Senior Portfolio Spring Week 13

Senior Portfolio Post 13

5/2/19

This week I have made changes to the test animations for the new rig I put together.  I updated the run cycle and weapon draw based on critiques from last session.  Of particular note are the offset and overlap of body parts moving, more movement in the center of gravity, and more snappy, dynamic key poses to hold.  Overall, I think the animations so far have turned out better than expected, but there is still more room to improve.

In addition, I have started another test animation that also takes on more dynamic movements.  This one features a jump and slash by the character.  This was another instance where blocking key poses and holds is important.  I have not fully added overlap, but so far, I think the pacing is acceptable and there is enough information to convey the action within the scene.  I will also need to add proper distance to the height and length traveled in the jump.  I used reference for this project, which has proven very helpful as far as portraying the right stuff.

https://youtu.be/6pharQ6kQoA


https://youtu.be/fgDdED9dWgo



https://youtu.be/wfupvvvJnQM


https://youtu.be/1jobGXYitBs

Senior Portfolio Spring Week 12

Senior Portfolio Post 12

4/25/19

This week, I had more time to work on the new action figure rig, as well as time to test it out.  So far, there is basic movement for the proper point of articulation.  I have had a less official version that was cobbled together for older projects to compare.  Now with new skills in rigging, I am making this version as clean as I can.  It will not be perfect, but for the most part things are already less complicated than before.  In addition to the main controls, I am planning to implement custom features for various components that are included in the base model.  The model, by the way, is based upon another Lego model.  As such, my knowledge on how the components should work is pretty well-rounded.

Among the main and complimentary features are:

- Inverse kinematics feet (which I had limited knowledge of before)

 -locators for posing leg orientation

- Forward kinematics arms (Ik will be implemented later)

-Proper controllers and joints (linked with proper constraints)

- Head and main body rotation (limited by the model, but functions as it should)

- Add-on accessories and corresponding layers (transferred over from previous version, now easier to understand)

-Driven keys for back blades

As a first test of this new rig, I have created a basic run cycle, as well as a dynamic movement test.  These will certainly be developed further as both the rig and my understanding of the rig will progress in the coming weeks.

https://youtu.be/7xeJGmy4_Vw




https://youtu.be/cPm7YZDiQUw


 https://youtu.be/JvljhISWODI

Advanced Production Progress Post 4

Advanced Production Progress Post 4

4/23/19

With the character animations finished for the Happy personality, all was set for exporting and importing into Unity.  Once in Unity, an animation controller could be established which could be passed on to the programmers.  Syncing up with the official rig and ultimately being put into the final game would be the next step.  For my work, I have moved on to the next personality set.  Now I am focusing on finalizing animations for the Nervous personality.  So far, things are going well.  With the hiccups encountered over the past few sprints, things are now evened out for the most part.

There are a few complications concerning the crossover into Unity, and the consistency of models and animation information between personalities done by different people.  At first, it was orientation of joints and skeletons, which was fixed fairly well.  Now, however, the main problem is scaling of the imported animations.  Some personalities vary in smaller size, and the problem is not so clear.

The overall process for animators should go much smoother and faster now that we've gone through the process once before.  Once done and approved, the Nervous animations will go the same route into Unity and so on.

https://youtu.be/62mHqrvKSAM

https://youtu.be/BOr0H4h81AE



https://youtu.be/qmavVUmEVEQ



https://youtu.be/asKs7Kav3tc



https://youtu.be/XTRwH_euR88



https://youtu.be/f52cSwt1jaM



https://youtu.be/9JWDNhxAY40

Senior Portfolio Spring Week 11

Senior Portfolio Post 11

4/18/19

This week I've taken a step back from animating Lego-builds and characters in order to focus efforts on other projects.  Priorities have taken a bit of my attention away from portfolio work.  I have instead devoted this week to working on my 495 Advanced Production character animations.  I have moved on from the Happy personality set and am now in progress working on the Nervous personality.  So far, four of the seven animations in the set have been blocked out and made into a presentable form.  These are the same for each personality, so each action should feel unique from one set to another.  Here are the walk, idle, sit down, and stand up block-out animations.

