Biped

Going into systems on the sidebar, we can find biped, from here we can import a Skeleton. Within the biped settings we are able to add tails extra spine parts, arms etc, whatever I liked.

 Example of Skeleton with a tail and extra ribs/spines and leg links

There are four types of biped, skeleton, male, female, and classic.

Resetting the skeleton back to normal so it's ready to be properly animated, we moved onto highlighting a part of a skeleton, we then in the sidebar went into motion settings and then under the biped section, we clicked figure mode allow use to edit parts of the skeleton such as it's toes so they look like shoes.

 Example of toes expanded to make shoes

Turning off figure mode, allows me to now use my skeleton to animate again. We then went into copy and paste in the side bar, and clicked pose, then create a collection, which I named walk cycle.
We then set up our skeleton in a walk pose. Going back to the side menu, we then clicked copy pose just under where the copy collection is. There we can name the copied pose, for this pose where my skeleton is starting his walk with his left leg so I named it L-foot-forward.

Example of pose and setting in sidebar.

Now we needed to make the next part of the walk which is the mid walk, where the knee is bending and getting ready to come up into a walk.

 Example of knee bending

Going back into the side bar and clicking again copy pose, which I then named passing_1, I could now by selecting from the drop list where I save my poses, selected my saved L-foot-forward and then click paste pose opposite. Paste pose opposite allows you get the same pose but reversed, allowing the left leg forward to flip to the right leg forward. I did the same process for my saved mid walk called passing_1, this again like the Left leg mirrored to right leg, allowing me to have a mirrored pose for the mid walk from left to right. I now have four poses made from just two poses, which means I can now create a walk!

 Example of leg reversed and complete timeline of animation.

Rendered out video of my walking animation.

Now knowing the process in which to take, I then decided to make my own animation using biped and poses. My animation would be a Russian dance.

Outcome: From today's lesson I've learned how to import a biped, manipulate the biped skeleton structure to my own usage, move and control my biped, and create a working animation from copying and pasting poses, all of which will prove very useful in time saving and creating my very own animation.

Creating a Storyboard

Today we were asked to draw up our storyboard that we wish to create for our animation. The storyboard I decided to draw up was my Amy Rose adventure story.

As I draw out my storyboard a lot of my story and scenes from my original story structure have been change/improve to suit the time of animation needed as my original idea was only 30 to 40 seconds long. New scenes have been added and the story has taken a different turn. Changes have be made in order to make the story longer, however some of the original idea are still being used.

Here are my storyboard scenes in order.

This is the first part of my storyboard, Amy is walking down the street minding her own business when she sees what she thinks is Sonic The Hedgehog her hero. Amy runs over and gives the stranger a big hug, and then quickly realises that this isn't who she thought it was.

 Amy drops the stranger, while doing this the stranger drops a chaos emerald which he then picks back up. The stranger takes a swipe at Amy, and then receives a call within his ear piece, which reveals to the viewers that he is Metal Sonic and his boss is Eggman. 

Amy now angered gets out her hammer, Eggman calls in reinforcements to deal with her. Three Egg bots drop into the scene, one falling on his head and destroying himself. Out of the blue the robots shut down.

Metal Sonic goes offline, and drops the chaos emerald which bounces over to Amy's boot, she's pretty pleased and happy with herself as she thinks she just beat them somehow. A shot goes to Eggmans base and shows him getting very angry and confused over what just happened. The phone on his work desk rings.

Eggman answers the phone, which turns out to be a fake Technical support call from Sonic the Hedgehog, Tails is in the background laughing over the trick they are playing on Eggman. They trick Eggman into thinking they're going to fix his problem he's having with his machines.

Eggman is put on hold with very relaxing lift music playing, after a while he then clicks onto the fact he's been tricked. Eggman gets very angry and turns all his robots back online himself, once done he then tells Metal Sonic to destroy Amy. This is where the scene ends and then goes into the game of Amy fighting Metal Sonic.

