This week my teacher said I needed to find a reference based on a plot I had envisaged. I envisaged a simple short story: a boy was playing with a bat in the yard, and he tried to swing it, but he couldn’t hold on to the bat, and it flew out and smashed the next-door neighbor’s window, and he ran away in fear. I put a few reference together：
So I could create 2D sketches based on these references.
Feedback:
Remove this pose
Make a different angle for this pose
Changing this position to a crouched, ready position with a bat in hand, I think this dynamic enriches the striking action.
Next, in the movement of the bat coming off and the near fall, the teacher changed the action to be more effective, more vivid, and more flexible than the movement I thought.
The teacher thought it would be more interesting to make the escape action more 2D, with the characters running out of the shot quickly.
Following the teacher’s advice, I modified the animation and used 3D models to create the blocking.
Please allow me to describe this semester’s assignment as very interesting.
It seems like we have a lot of work in this course, plus the group cooperation project, we are exhausted, but I have gained much knowledge and experience.
Regarding previs, I have never done 3D animatic so seriously. In previous assignments, I usually started to prepare the animation details after finishing the 2D animatic. I didn’t expect this process to be so important. To summarize my experience gained:
Body language is very important to a character, especially in an animation without any lines. The body language of each screen is to make the audience understand what the character is doing more simply and clearly.
The information in the scene is also important. In the feedback the teacher gave me, half of the information is in the scene. The amount of information contained in the scene in a shot cannot be ignored. The amount of information depends on the duration of a shot and the focus.
The connection of each shot is also very important. If the shot does not give people enough time, the audience will be confused.
Sound effects are also essential information in animation.
The beginning of a story requires a lot of worldview settings.
The most important points are probably these points. Because this assignment made me realize many deficiencies, I could improve at character body language, which also led me to find more information. Hence, This is where the title of the graduation thesis comes from——The interpretation of emotion by body language.
I am interested in the direction of my graduation thesis, and making character animation is also very happy. Creating a character to move flexibly has always been something I like very much. Experience is accumulated by practice, and talent is not important.
I’ve been hesitating about what exactly to focus on, and now I’m thinking that animation might be my first choice.
My graduation thesis aims to understand more theoretically what kind of body language can convey more information. By studying this topic, I hope to understand better what the body language that makes characters flexible is like. I can learn from The direction of theory masters more knowledge and information.
Of course, the animation that makes the model come alive is the part I like, and I still need to catch up on my modeling. I lack imagination in the design of the robot arm model. This is my shortcoming. But this homework made me re-acquainted with the work of rigging. Maya has many advanced rigging settings I need to learn, so I learned a lot of the most basic information.
I am delighted with the final effect of the robotic arm. After all, I like things that are extremely simple but very effective. I am satisfied with the final production of the robotic arm. The texture of tungsten steel and the cool technological style make the robotic arm look more advanced, but it can also be seen from this point that I am not very good at mechanical model design. This is my shortcoming. Although the result looks good, we still need to strengthen the design of the object.
It is also challenging to make an animation of a robotic arm because it is mechanical. Copying the movement of a human arm cannot reflect the mechanical sense of the arm. Mechanical things should have some inflexible performance, so making animations for robotic arms is very challenging.
This week I edited all the shots and improved the animation a bit. The plot becomes smoother and easier to understand as the changed shots get better. According to the teacher’s request last week, I changed several places and added some content according to my judgment. This is the final effect. I divided the cutscene into two parts. When the character dropped the box on the table, I deliberately made a “throwing” action, which is more flexible.
This is the effect after I improved:
*updated in the holiday I was fortunate the teacher was willing to give me some feedback during the holiday, so I changed the content again:
The character is attracted by the sound of gears rolling, preferably with sound effects or other effects that can represent the sound
The height when the character takes the gift box from the mailbox is wrong
“Your Admirer” on the box
The sound effect of character 2 knocking on the wall
The movement of character 2 walking one step is uncoordinated
The expression of character 1 changes in the subsequent shots (2D can be used)
The teacher said many things that needed to be changed in one breath… But it works! These changes can indeed convey more information, so I drew some auxiliary textures in PS, and I decided to use 2D comic effects to show the sound effects first.
Then this is the improvement I made with AE:
This is the sound of the gears and elevators creaking.
On the box: From your admirers.
This is what I judged to be added, an action scared by the clock’s bell, and the lightning symbol represents the bell of the watch.
