I have also learned a lot about my work from my tutor this term; unfortunately I am still determining what I should specialize in for the time being. I still find modeling and animating very interesting, and I still need to know a lot of basic animation knowledge to support my future ideas.
In talking to my classmates, my group and I were very interested in one of my past projects, so we are still choosing this subject and planning to redesign the sets and characters to create a complete worldview and story.
Overall, I have learned a lot I missed in the past, added many more handy basic skills, and found a subject I want to do animation on.

The showreel：

Week 10 Mouth animation（Supplementary）

Post author By Yuting Yan
Post date 20th December 2022
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This week I will be enhancing the existing mouth animation. I added the eye controller to the head. Still, I realized I didn’t need to make this controller, so I added the tongue to the model and made the texture to try and make the head more human-like.

Here is a video of the result：

First, I made a simple model of the tongue. I parented it to the skeleton and gave it a different blend shape.

This is the texture drawn in the Substance Painter：

I then added eyebrows to the figure in Photoshop, as the substance painter’s brushes aren’t very flexible.

Test rendering:

Final animation:

3D Computer Animation Fundamental Maya Uncategorised

Week 9 Moth Animation and continuous movements 2

Post author By Yuting Yan
Post date 8th December 2022
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Since the mouth shape work could have had better feedback from the teacher, I redid the blend shape this week, adding a few more different mouth shapes and the neck movement to make it look very similar to the original video.

Also, I modified some of the motion animation work, hoping to improve the inertia and movement of the characters to make it look more natural.

This is a list of my redone blend shapes:

This is the final result:

There is still a significant flaw in lip-syncing. I have been lip-syncing frame by frame, but some lip-syncing is not quite right, and if the mouth opens and closes too quickly, it makes the lip-syncing feel like a pop-up, so I want to continue to improve the lip-syncing animation next week.

The action animation final effect:

We can see in the reference that the man’s movements are just very light, so I tried to make his body movements look weighty without ruining the aesthetics of the movement.

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Week 8 Mouth animations and continuous movements

Post author By Yuting Yan
Post date 4th December 2022
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This week I animated the face from the reference, using the head model I made last week and trying to recreate the mouth shape of a person speaking to the reference frame by frame.
We also animated a continuous movement. I chose a reference that I liked, drew the keyframes in 2D, understood the dynamic structure of each frame, and then animated it in 3D.

First, I found a video, rendered it as a jpg sequence in AE, imported it into Maya, and used the image sequence while importing the audio file into Maya.

Next, an animation of the blend shape is created frame by frame with the mouth shape.
Firstly, the timing of the opening and closing of the mouth is good, as most of the movement of the jaw is when a person speaks.

The next step is to make the mouth shape according to the reference.

This person does not blink, but when a person speaks, not only the mouth move but also the muscles of the face and the eyebrows, so the eyes, nose, cheekbones, cheeks, and eyebrows are animated separately.

eyes

nose

eyebrows

cheek

Final result

Motion animation

There isn’t a lot of skill in motion animation.
I import the reference into Maya, create the motion frame by frame, and adjust the curves.

This is the reference

And this is the 2D sketch.

And this is the final result.

3D Computer Animation Fundamental Maya

Week 7 Homework improve.

I didn’t do more blend shapes this week because I accidentally did too much blending last week. I changed the walk cycle to liven it up.

Firstly, I felt that the walk I did last time was not natural enough, even like a straining old man walking, so I changed the rhythm of the walk and adjusted the direction and angle of the sphere itself so that the globe wobbles like an “8.”

I then added head tilts and head drops to the ball movement to make it look more flexible.

I didn’t use the toe and other controls on the foot in the last exercise, so this time I used the “foot roll” and “toe roll” controls to give the toe a bending effect and to make the center of rotation of the foot is the toe.

I then added some rotation to the foot to make it look like it was rotating outwards so that it would simulate each hard toe step.

To start adjusting the walking rhythm, I wanted to bring out the force of the stride so that the body would go faster after each stride due to the forward point.

Finally, add a squeeze effect to the body of the ball. This will make the ball look flexible.

And now you can get a flexible walk cycle!