Outcome: I know when it comes to animating my actual story, that there will be again some more changes or improvements, but the storyboard that I've created helps keep me on track in what is happening in what scene and when. Creating this storyboard has allowed me to have a better insight into planning and creating an animation scene/movie. Without taking these steps before animating, the story/scene could completely lose the plot or framework, the storyboard helps to keep you in check.

Creating storylines

Today we were asked to come up 3 to 5 story's of a scene with a start middle and end, that needed to be 5 to 3 minutes long. From knowing from the fact we are allowed to use any models we like and scenes, I came up with a couple of idea's all involving existing game characters. 

Story idea

Idea 1.

Beginning- Amy Rose is walking down a street minding her own business, when she notice what she thinks is her hero sonic, she runs over and hugs what she thinks is sonic, only to turns out to be metal sonic 

Middle - Metal sonic and Amy battle it out

End - Amy ends up smashing metal sonic. 

Idea 2. 

Beginning - Kunimitusu is sneaking around and being secret, she is trying to break in a building to steal a gem. 

Middle- she goes to take the gem but as she does security guards appeal

End- she takes out the guards and escapes with the gem

Idea 3. 

Beginning - Lara croft wakes up tired and weak, looks around trying to find survivors, she thinks she on her own on an island. 

Middle - she tries to keep herself alive and struggles. 

End - when she gets to the point of giving up, she turns around and finds an island of people and hotel. 

Idea 4. 

Beginning - Sonic is dancing on the dance floor trying to impress a girl. But is out danced by knuckles 

Middle - Sonic goes to the bar and gets depressed, sonic remembers he has an emerald and uses it to go super sonic 

End - Super Sonic out dances knuckles, and gets the girl.

Final ideas

After we finished thinking about our story ideas, we then got into groups and shared our story's with the group, from sharing the group voted two of the storys from the list of story idea's we had created.

The two story's that Everyone enjoyed was my Amy rose and metal sonic story (idea 1) and my Lara croft joke story (Idea 3). 

Everyone agreed when it comes to expanding the stories that were voted, it will require a phew changes within the story, this is something I will consider when I expand the two stories. 

Expanded Idea's 

Title: Amy Rose Day Out

Act 1

• Amy is walking down the street minding her own business, she is in a good mood
• As she walks down street she see what she thinks is sonic the hedgehog 
• Excited she runs as fast as she can down the street, ignoring the traffic. 
• She grabs what she thinks is sonic from behind, and lifts him up for a big hug. As this is happening Metal Sonic drops an emerald.
• Amy rose quickly realises her mistake and puts Metal Sonic, as she does Metal Sonic knocks her to the ground.

Act 2

• Metal sonic gets a call on his radio to stop messing around with the girl and get out of there with the emerald.
• Amy Rose gets back on her feet and is now angry. 
• Metal Sonic calls in three egg pawns to deal with Amy as he makes his get away. 
• The egg pawns spawn from no where and charge at Amy. Amy is now really angry, she gets out her hammer and hits the first one to the left, the second to the right. The third one is hit on the end, the kicked up into the air. 

Act 3

• Metal sonic get the order to deal with the Amy himself. He charges at Amy, but Amy jumps over metal sonic, hitting his back with her hammer causing metal sonic to hit the floor. 
• Metal sonic stands up, as he does the egg pawn that Amy hit into the air comes back down and lands on Metal Sonic crushing him.
• Metal sonic hand lets go of the emerald which bounces over to Amy feet. 
• Amy wins the battle and get the emerald as well. 
• End

Title: Lara Crofts Vacation

Act 1

• Lara wakes up face down on a beach
• She looks around, she doesn't know where she is. 
• She tries calling out to see if anyone is about, but no one is around, she is scared. 
• She walks around in circles trying to think about what to do. 

Act 2 

• She tries to survive by first making a fire but failing, but the fire doesn't start. She moves onto  hunting for food but fails to get any, she then tries to make shelter for herself, but the hut she tries to build is blown down. 
• Nothing is going right for Lara, she almost give up hope after trying to keep herself going.
• She lies on the sand and stairs at the sky.
• She tells herself that tomorrow she will do better.
• She performs the same tasks again making fire and hunting for food, and making shelter which all fail again. 