This is character 2 knocking on the wall.
The following few pictures are the characters’ expressions, and the order is: surprised, shy, panicked and shy, and speechless.
End! (I think this font is cute, so I put it up)
The final previs：
I think that’s the final result of what I wanted to do with this story, it’s a little bit different from what I wanted to do in the first place, but it’s easier to understand, it’s engaging for the audience, and these changes are practical, attractive. The finished product makes me delighted, and I think it is a very warm and lovely story.
Mechanical arm class note:
This week, my job was to blend the arm animation with the video shot, all the work made in After Effect. Firstly, because my arm is a different shape from the robotic arm, it doesn’t cover my arm completely, so I created a new mask and added a gradient color to blend it more into the video.
Secondly, DaVinci’s keyer function was not perfect, and the outline of my arm was faintly visible, so I used the background image to obscure the part of the video below my small arm.
Finally, I found that the difference in brightness between the left and right sides of the video was significant and could cause disharmony, so I gave the right side of the image a higher brightness to make the overall video look more harmonious.
Because my robot arm design is simple, it was a bit boring after adding it to the screen. Thirty-five seconds of animation could add more interesting effects, so I added some attractive mechanical lights to the background, which is also a kind of animation, to make the screen look less boring.
Finally, I also added an animation of the aiming mechanical electronics to give the whole animation a storytelling look, with the character becoming a futuristic robotic warrior was being aimed.
Create a new mask to cover up the part without the arms.
Use an unoccupied background to mask the following part of the arm animation.
Lighten the right half.
The finished effect
Adding a fun little animation to the background
The effect of adding the robot arm：
This is the arm without the aiming animation. Cool enough, but it’s not interesting enough.
So I added another aiming animation， created the aperture first
Counting the number panel to the aperture
Add it to the animation and scale it over time to look like it’s being aimed or scanned.
I got feedback from my teacher this week and was very happy that she thought my previs was good and that I could understand clearly what the character was doing, although there were still some details that needed to be changed, which was very encouraging.
The teacher still pointed out a few details:
The animation of the character picking up something needs to be clearer
The animation of the character looking at the watch needs a pocket watch model
The transition angle could be better. It needs to be changed to the character picking up the box, standing up and walking into the room, and then filming the character entering the house from this perspective
The teacher is trying to make what I am doing getting better and more detailed, so I am stil satisfied.
This is the shot of the character picking something up, not clear enough:
This is the action of the character looking at his watch, not enough information:
Process animations that need to be changed:
Mechanical arm class note:
The robotic arm finally gets to the animation part!!!
Making the model was fun, but I ran into many problems, each of which made me tired (although the feeling of accomplishment from making it made me happy)
Anyway, I also enjoyed the animation and compositing part, so I will animate the arm and finally replace my arm with this one!
I took the video of the arm movement with green gloves to make it easier to post-process. I chose a dark hallway and wore black, so I hope this video will look cool
After took the video, I need to process the video first, import it into the DaVinci, confirm the available duration of this animation in the timeline, then add a 3Dkeyer effect to this video in the effects screen, where I can remove the selected color from the screen, and use a scene without a character as the background, then done keying.
The finished video was rendered into a jpg image sequence and imported into Maya using the method taught by our teacher last term, so that we could easily create an arm animation.
The arm animation is relatively easy to create. The main tricky thing is to make the mechanical arm flexible but less natural than a human arm. It needs some mechanical feel.
I had some problems with the rendering, I used to render in PNG format, and the background was not transparent. This is because only exr can render the alpha channel. It took me a lot of time to figure out this problem…
The original video:
Importing DaVinci to remove the green arm:
Add an alpha channel node to the video and add a 3D keyer effect to the node:
Importing the video and animating in Maya:
The rendering setup has been torturing me for a long time ….. It really took me hours and hours to try to solve this problem, but I didn’t expect this solution could be these easy.
This is the final result of the animation in Maya:
(An objective review, is really cool, and I like it!)
*Only a little time was allotted to animation this week as I had to complete my thesis outline and spent a lot of time reviewing materials.
Previs class note:
This week, as I didn’t go to class due to illness, my teacher didn’t check my homework, nor did I have any feedback. Still, I completed the requirements that my teacher mentioned last time and drew a lot of 2D illustrations. Then I merged them into the animation using AE, which makes it easier for the audience to understand what the animation bubbles are saying. Apart from that, I was also wondering if I could use one of my other character designs to make up a story that could be animated.
