Evaluation

Looking back to the start of this module I am please with what I have achieved in the short space of time. I am happy with my choice of characters; the mime in particular, as I knew that animating him would be difficult as the movement had to be both realistic and fake as mimes have a tendency to get stuck in invisible boxes with rapidly closing walls. I knew creating a mime would be challenging but also that it would be unique and fun to see a mime asking for stuff purely through body gestures. As you can see in my previous blogs, texturing the mime had proved to be an extremely difficult and time consuming experience. His face in particular was mind boggling as the layers would not show up how I intended. I created many different UV map layers for the face and finally it came together with the results seen today.

The second character which I created was the butcher; he was a relatively simple character to create and did not pose too many problems. Initially he was supposed to do a lot of talking and so I spent a long time create extremely detailed facial expressions and phonemes however even though he had a full repertoire of expressions, only a few got used and that’s probably what I’m most disappointed about because I know that if I could pull off my original script and it turned out the way I imagined in my head I know it would have been a great success.

However I know that the original story was a bit long and ambitious and would take ludicrous time frames to render and I did not want to sacrifice quality. I am happy with my judgement as the short improvised script gave me extra time and allowed me to use advanced lighting techniques and Depth of Field.

Even though it was very time consuming to position and animate, I am glad that I created a full skeletal structure for both my characters. The fingers proved to be the most fiddly to animate as there was a lot of bones, which constantly had to be altered.

Through my own choice I decided to use a different software package to the rest of the class, which was Lightwave 3D. At some points this became frustrating as when there was a slight glitch or problem I had no one to turn to. This meant that I had no choice but to spend countless hours reading through books to solve silly problems, however doing so gave me greater knowledge of the package and the confidence to progress ever further.

Doing this module was a lot of fun and a great learning curve and I am happy with the final outcome. If I was to take this project forward I would defiantly add in dialogue and I would also create a full environment.

Creating the final video

Putting the final video together was not as difficult as a first assumed. Even though I did not use the original script and story board, due to time constraints, I did still work in sequence and so all the scenes that I made up still followed one another. I worked on the animation scene by scene and so I rendered each scene is small increments this meant that the render times were slightly smaller. Also because I rendered off every scene immediately, everything was in the correct order and organized, which meant that I did not have to rearrange anything in the editing stage. The program that I used to edit with was adobe Premiere, which even though is not an industry standard tool it is still very powerful and best of all, is extremely easy to use.

At the editing stage I also created a title for the animation and added in a few different effects. In order to keep render times down I created short precise scenes, which I then, using adobe premiere, stretched out to make those short scenes last slightly long to give better impact.

Every time I do a project such as this I plan everything out right from the start including the styles, characterisations and even music. This project was however slightly different as I intended to add speech, but as I mentioned I did not use the original script so had to create the animation first and then find appropriate overlaying music.

After searching my archive of music I came across a classical band called BOND, they have a particular song, which I instantly liked and thought it would go well with my improvised animation. The track is called Dalalai and I feel it suits my animation well as it is a fast paced track but at the same time is not heavy.

Depth of Field

Watch the video a few times and notice how the hand goes out of focus as it comes closer to the camera.



In order to create more believable and realistic looking scenes i used a technique called depth of field. This allowed me to put either the front, back or anywhere in between out of focus.
as you will notice the camera moves around in the scene. At one point it is next to the mimes face and very rapidly it pans out the next. so the hard part was to make his hand blur when the camera moves out, but at the same time to not blur his face. The way in which i resolved this was by using the envelope settings, which you can see in the image below.

The envelope settings are near the Depth of Field box. The settings are for Focal distance and Lens F-Stop, altering these two individual settings using the graph editor allowed me to precisely choose what i wanted in and out of focus. Altering these to values can take up a lot of time so i would not recommend leaving this as a last minute task.

More scenes where i used Depth Of Field

skelegons, skeletons, bones and rigging

In order to animate my characters i first had to create some skelegons, which is the skeleton structure in lightwaves modeler section of the package. Each 0f the characters was given a full skeleton structure in modeler and then in layout those skelegons where converted into bones. Only after the skelegons were converted into bones, was it possible to animated the characters. Every movement in the animation was manually created. Also IK Boost was used in order to be able to select the orientations more accurately.

below is an image of the butcher character with his bones showing. notice the vast amount of bones in his hands.

Also below is some of the bones found in the editing panel.

Animation

This is a sneak peak of one part of my final animation. note that the actual one looks better as it has not been compressed.


Animating using Lightwave 3D is very fiddly and tiresome especially for fingers. I used a tool called IK Boost which links the bones together however due to the vast amount of bones in the hands, animating was very time consuming and difficult just to get them in to position let alone animate.

unfortunatly due to time contraints animating my two chracters to their full potential was impossible even though both of the had a full Repertoire of Phonemes and expressions, enough for a feature film. as you can see circled by red the slider had a long way to go.


To help make the expressions e.g the blinks more accurate and on time i used the graph editor, which enabled me to precisely choose the time and amount of blink i required.

Lighting

As everyone involved in Photography or any type of design understands, lighting is one of the most critical aspects to get correct, as lighting can help bring any image to life.

