Donatella's 3D Computer Animation Blog
My 3D Computer Animation Progress

Category: 3.14 Week 14

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3.14 Week 14 Advanced & Experimental Project 2

Week 14: Body Mechanics Spline Animation

Introduction

This week, I focused on converting my body mechanics animation from blocking into spline. To do so, I focused on cleaning the keys from my graph editor.

Spline Animation Process

In order to start converting my stepped animation into spline, I divided the sequence into manageable parts when the character:

  • Looks at the balloon.
  • Makes the first jump.
  • Takes two steps.
  • Catches the balloon.

First Outcome

For my next draft, the first thing I need to fix is the timing of my balloon animation.

I also need to improve the arm rotation at the end of my animation and improve the arm overlapping throughout the sequence.

Second Outcome

Even though the arm movements look smoother, there are still some rotations I need to improve.

Furthermore, I need to work on tracking the arcs of my waist at the end of my animation, as I have stretched the leg and it affected the position of the waist.

Categories
3.14 Week 14 Advanced & Experimental Project 2

Week 14: Animated Artefact – Previs & Retiming Reference Videos

Introduction

This week, I created my previs animation of my animated artefact and imported my reference videos into my Maya file.

Creating my Previs Animation

My animation will take place indoors, so before working on my previs animation, I created simple props (bed, table, pictures) to setup the environment.

Previs Animation

In order to start planning the timing of the movements, I created a previs animation.

I used some basic volumes to represent both: the character (in red) and the creatures (in green).

Importing Reference Videos

Creating New Expressions

Importing the reference videos was a huge challenge as they all started by default in frame 1 even though I moved them in the graph editor.

In order to fix this issue, I had to manually change the expression of each image plane and write on which frame I wanted the sequence to start playing.

Retiming Reference Videos

Retiming Reference Videos

After having both my reference videos and previs animation, I combined them into my scene.

However, I needed to retime the reference videos according to the previs animation.

In this sense, my reference videos will guide me on how the character is moving and the previs animation will help me understand the timing of each movement.

Further Thoughts

Now that I have my previs shots and reference videos, I can start blocking my animation. Furthermore, in the following weeks I will replace the placeholder props with smoother 3D models.