Illustrations appearing in the protagonist’s idea bubble：
This is the animation after changing all the animation issues from last week.：
Mechanical arm class note:
Last week I finished drawing the texture of the robotic arm and tried to render it. This week I linked the texture to the model and adjusted different properties for each material. Finally, I added HDIR to the robotic arm as ambient light. To simulate my In the stairwell where the video was shot, I especially found a room with similar cement walls as the light source.
As I expected, the rendered shell looks like tungsten steel. I like this texture very much. It looks like light blue self-illumination. Especially tech-savvy.
All the texture:
Connected in Maya:
After experimenting several times, I found an apparent difference between the Arnold rendering and the substance painter rendering, the same material rendered differently, so I changed some of the data in Maya based on this：
Render in Maya:
I prefer Cel-shading animations, so this rendering is just right for me.
HDRI: This unfinished studio, I think, is very close to the stairwell where I took the video
Render in Maya (without light) :
（My sentiment is that it’s really cool, and I super like it! ）
I learned a lot of new things this time, and rigging has never been an area of expertise for me. Still, it was very satisfying to get the model rigged and moving, so in conclusion, although I had many technical problems, I am still pleased with the design and the rendering.
Draft thesis:
This week we have added an assignment where we need to prepare a title and a draft for our thesis. I have been reviewing a lot of information and organizing what I need so far, writing a rough structure for my thesis, and stating what I want to write about. This thesis will deepen my understanding of animation and body language and help me to make exciting and flexible animations.
The interpretation of emotion by body language – the way emotion influences character animation
Keywords.
Expression of emotion, body language, character personality, animation interest, Exaggerated dynamics
Hypothetical question:
Character animations are influenced by emotions through the character’s body language
Abstract:
This essay intends to investigate the effect of body language on the expression of emotion in characters and the enhancement of the overall character animation fun. I will argue and examine credible sources of information to find out how emotion affects character animation through character body language.
Introduction:
This essay will examine why character animation needs emotion; the link between human body language and emotion; the need for body language in animation; the reasons for human body language; body language and human body structure; the link between character personality and body language and finally non-physical body shape-shifting and exaggerated approaches to body language in animation. The main question at the heart of this is how emotion influences character animation. I hypothesize that emotion is influenced by a great deal of body language and is a necessary expression in character animation. The ways and types of expression are then part of what we will explore. I plan to delve into how body language is produced and used in animation to enrich my understanding of animation. Expressive body language is integral to emotional expression in animation.
Literature review:
In the current study, Dahle’s 2019 paper nicely supports part of the argument about body language (Dahle, 2019), where Dahle argues that body language is strongly linked to culture, examining how Western and East Asian cultures use and perceive body language by comparing Eastern and Western 3D characters. He illustrates through comparative experiments that body language can express emotions. He also suggests two types of body language: acquired and instinctive, with acquired body language being more personal and culturally influenced. He also mentions Disney’s 12 principles of animation.
However, This paper needs to add more comparison experiments, as body language can vary greatly depending on age.
In Larsson’s paper (2014), we can learn most of the well-established ideas about body language and the role of body language and the argument that emotions are shown through body language in animation, stating that 93% of human communication is made up of body language, that facial expressions are also a form of body language. Larsson believed body language makes characters more flexible. The subjects in the thesis do not have facial animation, which would make body language beyond the face even more important. This experiment argues for the importance of body language in animation and how it can be expressed in theory.
This paper also states that if character animation needs to be made more realistic, animators must understand emotions and how to express them. (Larsson, 2014) However, body language has very many specifics. At the end of the paper, Larsson also mentions that if more complex body language expressions are needed, then greater experimentation and further research are needed.
Regarding the classification of the emotions expressed, Ennis et al., in their 2013 paper and experiments, have shown that different emotions are shown differently through body language in character animation, with the most expressive being anger, followed by happiness, fear, and sadness, while this paper also compares the gender difference and finds that male characters are not as accurate in portraying emotions as female characters in terms of the expressiveness of body language for both genders. The paper also compares gender differences in body language expression, finding that male characters are less accurate than female characters in portraying emotions and less physically expressive than female characters (Ennis. et al., 2013). This paper is very informative in confirming the link between body language and gender. However, Motion capture technology in 2013 was less advanced than in modern times, so their access to resources and information was limited.