As you will see in the attached images i have used a lot of different lighting techniques. the scene consists of one area light, one spotlight, two distance lights and three point lights. I adjusted each light individually and every light plays a different role in making the scene look more realistic.

I am very happy with my efforts in lighting the scene as i feel the i have got the ambiance right.

Using these different lighting styles in the scene allows soft shadows as demonstrated by my butcher.

altering the sky

In the two images attached to this post you will notice that i have changed the sky. The reasons for doing so is because i felt that the first sky made the environment look a bit apocalyptic. also i felt that the lighting looked a bit harsh.

also you will notice that i have added in some signs.

mime test

This took a surprising amount of time to create even though its just make 14 seconds worth of video.

butcher test

This is just a test. I was messing about with the butcher model and thought id render the results.

butcher 360

butcher 360

Some of the extreme techniques used to texture the head 3

A lot of advanced texturing techniques were used to get the result for the mimes face.
In the big red circle is the many different layers required to texture the model, and note that all these layers and techniques used are only for the mimes face and so the rest of the head and body took different methods which were also very time consuming.

Some of the extreme techniques used to texture the head 2

As you can see a lot of different properties had to be used to get the desired effect

Some of the extreme techniques used to texture the head 1

Unfortunately nothing is ever simple or straight forward, and trying to texture the mimes head was no different. it took ages to get right and required a lot of trial and error which was very time consuming. below is a montage of some of the different textures used to create the final effect. I have labeled the images so click to enlarge to views the titles.

Marcel Marceau

Marcel Marceau is without a doubt the most famous of mimes.

mimes

theses are just some images of mimes that i found on the internet.

Butcher

Iv managed to finish the modeling and texturing for my market butcher.

the next stage will be to create bones for it and also to rig it.

i also need to create weight maps the butcher as this will help when animating the character.

mime

Iv managed to finish the modeling and texturing for my mime.

the next stage will be to create bones for it and also to rig it.

i also need to create weight maps the mime as this will help when animating the character.

The story

I have kept the plot for the animation very simple. The idea involves a permanent mime, meaning a mime which never likes to break character as being a mime is what he is and is his life style. So the story starts as this main character, the mime, approaches a butcher van in the market square to buy some meat. As he never likes to break character he asks the butcher for two chickens by only using gestures as i mime does. How ever it turns out to be a more complicated and frustrating process as the butcher decides to have a bit of fun and attempts the confuse the situation a win over more money. The butcher immediately understands that the mime requires two chickens but instead interprets back five chickens, two cows and seven ducks. The mime desperately shakes his head and hands to say that, what the butcher said is incorrect. So again he animates him self and shows that he only requires two chickens. This time however the butcher becomes a bit rude and leads the mime to believe that he understands the mimes order so puts up to fingers and says "so you want to chickens" the mimes face lights up as he finally thinks he'll get his chickens. But the butcher adds a ridiculous thrusting motion to the sentence which infuriated the mime causing him to shout out. The mime realizes that he is caught speaking on camera and so pleads to the butcher to keep it quiet. Knowing that he has the upper hand the butcher bribes the mime into purchasing extra goods.

Using this story should allow some very interesting scenarios and camera angles also it is a story that is told using a lot of visual movements and so does not rely solely on audio to help bring it to life.

This will be a very complicated animation technically and will be very time consuming as the movements have to be believable also this animation relies a lot on facial expressions which are always difficult to make convincing. But hopefully the animation will turn out as I visualize it in my head even though the time frame in which to produce such an animation is very short.

The setting

The scene will take place in the center of the market and the mobile butcher stall will be similar to the ones in the original image posts.

market trader

The second character to my second animation idea is the market trader.
the trader is a butcher like the ones from my local town market.

The characteristics should resemble the ones shown in the video. In appearance the butcher will be bigger and more intimidating he will have a headset and load speaker as they did.

Animation idea 2

The new idea will involve two new characters which i feel will be more interesting. the first of the new characters is a mime the reasons why i chose to use a mime is because a feel it will be both interesting to try an animated a mime trying to do an everyday normal tasks like buying goods from a market stall all without using any speech. Animating this character should also be challenging as the character has to communicate by only using expressive gestures and hand signals.

brief story overview

The short animation story involved a prisoner who had escaped out of prison and so was on the run

As the prisoner ran for his freedom he noticed a dark alleyway which he entered for cover. deep into the alleyway was a small market store labeled back market.

The market stall owner was a wacky gypsy trader which would try to scam the unfortunate individuals which stumble into his territory.

animation idea 1

My first idea for the short animation involved two unique characters. A typical rough escaped prisoner which would be the consumer and a wacky gypsy which would be the dealer.

Snap shots

To help get a better understanding on life in a market and how it looks and sounds i went in to my local Ipswich town market. The market stand that caught my eye was a butchers stand, which sold a variety of different meats. The bit that was amazing was how the two butchers gathered peoples attention through there headset and loud speaker. They appeared to be the typical confident butchers sweet talking people in to buying there products

Character animation introduction

For my third year project i have been given a brief to create a short animation, which should demonstrate life in a market. The focus will be to create interaction between two people for example the market vendor and the consumer. in order to portray such a scene i will use different animation techniques including body animations, facial animations and create different phonemes for speech.