Act 3 

• Lara now gives up, she goes to find a cliff to jump off. 
• As she finds a cliff to jump off she looks over and see a hotel
• She had thought this whole time she was on her own but she was actually near a hotel the whole time. 
• She falls the floor in shame and anger after realising their was a hotel near by. 
• End   

Outcome: Having already had lessons in creating a narrative, I feel the stories that I have created here would all be suitable to be made into an animation, granted some may need more what than other but the structure of the story's can still work in the way I want them to. I'm really looking forward to going onto story boarding one of my stories so that I can truly show how my story plays out.

First Attempt At Walk Cycle

We started the day by opening the simple rig from Moodle. Once opened we then clicked auto key to get the animation time line working, and then set key on frame 0 locking the model in an up right pose.

Going Into motion area on the right side of 3Ds Max, and then by going into parameters, I could then create a position key which I set the value to 20. Then moving onto frame 16, I did the same again but the value at -40, this allowed his right foot to move forward.

(Example of legs in set position by value)

His legs didn't look right, he needed his knees bent, so to do this I moved his body down. Now that his knees look correct, his arms however didn't. I needed to move his arms to the correct position as well, this is because when walking the arms swing, so on frame 16 I moved his arms out, one forward, one behind, so his arms would tween from key frame 0.

(Example of knees bent and arms ready to swing)

The first part of the walk was complete from key frame 0 to 16 his right leg moved forward, but only along the floor. We went to frame 8 and lifted his right leg up to bend the knee more, lifting his foot off the ground. Then by bending the toes on his feet, it shows he getting ready for the impact of the floor on frame 16, this made a realistic walk as it shows his foot/leg moving to show a walk. 


We repeated this pattern for the other leg and arms to get two step/walks out of the model. I worked for a little longer on my walk, as I did have some problems when setting keys. I tried my best to make my model move correctly, so by moving his head to the left when his right leg is forward and swinging his body to the right with his leg moving as well, it helped to create a slightly better and realistic walk animation.

(Example of my walk from the side)

 

(Example of walk from the front)

I played around with some other walks such as a march walk, but 3Ds Max crashed and I lost the work, which is why at the end of my walk within the video he then goes into a march walk, but that animation was lost.

Feeling annoyed at my lost work, I tried another walk with a different model, this model is from my computer, I animated again a walk for the model, with all the moving body motions with it, ears, eye brows, spikes, hands legs and feet. Pretty much everything I could move, but his eyes as they were a texture map.

(Example of Shadow The Hedgehog Rig)

Shadow The Hedgehog walk from side (ignore the eyes I had no control over them)

Shadow The Hedgehog walk from front (Ignore the eyes)

Outcome: The walk animation has really made me question and think about how the human body walks and moves, something as simple as walking has a lot of principles behind the movement, from weight, speed, distance, all of which needs to be taken into account to get that realistic walk. I want to practice more in my own time like I did with Shadow The Hedgehog to perfect my walk, and other types of walks to fully understand the animation tasks needed to perform the task.

Floppy Animation Lesson Five

We were asked to open floppy, a file provided to us on Moodle.

We set our timeline to 40, then we created a key, ticking off the rotation and scale, leaving only position ticked. We only did this on frame 0, 10 and 20 on the timeline.
Going into the curve editor, we selected the first key frame point and then the last key frame point while holding control, and then dragged them up to 40 on the scale within the curve editor. We then set a fast tangent on frame 10 the middle frame, to make the bounce of floppy fast.

(Example of First bounce)

After doing this we selected all the points and then went into the top screen bar (edit), then control and then Parma curve out-of-range types, from there we clicked cycle this repeated the animation over and over making floppy bounce on the spot again and again.