https://youtu.be/qmavVUmEVEQ


https://youtu.be/BOr0H4h81AE


https://youtu.be/62mHqrvKSAM


https://youtu.be/8-Wz-9bw4OI



In addition to the character animations, the time leftover for work on personal projects I used to instead start putting my newly learned rigging skills to use.  I am currently refining previous rigs to have a much more sophisticated and clean product. Some are old, like the mech and figures, while others will be new testing grounds.  Now that I have a bit more knowledge of the subject, I will be able to animate faster, more efficiently, and perhaps be able to better teach others how it is all coming together.  While none are complete just yet, I have a screenshot of a larger action figure which will utilize an IK biped-style rig.

Senior Portfolio Spring Week 10

Senior Portfolio Post 10

4/11/19

For this week, most of my work was diverted to other projects, and not much can be presented for Portfolio work.  I decided to turn my attention to the opening of the brick build project.  This week I wanted to give more life to the single character that begins the animation.  I have added a bit of an introduction, with the character jumping into the blank scene and then they transition into the role of building the sign.  I personally think the sequence needs to be drawn out a bit longer, and more holds are necessary to sell the scene.  In addition, some linking between this new animation and the original stationary start will need to be taken care of.  Overall, I think this will benefit the project, even if it is just a short portion at the beginning.

https://youtu.be/7iyFsKr8Tho

Senior Portfolio Spring Week 9

Senior Portfolio Post 9

4/4/19

This week I had to dedicate most of my time to polishing my animations for 495 Advanced Production.  I was tasked with finalizing animations for the "Happy" personality.  As stated in previous posts, this set of animations includes walking, sitting, drinking, etc.  So far, things have turned out well, and the next step is finishing up and sending the animations off for integration into the game.

With the rest of my time, I continued work on the brick build animation from the previous weeks.  I wanted to fulfill the goals I set up in the previous post.  That includes colorization, variation and tweaking of movements throughout the project.  Not much work overall, but I think it benefits the visual aesthetic.  I want to have this project finished withing another week if not sooner.  After this, I believe I will move on to another project if time permits.

https://youtu.be/kuyZ7pu8trQ


https://youtu.be/HYQKAxpmg1g



https://youtu.be/FuWnCx_A5c4


https://youtu.be/BfhDHbLChaU

Advanced Production Progress Post 3

Advanced Production Progress Post 3

4/5/19

The recent sprints have been dedicated to finalizing animations for the "Happy" character personality.  There were a few bumps in the road concerning the rig and the method of exporting filed properly for integration into Unity for the official game.  I had to adapt the preliminary animations from the blockout phase for the new rig which, while it has issues to work with, is manageable and good enough to use for presentable final animations.  Unfortunately, with the problems concerning the rig early on in the sprint, significant work wasn't quite able to get underway until later, causing spill-over work for the following sprint.  With that said, I feel that the extra time to work on this single task is much more beneficial, as the animators in general can focus on really making these final animations properly and not too rushed.  Aside from the hiccups along the way, my animations are coming along nicely.  Now that I have learned how to make the most of the new rig, and proper assets for reference are in place, I am almost at a point where every animation in the set is ready for exporting to some degree.  They should be ready to go by the end of the current sprint.

https://youtu.be/HYQKAxpmg1g



https://youtu.be/FuWnCx_A5c4


https://youtu.be/BfhDHbLChaU

Senior Portfolio Spring Week 8

Senior Portfolio Post 8

3/28/19

This week, I really wanted to keep going with my previous brick build animation.  Now that I am familiar with what to do to get the visual I am going for, I carried through to finish off the rest of the sign.  Overall, the process took quite some time, and was pretty repetitive, but now that that is over with, I can present and then add more finesse to it all.  There is still a lot to improve on, and I am excited to go to the next phase.  Next up I plan to add color to the pieces, variety in movement to the individual bricks as they move from point A to point B, and tweaks to the camera to get the best visual representation of the animation.  I will also add more objects to fill out the immediate scenery and background.