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Week6 Rigging and walking animation

Post author By Yuting Yan
Post date 14th November 2022
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This week we learned how to make joins and skin weight, blend shapes to make facial expressions more flexible, and add more detail to bones, such as bent bones in the elbows and double chins when opening the mouth.

Animating dynamics was a great way to learn how to make a walking cycle. Although it was an animation that I had already done, I still reviewed many of the details.

First, we prepare a human head. Because I wanted to make a handsome man, I made minor changes to the shape of his face.

I made joins in the side view, it has six bones, which require an understanding the human skeletal structure and musculature. I made bones for the neck and head link, bones for the whole head, and bones for the jawbone, and gave each join a corresponding name.

Select the bones that need to be moved, select bind skin in the skin, and set it to “select joins.” The bones will be colored after the bindings have been completed.

Place the eye and upper tooth parent on the head join The lower teeth parent is on the jaw join

Select the brushes in different modes, change the weights in “paint skin weight” mode and then standardize the skin weight left and right by using mirror skin weight.

Open the shape editor and use the sculpting tool to sculpt the facial expressions and muscular variations and create different blend shapes.

Fix the blend shape and join make it together and activate it：

Select the bones to be activated and open the “set driven key” to tie the blend shape to the join by adding a key to the z-axis.

And this is the walk cycle animation:

3D Computer Animation Fundamental Maya

Week 5 Animation

In this class, the teacher taught us some rough rigging. We made a cube man with simple geometric models and bound the simple model with controllers and joins so that the model could move freely. It is a troublesome choice for me to make active models without joins and without skin weight. But I still got an excellent chance to review all the skills for creating a model and rigging

First, build a cub model, place the midpoint of each limb at the body joint, and plan the parent and child limbs in outliner correctly.

Create a controller for each joint with a curve, and plan the relationship between each curve, keeping the midpoint of each controller consistent with the center of the joint it controls.

Create new joints from the side view, ensuring that each joint has bone support

Bundle IK handles for the bones of the two legs.

Select the bones of both legs, make a group, and parent with the hip controller

star_borderSelect the leg bones and use the pole vector to bind the controller and bones, enables controller to control knee orientation.

Create layers, select all polygons, and create a new layer to ensure that the model will not be selected by mistake when making animations

Your movable model is ready!

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week 4 Animation

Simple walk cycle

In today’s class, we learned how to make a walk cycle for a simple model, and in the process of creating it, I found that the existing model had some defects when making the walk cycle. I discussed fixing this defect with the IK handle with our teacher, which made the model more usable.

Modify rigging:

1.Select the controller and delete it

Generate IK handle:

First select the top of the thigh joint, then the top of the foot joint.

And create a new controller, make sure the center of controllor as the same position as the joint center of the toe.

Select the controller first then the joint I want to control, and parent both of them.

Make a flat surface to walk on.

Next, make different animations of the whole body moving forward and the feet, after the general animation, add the detail animation, such as swinging and rotating upper body movements.

You’ll end up with a swaggering pillow!

Final effect:

3D Computer Animation Fundamental Maya

Week 3 Animation

Today, we learned how to use the simplest hand model to make the action of grabbing something and throwing it out. The controller and parent were used, which helped me review many things.

The way to make a simple hand:

Use the simple hand made a grab movement.

Add two locator, one for the hand, other for the ball

Finally, I combined the small ball animation I did in the first week with today’s practice to make the effect of grabbing and throwing the ball.

And we Then we made a small animation of squirrel jumping, mainly to control the squirrel’s tail to swing more naturally.

After the class, I used my free time to practice more, trying to make the squirrel more flexible:

First, Finish the jumping movement of squirrels in place, and make it become a cycle.

Then copy paste

And you can get a bouncing squirrel!

3D Computer Animation Fundamental Maya

Week 2 Animation

Today, we learned how to make objects move with curves, use the sine function to create a fishtail swing, and use a camera with the camera target. Our teacher said we could add more effect to this animation, so I used the substance painter to paint the UV texture for the shark to make the model more realistic. I want to make an animation of a shark swimming leisurely in the ocean after eating its prey.

Model

Model: I made some shape changes to the default model in Maya, using some shark pictures as reference to make the tail sharper, adding the rounded eye, and four different shapes of teeth.

reference：