(Bounce on Cycle)

Now we moved on to making floppy squash, working in Z position from the control box which controls the stretch bottom part of floppy, we created a key frame on frame 10 and the same for frame 9. Turning auto key on, and squashing floppy with the control box on key frame 10, resulted in making floppy look like he's getting ready for the bounce up plus the force of impact from jumping into the bounce, we left frame 9 normal for now.

(Example of what Floppy looks like squashed)

Having problems with frame 9, I managed to work my way around the problem by going into the curve editor on the bottom control box (Red box within picture) on key frame 10, and dropping that frame lower than 0 on the curve editors scale, making the bounce on the floor correct, instead of going into frame 9 and moving floppy back into place with the floor before the bounce happened on frame 10.

(Example of bounce with no frame 9, and bounce animation past 0 on scale)

I creating a key frame for 0 and 20 for a stretch for floppy when he's in air for the next step. Highlighting frame 0 and 20 for the stretch top control box within the curve editor, I then moved them up the scale so floppy would scratch out at the start and end of animation as frame 0 and 20 are at the same scale start to finish, resulting in a perfect loop. I did the same on the stretch bottom control box as well which controls floppy lower half of his body.

(Example of stretch bottom control box for floppy)

(Example of stretch top control box)

We now moved onto making floppy more life like by making him look at where he's jumping, for this we went to the twist control box and made frame 0 a rotation key instead of a position key working in X rotation only.
The first frame we moved floppy's head back to make it look like he looking up as he jumps, then we went to frame 4, by this frame floppy is getting ready to look at the floor as he is about to hit it. By frame 8 he's looking right down at the floor. Frame 13 bending his head back again but dramatically to show the force behind bounce, by frame 20 we set our (create key) source time to 0 so it at the same scale as frame 0 helping make a perfect loop.

(Example of Twist control box of floppy's head movement on curve editor)

After completing his head or upper part to his body, we then moved onto his foot rotation control box. Inserting a (create key) on rotation on 0, 10, and 20, we then went to frame 5, this is where his feet is out ready to embrace the floor, and frame 13 for his feet behind him as he pushes back for the jump, all of which created a comical and life like animation for floppy.

(Example of Foot Control box on curve editor)

We then moved onto his ears, we did this by selecting and working on the ears controls box individually to get a natural looking effect for flopping we used the animation technique over lapping with the ears to help create the force and friction on his ears.

(Example of all rotations in floppy's ears)

Now that everything is done to make floppy look like he bouncing, we needed to make him move, we did this by selecting the compass looking arrows which controls the location on floppy, by clicking that we then created keys in which positions we wanted. Working in Y, I made floppy move across the screen on key frames 0, 10 and 20. Once I was happy I then went into edit, controller, then put of range types and set it on relative repeat making flopping bounce on for ever!

(Example of Y axis movement of Floppy control box to make floppy bounce forever)

Going into modify, then into cameras, we could chose two type of camera for now we selected target camera. Using the target camera we placed it in the working environment and positioned it where I liked, until I was happy. I also linked our camera to floppy, so where ever floppy goes, my camera follows, allowing some great video shots.

(Example of camera)

Here is the render result of my animation that I made from today's work.

 

The animation of floppy does appear to be slightly harsh in his movements and animation but still shows a wide range of movements and emotions within floppy. 

Outcome: Understanding how control boxes work, along side the tweaks and loops used within the curve editor to achieve such great animations really helped me to gain a good understanding of how to perform animations to a good level of standard within 3ds Max. Today lessons was very busy, but worth it as I learned a great deal, from the usage of body language, (Helped by the 12 rules of animation, Anticipation, Squash and stretch, and over lapping) even how to use a camera within an animation, something of which has never crossed my mind within animation. Being able to see my animation working and performing the way I wanted it to brings me great satisfaction.

Simple Rigging Poses

Getting emotional poses.

Loading a modal from Moodle and opening it up, we could see a character that I called Bob already rigged up for us to use. We were then asked to play around with the rigged character to understand how his parts moved within the rig set up. 