I have set up three videos showcasing the animation.  Two are from the same cameras as the initial tests.  The third demonstrates a rough draft of how the final product might look.  I may end up splitting the scene into two or more angles to portray the scene rather than one continuous view.


https://youtu.be/XWhX3HMLCVM


https://youtu.be/Gv6Q_pRef14



https://youtu.be/XQioVxYIKvY

Senior Portfolio Spring Week 7

Senior Portfolio Post 7

3/14/19

For my work this week, I decided to continue on with the brick build animation.  Expanding into the full project, I am not currently grouping and individually animating pieces as they appear, move and scale to their proper alignments.  Overall, the process is not too complicated, but more time consuming and repetitive.  I have made most progress on the beginning and ending.  I may take a break for the following weeks to avoid burnout and come back to this for further progress later.  If not, I want to keep going on this brick build until finished in some capacity.

I had to redo my previous test animation from last week.  However, I was able to get a better understanding of the process I was aiming for, so recreating the project was faster and better thought out this time.  With the end position established beforehand, it was easier to know where to aim with translation coordinates.

https://youtu.be/8OtxIBVPr-Y




I also began work on the tail end of the project, where the brick-built signage does a final spin and hop to show the overall build for the camera.  This segment was also not particularly tough to make, but was time consuming to divide up and streamline across each build.  In addition, the many moving parts did cause some lag for my computer.

https://youtu.be/PT89NoBkJWA

Senior Portfolio Spring Week 6

Senior Portfolio Post 6

3/7/19

For this week, I began work on a new project experimenting with LEGO brick building.  Not much animation takes place in this project, but it focuses more on the visualization of bricks appearing and moving into a formation.  This process takes quite some time to outfit, and will be important for future projects of mine.  This first iteration has a tool forming, mainly utilizing the visibility of objects.  Then, more pieces appear and move into place as part of the final build.  The project mainly revolves around translation and scaling of objects.

This was a project I began early concepts for last semester, and now I want to create the full proper animated scene.  It will be further fleshed out and diversified once the basic animation is figured out.

https://youtu.be/EjAXGpqWels

Advanced Production Progress Post 2

Advanced Production Progress Post 2

3/5/19

Following the previous post, as an animator I have been tasked with continuing block-out animations for the non-playable characters for the game.  Since the rig was not ready just yet, I along with other animators have used the Bodymech rigs to get a brief idea of how we and the project leads want the animations to look further down the line.  A preliminary rig was created and used as a further testing ground.  So far things have gone well in the beginning process.
My individual work focused on the "happy," "angry," and "nervous" personalities.  Each was mainly building upon previous weeks of work, adding in certain traits to differentiate one personality from another.  The basic animations consisted of a walk cycle, idle, sitting idle, sit down, stand up, drinking, and eating.  Each of these were to be completed for all personalities as rough animations.

I was also tasked with animating the front door for the tavern.  This job was simple and fairly easy to manage.  Through communication with the lead and modelers, I set up a preliminary set of open and close animations to be implemented into the game prototype.








Moving on from this batch of work, I will be moving forward with the personality animations.  I will be finessing each animation, as well as bringing them over to Unity for implementation into the official game build.  The official rig should be finished soon as well, so once that happens, my work will be dedicated to translating the movements of each personality animation over.

Senior Portfolio Spring Week 5

Senior Portfolio Post 5

2/28/19

For this week, I had a bit of "animator's block" and had a bit of trouble figuring out what to work on.  I was not quite motivated to continue work on previous projects early on, and instead opted to start a new animation first.