Body language is an expression of emotion, and in the paper published by Zibrek et al., which explores the use of body language by robots to express gender and emotion and uses some psychological theories to mimic human experiments, the study also shows that people can recognize gender from body movements and that stereotypes of emotional expression can influence perceptions, thus showing that perceptions of body movements are also popular and prevalent ( Zibrek, 2015)
In addition, body language is said to be a human trait, as only humans have such a wide range of emotions. In their 2017 paper, Aulia and Aditya analyzed the body language of non-human species. The study concludes that if interesting, accessible, and understandable characters are to be designed, it is necessary to combine the characteristics of the species with human body language, thus demonstrating that body language is also common to non-human characters. (Aulia and Aditya, 2017) However, this paper is limited to rats, and more examples of non-human characters using human body language are needed to make a stronger case for using human body language.
Logical thinking: emotional expression is significant for animation. The primary way to express emotion is through language, and body language is also an integral part of animation and how emotion affects animation body language.
Main article.
The connection between body language and human emotion → Methods of interpreting emotion
Understanding of body language → Scientific classification of body language and some basic concepts
The need for emotion in character animation → Why body language is needed in animation →
The production of exaggerated body language → The impact of some exaggerated body language on character animation → Evidence of the importance of body language in animation.
Conclusion:
Emotion is an essential element for animation, and body language is a very important way for emotion to be expressed so that emotion can have a significant impact on energy through methods such as xxxxxxxxxx of body language.
Aulia, E. and Aditya, C. (2017) “Panawa” Animation Movement Design: Rat character with human …, “Panawa” animation movement design: Rat character with human personality. IEEE. Available at: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/8266053 (Accessed: March 2, 2023).
Ennis, C. et al. (2013) Emotion Capture: Emotionally Expressive Characters for Games. Association for Computing Machinery New York, NY, United States. Available at: https://dl-acm-org.arts.idm.oclc.org/doi/10.1145/2522628.2522633 (Accessed: March 2, 2023).
McGill, J. (2021) Finding personality in animation, Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University. East Tennessee State University. Available at: https://dc.etsu.edu/honors/642/ (Accessed: March 2, 2023).
Mourot, L. et al. (2021) A Survey on Deep Learning for Skeleton-Based Human Animation, Computer Graphics Forum. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/cgf.14426 (Accessed: March 2, 2023).
Schindler, K., Gool, L.V. and Gelder, B.de (2008) Recognizing emotions expressed by body pose: A biologically inspired neural model, Redirecting. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neunet.2008.05.0033 (Accessed: March 2, 2023).
Volume 21, Issue 9, November 2008, Pages 1238-1246
Thaler, A. et al. (2020) Attractiveness and Confidence in Walking Style of Male and Female Virtual Characters. IEEE. Available at: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9090610/ (Accessed: February 28, 2023).
Thomas, S. et al. (2022) Investigating how speech and animation realism influence the perceived personality of virtual characters and agents. IEEE. Available at: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9756815 (Accessed: March 2, 2023).
Zibrek, K. et al. (2015) Exploring the effect of motion type and emotions on the perception of gender in virtual humans, ACM Transactions on Applied Perception. Association for Computing Machinery New York, NY, United States. Available at: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2767130 (Accessed: March 2, 2023).
Zong, M., Qi, Z. and Zong, Z. (2020) Research on character expression shaping in animation movies, Research on Character Expression Shaping in Animation Movies | Atlantis Press. Atlantis Press. Available at: https://www.atlantis-press.com/proceedings/iccese-20/125937024 (Accessed: March 2, 2023).
In this week’s previs, I corrected some problems from last time. The feedback the teacher gave me was also straightforward. It was some details that needed to be added. After thinking, I tried adding a shot to clarify the story. This can make the meaning of animation conveyed evident and understandable.
Teacher’s feedback:
Add content to each bubble
move from sitting a little wider
Hold the movement of the character when turning his head until the next shot
Remove the zoomed shot and replace it with a stylized effect or an avatar-sized black background
My teacher once suggested that I could end the story with a shocking shot of the character, but I think it would be more appropriate to end it with a shot of the character feeling ashamed.
