In the final production I fixed all the mistakes George mentioned, I know it looks like there is still room for improvement, but for the finished piece, I wasn’t disappointed as he moved logically and didn’t have major mistakes , this is a kind of progress for me.
I’m very happy with the final result, although there were a lot of animation issues and rendering issues, but it means a lot to me, this is my first mockumentary. My ultimate dream is to be a cg director, this is a small step for me to succeed. I am very grateful to all the people who have helped me during this semester.
At George’s suggestion, I revised my reference, where I paid more attention to the performance of the character’s demeanor and avoided overly exaggerated movements. In the production of blocking, I roughly made the main expressions. It has to be said that the production of emoticons is indeed a difficult subject. You must understand and practice emoticon animations in order to achieve smooth and consistent character movements.
During this week, I repeatedly made and modified the scene. The reason is that the performance of the computer is not enough, and it is difficult to drive high-resolution textures, so I did a lot of subtraction. The scene I hope to make is similar to the feeling of the beach in Iceland. Because the black land of Iceland gives people a very primitive and unspoiled feeling, so in my setting I decided to make a beach similar to the Icelandic landscape. I used fluid flux to make waves in the sea water, and it cost me 7 days and 7 nights to study it.
I fixed the previous mistakes and added more intermediate frames to make the whole animation look smoother.
The main work this week is to disassemble the uv and draw the texture. I refer to the appearance of the ancient crab to make the current appearance. Because it is a realistic style, I use the pbr material process in terms of materials. I will try my best to consider some realistic elements, such as soil stains and wear. As for the material of the Velociraptor, I also used a lot of normal brushes packed with modern animals, such as crocodile lizards and so on. By the way, all of this is done in substance painter.
I fixed the whites of the eyes, but my shot still has some issues. Also I added the shoulder animation for more detail, but embarrassingly, it moves like a butterfly flapping its wings instead of the correct one. .
I edited the rendered footage and edited it, and for what it’s worth, the whole process was a lot of fun, and I enjoyed the soundtrack because the sound effects of the monsters are so compelling it seems to give the work its soul.
Under George’s patient explanation, I understood a lot of techniques and key points of 3D character animation, as well as production techniques and points to pay attention to. I recreated blocking, but the overly exaggerated movements above still made it look uncomfortable. . There are still many elements to improve.
This week I put together and lit all the animations and shots, and I really enjoyed it. Insufficient multi-tasking of the lens caused a lot of problems and bugs. I added special effects like mud and fog to some shots to make it look more realistic.
It’s exciting to finally come to a new project, and I’m going to take a champion line from League of Legends as my plan. Tucci is a relatively popular character, his voice is full of drama and charm, so I am going to make a performance that is more suitable for this character, and I am going to express obscenity and cringe.
I made some animations and tested them, and the results looked amazing, exactly as I expected, but I still pay more attention to the realism of the character’s trajectory and joint movement.
This is the final product. Although there are many mistakes and actions that can be improved in the picture, there are too many technical difficulties that need to be overcome. I still can’t find the technique to make the stick bend, and there are more subtle action adjustments that I haven’t made in time. Adjustment, so this became one of my regrets.
For the needs of the story, I added another character—T-Rex. In addition to the previously repeated work (modeling topology maps) I also rigged them. I have to say that for the rigging of the crab, I refer to a lot of tutorials and crab animation references. It took me a lot of time, but the result is still very ok. By the way, all this is done in blender. It is undeniable. Blender is more convenient in the field of binding and animation.
Under the teacher’s suggestion, I modified some actions of blocking and added scenes and shots and the woman walking, but the actions are still a bit problematic, but at least it is better than the previous one.
Similarly, this week I mainly worked on modeling. I used the velociraptor circulating on the Internet as a prototype and modeled it with zbrush. Then use blender topology to model the number of faces. Modify the details, then bake a normal map onto the low poly model with Marmoset Toolbag to make it a rig ready asset. , it is worth integrating the eyelids of the dinosaur that I added later, so I made a lot of modifications for binding.
George said that this action lacks a sense of story, and the whole martial arts action seems monotonous, so with the help of George, I added some extra stories and actions to this action. This is a preliminary blocking, but there are still many problems. This is really a lot of work.
For project2. This week, I mainly worked on modeling. I used the crab fossils discovered by scientists as prototypes and modeled with zbrush. Then use blender topology to model the number of faces. Modify the details, then bake a normal map onto the low poly model with Marmoset Toolbag to make it a rig ready asset.
I really like martial arts scenes, so I chose the monkey stick method of Shaolin Kung Fu. The task is tough, which means I need a lot of time to challenge it.
My first project was from the geroge course. The story I wrote was about the metaphysical theme of a girl and a monster. It tells the story of a girl with amnesia who struggles to find her memories with the help of a mysterious monster. My story is inspired by some movies and anime. For example THE BFG, from which I got the idea of giants existing in the city. There’s also the emotion and interaction between the girl and King Kong in King Kong. Even in SPIRIT AWAY, where the protagonist accidentally enters the world of monsters from the real world, etc. These films and movies give me a lot of ideas and the basis for stories. In my animation, I usually like to add cinematic elements to my work. I think this is something that cannot be overlooked and is often a major factor in how good a piece of work is. AI is a good tool and a good partner for human beings. The premise is that it will not destroy humans. I used midjourney, which has become very popular recently, to generate some concept images, and through many attempts and filters, I picked a few that came close to what I imagined. The amazing thing is that they work really well and they are passable as art concepts.
As you can see the cover is a dinosaur, so for my next 9 weeks I’m going to make a short film about dinosaurs. The artwork is ai-generated by the way. The reason I’m going to do it is probably this, dinosaurs are a widely popular subject, especially among children or young audiences. The nature of the plot of this little animation for project2 might be similar to tropes like There’s many a slip ‘twixt the cup and the lip. So I will show the cruelty of inter-species competition and the law of the forest where the weak are the strongest in ancient times. I have analysed three difficulties in this project, the first of which is rigging, I have modelled and riged the Tyrannosaurus Rex and he seems to be working. I have left the crabs and raptor no rig . The second was animating the dinosaurs, as they don’t exist in real life at the moment,
so my references came back from previous films and TV shows. prehistoric planet and the classic movie Jurassic Park were good targets for me to learn from. 3. physics simulation, I felt it was necessary to add some effects to give a better visual effect. Sand collisions and seawater simulations were essential and I worked on these in ue5 rather than houdini because ue is more time efficient and convenient. Next it was time for ai ~ these images were generated in the style of a photographic artist, it looks more realistic and detailed. This is the scene I imagined, it is more like the environment of the earth in ancient times.
