Category: 3D Computer Animation Fundamental

Above is the polished body mechanic shot.

Above is lip sync using blend shapes to audio from Matrix.

Body mechanics planning

My reference footage is from the embedded video above, specifically the segment from 0:8 to 0:13.

I started by analysing hip movement and the placement of lower body and arms. I tried to identify extreme keys and how momentum is generated when the subject launches himself up the wall. He launches himself vertically up towards the wall and with his left foot kicks himself up and immediately grabs the edge of the wall and kicks himself up with right foot while using the momentum generated and pulls himself up, his hips and lower legs wiggle towards the camera for a while and then follows his hips movement up. So there is quite a bit of follow through movement on his legs when they are hanging in the air. This follow through movement will happen during the breakdown keys inbetween two key frames.

These are my 13 key frames, the spine needs to be further adjusted into a C shape and in some frames S shape, and the palm of the hand more open when reaching out for the edge of the wall.

Blend Shapes

All the mouth shapes for my lip sync audio made in consideration of reference footage/audio. My chosen audio clip for the lip sync assignment is the line “have you ever stood and stared at it? marvelled at it’s beauty, it’s genius!” spoken by Agent Smith in the movie Matrix. Hugo Weaving’s upper lip doesn’t move a lot he speaks in a very reserved manner rarely opening his mouth fully.

Further developed the bald face model from last week, added blink to the eyes, duplicated blink deleted one on each duplicate blend shape to allow for eyes to close and open individual

Added more blend shapes such as frown, different nose and wrinkles and further developed skin weight around jaw area so the rig doesn’t break when opening jaw.

Above image is the polished walk cycle with ghosting effect turned on to show all the frames. Full walk cycle can be viewed in link below.

Nick introduced us to skin weights and basic blend shapes. I created this character using the basic bald face model provided by Nick. Various features were sculpted using the sculpt and smooth tool with symmetry turned on and using the shape editor.

Georges session focused on further explaining the fundamentals of a walk cycle, and planning our walk for next week.

Weight shift key frames from right to left. This is the key frames I made for my weight shift using everything that was taught during Georges session today. I made a second weight shift both polished, second attempt below.

Nick explained rig hierarchy and how to use a rig using a simple flour sack rig. Using the flour sack we have to animate a two step walk.

Graph and timeline for flour walk, frame 1, 32, 64 are contact poses with left foot forward. This was animated as a normal walk cycle would be, contact and pass poses first, flipped for each foot then up and down poses, breakdown and inbetween.

Georges session was about squash and stretch and blocking out and planning the fox jump.

These are some of the key frames of my ball bounce/fox jump.

In this week George explained animation principles, anticipation and off set this culminated in to a pendulum exercise.

Above are extreme poses of pendulum, off set was achieved by manipulating graph editor and setting key frames for different tail joints in different timing, about 3-8 frames apart from each other.

Timeline and graph editor for pendulum. The image above shows my workflow.

I joined the course in week 4 therefore I wasn’t present during week 1 and 2 but I have viewed the recordings of those two sessions. Nick’s session focused on the technical understanding of Maya tools and George’s session focused on animation process in Maya. Week 2 introduced deformation basic animation principles, squash and stretch follow through and overlap. The task was animating a pendulum moving and blocking a fox ball bounce. I did both exercises in and posted them on syncsketch link is below.

3D Computer Animation Fundamentals -> Ball With Tail Jump (syncsketch.com)