Give the letterhead model a decal to read what is written on it
Add a drawing to each bubble to at least know what is being conveyed
The turn of the head on this shot does not connect to the next shot
This is the animation that has been changed from last week’s feedback:
Mechanical arm class note:
This week I grouped all the structures in the robotic arm in the outliner, cut the UVs, and then classified them for texture drawing. I still use SP to draw the texture. There are three materials: one shell, one gear, and one bearing. The shell and gear are drawn with SP. The bearing material is directly established in Maya, and the data is adjusted.
The method taught by the teacher is to use nodes to make materials in Maya, but I intend to make something other than realistic materials. I want my mechanical arm to keep simple, so I used black and silver and added some blue emission pattern on the edges, which can make it looks like “energy.” I added two gems to the arm to cause the arm’s ” energy ” element to protrude. I like this simple and beautiful design very much.
* This week I have not had a lot of time to work on this assignment as I have had a lot of technical projects and have spent a lot of time on the 3D animation task in the collaboration unit, so I have not had a lot of time to work on this assignment. There is a limited amount of material to update.
Previs class note:
In this week’s work, I have changed the details of the storyboard and corrected the things that my teacher wanted me to change last week—a few ideas to try.
This week my teacher gave me more detailed feedback:
In the shots where the characters are startled, there is no need for particularly exaggerated shaking
A shot could be added to show the character running from outside the house into the house
Shorten the duration of the transitions
The character’s final expression of surprise could be added in the style of a 2D comic
Here is the revised storyboard. I have numbered each shot, removed some of the less valuable shots, and and corrected the animation errors pointed out by the teacher last week.
This is a modified version of 3Dprevis, which is clearer and easier to understand, but doesn’t convey much in terms of some of the action, so more detail may need to be added. The teacher’s guidance was also beneficial and made me realize many things, such as that every movement in animation can convey a message, and this knowledge gave me some more insight into animation. There is also no need to follow very realistic dynamics when it comes to animation effects, as natural dynamics are often less appealing.
Mechanical arm class note:
For this week, I added a few minor details and a curve to the shoulder as a controller. The small detail is the generation and control of the wires, and it didn’t work at first when I followed the teacher’s video. I asked the teacher many times and finally figured out how to make it, but because I disliked the design, the wires didn’t appear on my final arm.
My robotic arm looks like this so far, and it still needs some changes. I have added a shoulder controller to it.
This is the inside of the arm. I added a layer to the arm shell, so the parts don’t touch the surface.
This is the structure of the shoulder part. I studied the structure of the human body carefully, it should be a spherical link joint, but as a robotic arm, this design might have a more mechanical feel {?
We also learned about making wires with extrude, using a curve to make a wire’s basic length and shape, and adding a circle to make the wire. I had a lot of trouble making this wire, and it was impossible to control it well with the cluster.
In the end, although I made it, I was not too fond of the design and didn’t add it to the structure of the arm.
Last week my teacher said my story was quite good, so I took the time to make both the 2D and 3D storyboards. It was only when I made it that I felt some resistance and that there were many shortcomings because my model doesn’t have the face controller, so I didn’t think I could express much in the 3D animatic.
In the 3D version of the animation, my teacher gave me two suggestions for changes.
Merge shot 13 – shot14, to make it more coherent
In the second half of the story, my teacher told me an important piece of camera language that it is better to keep the characters on the same side of the camera so that the audience can understand them more easily. It makes sense, so that I will revise it in this direction next week.
This part happens to the main character in the working scene, but I don’t think this animation needs this part, so I didn’t make it:
This part happens to the main character in the working scene, but I don’t think this animation needs this part, so I didn’t make it:
This is the 3Dshot I’ve made so far, I used to create a new file for each shot:
Im combine the 3D animation together in the after effect:
This is the Final effect of the 3D animatic：
Mechanical arm class note:
This week we continued to make the large arm part of the robot arm. The teacher had made the basic structure before the lesson, so I tried to make some of my own by copying the teacher’s structure, adding some restraining joints at the elbows, and adding my design of the arm shell. I liked the sharp shapes, and the appearance of the design gave a sense of the arm’s scope, which is for fighting.
This is the internal structure of the arm, which consists of a few specific geometric parts. The elbow part rotates in only one axial direction because there is a limit to the angle and direction that the human elbow can rotate.
The shell of the arm is also a very simple shape, and I will use a lot of self-luminous materials to make the final result of the arm look better.
After the shell was made, I grouped each part and added curves for the elbows and shoulders as controllers.
