3D Character Animation

This is the final rendered animation with audio.

Evaluation and Reflection

Over the course of this semester I created my character and animation. The idea was to create a character to portray emotion whether in body language, facial expressions or both. Furthermore the character had to develop a personality that suited his visual presence. To create realistic emotive expressions and body language, research had to be conducted into how real people move and emote.

Generally the modeling stage went without much trouble. It was time consuming and took a while to become adjusted to modeling an organic character with clothes. The model of the head was recycled from an earlier project which helped significantly.

The most trouble during the project I found was during the bone structure and bi-ped stages. I used bones within the hands of the character but came into a lot of trouble with getting the points to respond properly, however these problems were fixed and the characters hands worked very well.

The rest of the body was a bi-ped system which saved time and enabled me to think about how to animate the character.

Once the modeling stage was finished I created storyboard images of what I wanted the character to do in the animation and noted what type of environment I wanted and the sound effects I’d need to create the full effect.

When creating the environment the use of lights within the environment was something I was happy with. The omni lights used created a gritty atmosphere and enhanced the aesthetic of the textures. Using omni lights was important in making a more realistic glow for the characters light sabers as well. The glow of the lights moving with the light saber and casting the character in its coloured glow was something I was pleased with.

I was happy with the characters movements during the animation. The cut throat expression and the light saber throw movements I was particularly pleased with as I thought initially it would be hard to pull of realistically.

Also the characters facial expressions I was quite happy with, although I would of liked to create some more diverse facial expressions.

The part of the animation that I am least happy with was in the way the character walks with the bi-ped system. While there are a lot of different parameters the user can change to adjust and tailor the characters walk to a more desired result. However after a lot of experiments the result was the best I could come up with. As the character walking is only used to introduce the character to the scene and at the end of the animation I thought it was not a top priority to have the character walking totally perfect.

Further improvements that I would implement would be to improve the environment and more diverse facial expressions.

Overall the project was very beneficial to me and was something I found interesting. Reflecting back on previous projects I believe that I have improved my work and have developed techniques that will have a positive effect on my 3D work.

The time spent trying to get the right facial expression and body movement was worth the effort when the final result was just how I wanted it to be and although there were aspects of the animation and modeling that were difficult it is very satisfying to have the whole animation come together as planned. I hope to be able to work on another project similar in the near future to further improve my character modeling and animation skills.

Animation

My character has been given his personality and has been fitted with the ‘Bi-Ped’ system and so he is now ready for animating.

The animation is based upon my earlier storyboard sketches. The character will appear from a doorway with the lights behind him casting him in shadow for a dramatic entrance. Mickey will retrieve a lightsaber from his pocket but will struggle in actually turning it on and so will become angry and impatient. Once he has managed to switch it on, after fiddling with it, the lightsaber illuminates Mickey’s face in a red glow as he bears a manic grin of happiness.

Mickey then encounters a foe that he is none too pleased to see. He glares furiously at his opponent and they both draw their light saber’s ready for battle. Mickey points at the nameless adversary and insults him by depicting a cutting throat motion.

Mickey is revealed to be a bit of a misfit in his biography, although he looks like a dangerous maniac that you wouldn’t like to meet in a dark alley, he would much rather be writing hit songs for his debut album. His physical ability has been described as a “crushing disappointment”, and so now preparing to engage in a fight with a person who is undoubtedly going to win, Mickey decides to launch his lightsaber through the air and kill his enemy in a desperate and unfair victory.

Mickey is now free to continue his journey. He leaves his thrown lightsaber on the floor as he walks away swearing an oath never to use force again.

The animations took some time to finish so they were at a standard I was happy with. Rather than concentrating purely on facial expression or just on the body movements to express his emotions I felt it would be better to try both. Using the head model I made from my previous semester I changed the face map and went back to making the model pull horrible faces. I came up with a fierce glare and an evil grin for my character. The body movements took more time because there was more to think about with how bodies move when they perform different poses. Working with the animation and key frames became quite tedious but in the end I managed to create the poses I needed.

I used the recent Tim Burton film ‘Sweeny Todd – The Demon Barber of Fleet Street’ as my main inspiration for my character within the animation. The general style and feel of the film is macabre and grim. I found the characters facial expressions and body movements to be similar in how I wanted to portray my character. The lead character Sweeny Todd himself is shown almost permanently with a scowl and never really looks happy. It was difficult trying to replicate the same appearance for my character. However I successfully managed to create a rather nasty stare and grin.

I wanted to create a dark gritty environment where my character exists. I used some metallic panel textures for the floor and walls which I thought would suit the ‘space station’ aesthetic of the animation. The props and the environment were fairly unimportant during this process as they were only needed to support the character. With more time I would create a more believable environment with perhaps some windows which look out into space showing planets and light beaming through from the sun. I used some key placed Omni lights to create an atmosphere for my scenes, which I thought worked very well on the high specular metallic surfaces.

The main prop for the story is the characters Lightsaber weapon. This item was created simply, using a cylinder with enough height, length and width segments so I could manipulate the vertices’ into a handle shape then applying some bevelling at either end. A turbo smooth modifier is added for the smooth finish. The blade part itself is just another cylinder with a lens, glow effect added. To finish the handle I added a ‘Raytrace’ map on the reflection map to create a realistic metallic finish.

I also added an Omni light to the lightsaber so that it gives off a red glow wherever it is moved to which works very well in the animation. I had to change the near and far attenuation so the light didn’t travel far and only effected what was close.

For rendering the scenes I decided to use the ‘Quicktime’ MOV format because I have always had good results than compared to the AVI format. I used a resolution of 1200x800 for a good quality wide screen render at 25 frames a second.

Using ‘Adobe Premier Pro' I edited my animation and added some suitable sound effects before rendering out the final animation. Premier Pro scaled down my animation to a lower resolution.