(Example of rigging on bob)

Control A, highlights all the parts seen on the screen, then by control Alt, left click on the time line, we could drag out negative frames on the time line. I made mine go up to -15, once done I then hit set key, set key is when you manually import your own commands within the key, where as Auto key whatever you change in the time line it will automatically animate to follow position you have set within a frame. Once a key was placed on -15 I then went to -10, and set a key, I then went to -5, on this frame I moved his arms down by his waist and then set a key.
We then copied frame -5 by holding shift and dragging out a copy to frame 0, this is so whatever command was set on that frame, it will be copied to the following placement. 

(Example of arms by waist)

The first pose we worked on was a shy pose, we first bent our characters knees, to show the some weight within the character, as having straight legs makes the character looks unreal. Once done, we then rotated his hips back a bit, and then worked our way up his control boxes on his waist to bend his upper body forward a slight bit in each control box right up to his head, which we moved downwards to make it look as if bob didn't want to show eye contact, these all helped to set the body in the correct position for the shy pose but we still hadn't finished. We then turned his feet inwards, then we moved his arms down in front of stomach, which all help to suggest bob is trying to hide his emotions and body. Once I was happy, I then selected all the rig points by control A, and set a key to make sure the animation is saved on that frame. Now everything has been saved and set within the frame, I could now render the shy pose to see bobs full detail without all the rigging control boxes showing.

(Example of Shy pose)

(Rendered Shy pose)

Moving on, we then copied a blank frame that had no animation within it so we could start fresh again. The next pose was a confident pose, for this we needed to show bob taking up space and being open, the complete opposite of the shy pose.
We started by moving his knees down to make him look more natural, then we made him learn back with his chest out, to show confident. Then spreading his legs apart and arms out wide all helped to show he's out there and not afraid, a very confident person. Once we were happy we then set key frame and rendered the pose.

(Example of Confident pose)

(Rendered Confident Pose)

Now that we had all worked together making a shy and confident pose, we then created a list together within the class, to create our own versions of character poses/emotions.


The first pose I worked on was the camp pose. I found it tricky working the arms, as the arms and hands are the most important part to the pose, as well as his hips. I first worked on his legs and hips before doing the arms, this just helped me see how the hand on the hip and arm movement could work with the body pose i've set. once I had got the legs and hip position just right I moved on to  working his arms, the hardest arm being the one thats out in front of him. Overall I was pretty pleased with the outcome I got for my camp pose.

(Example of Camp pose)

(Rendered Camp pose)

Then I moved on to hero pose, working again with the arms and hips. I first started on his legs, by spreading them out wide in a confident and tough stance, you could clearly see just by his leg pose that this is someone ready for action. Moving on from his legs I went onto his upper back and head which I pulled back with the arms out and hands by his hips, which all came together to show a man of action.

(Example of Hero Pose)

(Rendered Hero Pose)

The afraid pose was a tough one to portray without facial expression at aid. I thought about the number of ways people could show there fear, and I thought about a pose that I call the ball pose, this pose is where some goes into a ball avoid being seen, and hurt. First thing I needed to do is get him into the ball pose, this was pretty easily done by moving his body down, which resulted in his knees also going down and bent. Once done,  I then needed to work on the head and upper body, so I moved his head down as much as possible to show that he is hiding away from seeing whatever it is that scares him, and his upper body forward as much as possible to show the ball effect. Now that all of this is done, all I needed to then do was work on his arms and hands, positioning them in places such as the head to show protection from any attack and one by the eyes to show that he doesn't want to see or be seen. 

(Example of afraid pose)

(Rendered afraid pose)

The bored pose was pretty straight forward, much like the shy pose, all I needed to do was move his head and upper body down, and place his arms by his side, with his legs bent and slightly leaning against the side to show one leg supporting his body weight, all of which really helped to show a bored person. Though I'm pleased with the pose, it can be misinterpreted as a pose of a sad or lonely person not such much a bored person.