This week I built the basic model for this 3D animated storyboard. I created the rough house, the base, and the branches used the orb as a leaf, made a relatively simple model, and animated the simple and cozy expression I wanted to convey in the storyboard. There were six shots in total. Our teacher gave me the opinion that the story needed to be longer, he thought there was no story in these 30 seconds, so it wasn’t an excellent 3D storyboard. He also suggested that I could add a complex background to my character, like being an essential person in some organization or having a heavy responsibility. Such a background is not quite what I expected from the character in the first place. However, it is possible the postman setting makes my character destined to have a strong body and mighty wings, so I think the character has high attack attributes as well but doesn’t fit into a complex background, as her tribe is the peaceful one.
So I changed my story, but I didn’t have that much time to draw it into a storyboard, and it was a long story, so if the teacher weren’t happy with what I had drawn again, it would be wasted time, so I decided to show my teacher my story outline first and then draw the 2D storyboard.
This is the storyboard I show to our tutor:
This is the story that I thought:
In the morning, Swallow comes out of the house and finds a package on her letter-receiving lift. She approaches to see the recipient is herself. It is a parcel, she opens the package, there is a letter inside, it is a love letter. • She was shy and puzzled, it was the first time she had ever received a love letter, and it was not signed, which made her wonder. • There were many other gifts in the parcel. She picked up one gift, which reminded her of a friend, but she thought it should not be, she picked up another gift, which reminded her of another friend, but it should not be this one. • She was puzzled but had to go to work, so she put the item back in the box, put the package on her desk, and went out to work. • She came home in the evening, and the box was still on her desk, and she looked at it a little troubled because she still couldn't think of who this was from. • She had just sat in front of the table when she heard a knock at the door. She went to the door and found a friend of hers of the same sex at the door, who blushed and asked her to confirm if she had received a gift box. • She looked at her friend with surprise. Yanzi didn't expect a love letter and a gift from a same-sex friend. Her mind was in turmoil. Then she pointed to the box on the table and was full of thoughts about whether to accept this friend's confession. • Then Yanzi's friend sheepishly told her that she had sent it to the wrong address and that the box was supposed to be for someone else who wanted to take the gift home. • With a dumbfounded look, Swallow watched as her friend took the box, happily said goodbye to her, and left her house.
The teacher thought the story was fun and relaxing, so we decided to continue developing the idea.
Mechanical arm class note:
This week I followed my teacher to make the internal structure of the arm and the controller. I spent a lot of energy on the internal structure part, which was challenging. I tried to change my teacher’s design as there were some areas where I wanted it to be more flexible. I tried four different structures in the palm of my hand and finally chose one that can be worked well on the palm. In the meantime, I found that I had a problem with the axes resetting after freezing all the models so that fingers were not bending in the exact direction when I turned them, and I decided not to freeze the axes of rotation. I was not very good at tying the controllers. I am good at modeling but not at making controllers, so after making them once, I realized that I did not freeze the axes of all the models and that models with controllers tied to them could not be frozen, so I had to make the controllers again… This is the first time I have made a finger controller. I wanted to maximize the flexibility of my fingers when I made it, so I spent a lot of time setting the maximum amount of finger flexion I could do, and I am very happy with the result. I also added a palm flexion controller.
This is my model grouping, I used to change the name of the model at the end because it was less confusing and I often took a previously made model and changed it into some other parts.
I made the first version of the internal structure, but I think this is really ugly…..
So I made four more versions：
So I made four more versions and finally chose this one：
I added a gear to the palm part of the hand so that the palm can be bent in a specific curve because, in reality, the human hand is turned a little when the palm is clenched in a fist.
The models of the ring and pinky fingers are then placed in a group with the gears so that they can be carried along by the gears
I added some materials to the model, which is what it looks like in the render. I didn’t like the color scheme, so I changed it again
This is the final effect of the wrist controller. It looks particularly flexible and exciting when it moves. I tied the XYZ axes of the controller to different models and let them take care of the rotation in their respective directions, and the result looked brilliant.
This seemingly retractable spring mechanism has a simple model, parent constraints, point constraints, aim constrain, and two locators. This effect could be created by placing the locator on both sides of the mechanism and combining different constraints. It was fascinating, just like the Achilles tendon muscle, so I put two on the top of the wrist to limit the range of motion of some wrists.