This new animation focuses on a single character going into a slide underneath a barrier.  This was created more haphazardly without much reference to go off of.  That is certainly one thing I will focus on later if need be.  Once critiques come in, I hope this could spark some new ideas connected.  One particular challenge was the multilateral transition from upright standing/running down into the actual slide.  As the LEGO character doesn't bend like a normal humanoid, rules must be broken, and illusion of motion must be utilized.  Certain pieces also have to be put in unnatural positions to make the movement readable.

https://youtu.be/NY1W9PdMrO0


After starting on the previous animation, I decided to go back to my project from a couple of weeks ago.  The boot-up of the mech with the character entering was a good start, and I wanted to go further with it.  Taking in critiques from the last session, I made adjustments to animations in places such as the arms, character entrance, cage fluctuation, and arm weight.  I also wanted to work on a better rig system for the legs, as they are not in inverse kinematics.  Applying new knowledge from rigging, I did a preliminary setup for the feet and leg movement that is somewhat independent of the main build, while still functioning with the mech as a whole.  It will need much more work, but so far it works better than expected.

https://youtu.be/W4k6vNcQ-Ng


https://youtu.be/nvxLj3aO6ns

Senior Portfolio Spring Week 4

Senior Portfolio Post 4

2/21/19

This week's work was primarily put towards blocking out animations for the 495 Advanced Production game project.  I continued work on different personality animation cycles happy and angry.  For each I prepared initial ideas for actions including idles, sitting down, drinking, walking, and more.  These are all meant to be early developments to be improved later when ideas are finalized, as well as when the official rig is completed.  Once that takes place, the blockouts can be referenced and proper, more streamlined animation can be focused on.

https://youtu.be/IbTMiM6T9AE



https://youtu.be/Maifynh4ksM



https://youtu.be/_4tYSMefeO4

 https://youtu.be/ZVxOkRtdu5Y

 https://youtu.be/c4bWvhmPPE8

Senior Portfolio Spring Week 3

Senior Portfolio Post 3

2/14/19

This week, I have continued experimenting with the mechs and characters from the previous week.  I have tried to create an animation merging the two styles.  The main focus is having them interact within the same environment, working together.  The character will hop into the mech, which will then power up and prepare for some sort of following action.  This was a test of constraints knowledge and knowing how to maneuver two sets of controls at the same time.  If all goes well, I plan to move forward with larger scenes with even more characters and such to keep track of.

https://youtu.be/2SaTMprS8fM

For my other animation focus projects, I have continued blocking out animations for Advanced Production NPCs, and their different personalities.  I began work with the new custom character rigs being produced for the game.  A different personality was the focus of this week, and I have compiled a few blockouts.  These will be further tweaked as the rig is updated, and I have established a better idea of how the respective personalities will look later on.

Advanced Production Progress Post 1

Advanced Production Progress Post 1

2/14/19

As an animator for the project known as My Little Tavern Shop, my work will be based around creating the non-playable character movements, as well as rigging characters where necessary.  For the first weeks, and first sprint,  I was tasked with blocking out the basic movements for multiple different personalities.  Another task was reviewing the rigging lessons, and applying them to teh custom characters being created for the project.  With a variety of characters utilizing the same types of forms, the key is to establish a unique set of movements that both correspond with each other, as well as fall in line with the overall feel of the project.  For each personality, the base animations we picked as a team were: walking, standing idle, sitting idle, sitting down, standing up, drinking, and more what may factor in at a later time.

To start off, I began working with the personality type: Nervous.  I blocked out the scenes, and proceeded to smooth them out and finesse where I could.  As the custom character rigs we will use for the final product were not quite ready, I used the Jack rig from the Bodymech rig pack as a substitute and practice.