(Example of bored Pose)

(Rendered Bored Pose)

The laughing pose was tricky as I don't have facial expression to help show the emotion. I totally had to rely on the hand gestures and leg positions to help show the laughing pose. by placing the hands over the mouth, and by bending the knees, you can get that cartoon/comedic laughing style feel to the pose, but this pose can also be misinterpreted as a shock pose, like a gasping action.

(Example of laughing pose.)

(Rendered laughing pose.)

The confused pose was really easy, as I just needed to place my characters arms and hands in the correct position to show that stereotypical confused action with one hand scratching the hand and the other by their hip.

(Example of confused pose)

(Rendered Confused Pose)

Finally a relaxed pose, this pose was only hard when it came to doing his legs, his legs took a while to get into the correct position when trying to move them into place, but I finally got there. By making him sit on the floor, and have one leg stretched out and the other leg bent up helping him to support himself as he sits up, with the assistants of his arms out to support his body weight as he sits, you can see that this is someone relaxing and trying to sit comfortably on the floor, I'm very pleased by the result of the pose.

(Example of Relaxed pose)

(Rendered Relaxed pose.)

Outcome: From doing all of the poses, I learn a great deal today, on how body language can be created with the use of the correct positions and poses within a lifeless character, allowing a character that is so boring to become something interesting and appealing. I learned a lot of the body emotions could be done easily by the use of the arms, hands, legs and upper body, but I feel to truly make a character look life like and natural, facial expression on a character can really help complete the transaction of emotion.

Richard Williams

Richard Williams
Today we watched three videos from Richard Williams Animators survival guide. From watching the video I took down notes from them, below are my notes from the video.

Video one

Think about tempo of the walk first before working on the walk animation.
If walking on all fours like a dog, this speed would be six positions within a frame.

Always start a walk cycle with the contact the foot touch the ground, such the heals on the floor

When talking about frames and number of frames, it mean from when the frames of the foot comes into contact with the floor.

Walking on 4 frames is like a cartoon run, not possible by human
6 frames is a fast run, hard for a human
8 frames is a normal human run
12 frames is a business like walk, brisk normal walk (march time)
16 frames is a strolling walk
20 frames is tired, or old person
24 frames very slow steps

Video two

Flexibility in walks helps to create personality within the character, depending how you want your character personality to be like.

Experimenting with braking the legs or arms helps create new and wonderful characteristics for a character.

A bounce walk has two bounce per steps, for example if the character is walking along happily, you can place two bounces within a step to create a jolly person. Experimenting with this helps create a better and more interesting result. 

Video threes
Sneaks and runs animations

Animal body parts are all flexible, including humans, so take that into consideration when working on sneaks and runs animations

Think about the weight of the character or animal, if the person is large the fat will catch up with the character when in a run

Small animals will function the most from the rear of the body, E.G a squirrel back legs is where the squirall gets his power to run, jump etc the most, so this part of the body will have more function than the rest.

When a character has eight legs, then the first two leg movement counteract each other, but the other two are a copy making right moving legs


After the videos

Once the videos were over we still had some time left within the lesson to practice some walk poses of our own.

Here a rendered walk I created, this is my first attempt at my characters walk. You can see I have his feet and arms all set and ready for a walk, i was going for a basic walk, but this walk looks pretty unreal. 

This is my rendered comical run, the kind of run seen in cartoon when there running to catch something. The weight of the body is forward and the character would only fall if he stopped running, making it a good comical running effect.

 

 With this character i was going for a walk with some personality, this one being a very happy and jolly person. By making the arms and legs have big movement, you can see this character is proud and pleased with himself.

Outcome: Learning from the best such as Richard Williams, really helps you to understand and process the amount of detail that needs to be taken in within animation, by understanding the correct ways to start and finish your animation and the tweaks that you can conduct to improve your character personality and behavior, really helps me to understand how today's animators create such amazing and life like characters in today games and movies. Learning this new information I feel I know more about how to create the characters and emotions needed to make my characters in future games and projects look and feel the way I want them to be.