This is the final effect:
It is also very troublesome to make fingers. First, we need to create attributes of five fingers and palms on the control curve of fingers. Next, we use the Driven key tool to bind the controller of fingers. And when you’re done with all of that, you have to see if there’s any penetration of the models when the palms are clenched.
In this week’s worldview build, I’ve added more details:
While refining the worldview, I had many ideas, but once the story worked out, I realized it didn’t fit the character. Within the time limit, I chose to make a straightforward short story that showed the character’s comfortable life and her excellent living conditions; for this purpose. My storyboard was simple and primarily for atmosphere
The concept:
I intend to create a world of monsters, of which the Harpies are one race.
Harpies are the fastest flying monsters in the world. Their arms and legs are birds, the rest are humans, they are also the closest race to humans, and they are full of curiosity. Harpies were not aggressive, so most of them took up the job of delivering letters or goods; they are the courier of the world.
Harpies lived in the top of the world, around by cliffs. They would build houses on pine branches or stone bumps from cliffs.
Because they live on the peak of the cold, they wear robes to protect the torso (refer to American Indian dress)
They also lived with the eagles, who could not fly as fast as Harpy but had better eyesight.
Background Settings:
Medieval fantasy setting
Targeted species: Harpies
Harpies are separated into three main factions, divine, neutral and invasive.
Character settings:
The Swallow
Neutral faction, tribal clothing, lives on treetop communities with other neutral harpies. Works as a mailman/ delivery man for a living. Easy to get along, good at reading the room, nice to people.
The Shoebill
Chaotic faction, easily irritable, menacing/unfriendly on the outside, but has a good heart and morale. Values friendship and trust. Lives in a secluded valley, where chaotic harpies created their own way of life by pillaging other settlements or other bad deeds.
The Crane
Divine faction, sacred, lives alone far away from civilization almost like a hermit. Due to lack of human interaction, is bad at socializing, despite her always perfectly held composure.
Storyboard：
In terms of story, I take into account the time, I think it is not easy to tell a complete animation in 90 seconds, so I tend to make showcase animations that show the environment where the characters live, the character’s personalities, and the character’s comfortable life, so my storyboard is concise.
Mechanical arm class note:
This week we finished the basic model below the small arm, starting from the palm to the forearm. Basic modeling was relatively easy for me. Still, I did a lot of testing on the linking of some parts because the ultimate goal of modeling is to make the model movable. It took a lot of time for each model. It was torture… But I was happy when the model was finished and ready to move! In terms of small structure, we learned a structure that looks like a yo-yo, which means that the string can be wrapped around a cylinder. This mechanism can be used for ropes, screws, and wires. In this case, we also used nodes to make an increaser, which means that the output and input variables are controlled to make the animation look more logical. I rarely use nodes for modeling or animation because I am not good at them, But it made me realize the importance of nodal learning.
First, the palms are made. These are very simple processes.
It is worth noting that I have separated the ring finger and pinky finger sections from the palm so that the palm can be bend, and I have only used extruded surfaces to ensure that the whole palm looks linked.
Once the palm is finished, place each finger in the right place.
Then add a primary bone for the Forearm.
As someone really bad at mechanical modeling, I had trouble imagining how this structure would move…
Anyway, I made a circular shaft that can rotate up and down with the whole hand and reviewed a function that turns on the center point of the part.
A part that can be rotated in the y-axis
Another function that I reviewed when making this part was the crease tool. Although I think the result of this function is similar to chamfering (I ended up using chamfering because I wasn’t used to it)
Finally, I made a part that rotates in the z-axis, which I used as a wrist
This is also a disc for the wrist, with ten circular holes made in the disc and a suitable screw model to make it look more complex
This is also a disc for the wrist, with ten circular holes made in the disc and a suitable screw model to make it look more complex
This is the screw made using special reproduction
Finally, the small arm housing was modeled using a cylinder
This is how the yoyo was made!
First, add the bend controller to a cylinder and bend the cylinder
Create a new cylinder. Adjust the size of the controller just enough to curl around the cylinder
Group the cylinder with the controller, and this time move the group, and you’ll see the string bent around the cylinder!
But when you roll it, it doesn’t move far enough and looks unnatural
It’s time to add the increase!
Open the node screen, select the group and the controller, and use the connection editor to link them.
In the node interface, create a node for the increaser, link the group with the controller to input value, and the model transform to out value.
Enter the appropriate values in the editor window for the increaser.