The following personality types I am ans will be working on are the Happy and Angry personalities.  With the base of the new rig now at our disposal, blocking out and examples for animations will be using such, until finalization.  So far, blocking out has begun on the Happy personality animations.  Not many issues have arisen since work has begun, aside from simply getting used to the controls for the new rig.

Senior Portfolio Spring Week 2.5

Senior Portfolio Post 2.5

2/7/19

This week I have worked on a couple of animations focused on testing some of the character rigs I put together previously.  The first animation is a simple walk-type cycle with simple joint articulation.  The second tests out a model with more joints to play with.  It is also a walk cycle, but with joint systems and movements closer to humanoid skeletons.

For the first animation, the inspiration was working with the character as floating around with less gravity.  This is more of a moonwalk type cycle, exploring realistic movements.  Since this was a fairly new experience with these types of characters, it was interesting to find the differences in animation workflow.  Some aspects were much easier to pinpoint and alter for the overall animation.  The changes to come will certainly come easier and faster going forward.

https://youtu.be/6cZkwVdNaR0



The second animation will take some time to finesse, and will likely be a learning experience for future projects with bigger and better models.  This animation uses a robotic mech that has a fairly good range of movement, but proved tricky to become acquainted with.  The first thing I worked on was the legs and feet.  Once I got a decent idea of how they would work, other moving parts fell in line as far as adding weight.  I want to do some more research and reference for these types of models in the weeks to come.

https://youtu.be/ctU8GhbmewM


In addition to the main portfolio animations, I have also blocked out and somewhat splined some animations for Advanced Production.  These are practice game animations meant for NPCs.  While the official models are not finished yet, these concepts will be helpful for when the time comes.  These animations will be based around a common personality, this one in particular being "nervous." There are three animation I worked on, them being a walk cycle, a standing idle, and a sitting idle.  All of these use the BodyMech Jack rig.

https://youtu.be/kGv2J44cwvk

Senior Portfolio Spring Week 2

Senior Portfolio Post 2

1/31/19

For the first week of work this semester, I decided to spend my time tweaking and preparing the characters and other assets I plan to use for my animations throughout this semester.  As I mentioned in the previous post, I want to use a mix of characters I had on hand last semester, and also add in some new stuff for variety.  The first things I did was update the "rigs" I put together, applying some new skills I have learned since making earlier animations.  The following are displays of the character rigs I have put together for the first few animations I planned to work on over the next few weeks.

With these assets now up to date with the latest improvements, I can move forward with the animation projects, which will hopefully be easier to manage and develop over weeks than projects before.

Senior Portfolio Spring Week 1

Senior Portfolio Post 1

1/25/19

Preface

My name is Nicholas Ng, and for this semester of CAGD 493 - Senior Portfolio I will be exploring and experimenting 3D computer animation.  My main focus for these next few months will be practicing and expanding my knowledge of animation concepts.  I will be continuing my work on animation involving LEGO models, figures, and other related assets.  The style of animation I aim to achieve with these is akin to projects such as stop-motion, LEGO video games, and the cinematic LEGO movies from the past few years.  I want to do another set of projects that may take 1 to 4 weeks of focused work, much like the previous semester.  Some projects will take longer than others, depending on the inspiration and direction I want to take them.  In some instances I might want more of a narrative, while others will be short and to the point.  For the models and rigs I am using, the LEGO models are semi-custom and based upon real-life bricks and pieces.  This semester, my goal is to improve my knowledge and understanding of computer animation, as well as learn where I am most comfortable putting my skills to use.

Assets

These are the types of models I worked with for the previous semester.  I plan to still use most of them for upcoming projects as well.  The range will likely grow to include more for this semester.  Specifically, more complex models are what I have in mind, such as vehicles and larger characters.

Project Concepts

• Run/Walk Cycle
• - Normal (1 week)
• - Floating (1 week)
• Iron Man Suit Up (continuation) (1-2 weeks)
• Logo Build-Up (2 weeks)
• First Person Fight Scene (4+ weeks)