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My 3D Computer Animation Progress

Category: 1.8 Week 8

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1.8 Week 8 3D Animation Fundamentals

Week 8: Body Mechanics Planning

Introduction

This week, we got an overview on how to record reference videos since we are going to need them for our body mechanics animation.

Body Mechanics – Planning

For my body mechanics animation, I wanted to create a short and simple animated dance. Since I never had the experience of recording my own reference videos, I decided it was a great opportunity to practice that.

First, I recorded myself dancing and then I sketched the key poses of my animation.

1. Reference Video

What I learned in our lesson was that it is essential to have reference videos from different perspectives.

Despite the fact that I only had limited space to record my reference video, I managed to position several cameras in my room.

However, what I failed to do was to film from a 3/4 perspective, rather than from a front or side view.

2. Key Poses

After shooting my reference video, I sketched the key poses of my animation.

It was actually very useful to have visual references from different perspectives.

Now that I have my reference videos and also key poses, I can import them into my Maya file. In this way, I can start posing my character more effectively.

Categories
1.8 Week 8 3D Animation Fundamentals

Week 8: Lip-Syncing

Introduction

This week we are getting familiar with lip syncing animations and in order to animate our face rig, we have to add several facial expressions.

For my lip syncing animation, I decided to use as a reference part of a conversation held by Hans Landa from the movie Inglorious Basterds.

Christoph Waltz as Hans Landa – Inglorious Basterds

Part 1: Character Rigging

Christoph Waltz – References for Rigging

In order to create a lip-syncing animation of Christoph Waltz, first I wanted to customize my face rig.

I used some reference pictures (front and side view) of the actor in order to analyze the shape of his face.

The shapes of his face that caught my attention were:

  • Plane Face (forehead and chin are aligned).
  • Straight & Sloped Forehead
  • Cleft Chin
  • Wrinkles around his mouth
  • Puffy eyes

Even though I am aware that my rig doesn’t entirely resemble the actor, I can say that I used many of his facial features as a reference in order to customize my rig.

Part 2: Lip-Syncing

In order to start my lip-syncing animation, I had to first import the video and audio into my Maya file.

I used Adobe Premiere Pro to export the video into frames (.jpg sequence) and also the audio (.wav).

After importing the video and audio into my file, for this week we had to animate our character rig like a puppet.

In order words, we needed to analyze the audio waveform in order to determine when our rig was opening and closing its mouth.

Part 3: Work in Progress

In order to create a more realistic lip-syncing animation, I am going to add over the upcoming weeks more facial expressions.

Not only does the mouth move when the character is talking, but also the eyebrows, cheeks and forehead.

For this reason, I am going to analyze what types of expressions I need to add in the Blend Shapes panel in order to improve the animation.