Final Project~Mani jumping of the board

This is the final project I did and I will be submitting this instead of the mani's personality. Looking at the videos above, it might seem easy but the little details and movement of the body really took me loads of time to polish but I personally feel that my effort payed off as I learnt a lot along the way as well. The 2 videos above are the same animation but playblasted at 2 different angles for you to see. I used IK for my feet so it will not be messed up when I adjust the body while the arms is FK to give it a more natural feel to the whole animation. Now moving on, I learned that the squash and stretch principle is so important in making this animation works. I was at a lost at first after I polished the first part of the animation where mani climbs up the board as I added more weight to mani to show that mani used a substantial amount of energy to climb up the board. 

The hard part comes after this where I need to make the squash and stretch effect works smoothly as if mani really is jumping off the board. I painstakingly key frame each time I had to polish the squash and stretch effect especially when mani is in mid air as I need to take body physics into consideration. After all this done, I was so happy but what came after that was really bad. I playblast and realize that the video is too fast so I was at the verge of crying as I have almost 50 keyframes which will definitely kill me to extend every single one. However, thanks to mr douglas he taught me how to use the graph editor to increase certain length between certain key frames to make it look smoother. It was really helpful as I was able to increase gaps between each key frame to make certain part stretch longer. After that I continued to edit it using graph editor and played around with the tangents to help me make the whole animation even more natural. 

Finally, I would like to add that I really learnt a lot throughout my journey of 3pdf and I am elated that I was able to accomplish such an animation at the end of the day especially with the help of my lecturer Mr Douglas.

Final walk cycle

The above video show my final walk cycle. I will now elaborate more on how I animated the feet part of this rig. Firstly, I set the key frames for this walk cycle on key frames 0,6,12,18,24,30,36 so I can edit the movement of the feet better. Secondly, at 0 key frame I split the two legs evenly a part and move to frame 6 to lift the left leg up to make the squash effect of it in mid-air while the right leg slides backwards. Thirdly, at key frame 12 I stretch the left leg out towards the ground before resting at the two legs on key frame 18. Frame 0 and 18 is the resting points so it looks the same, the only difference is that the left and right leg swap position. Now moving on the frame 24, it looks exactly same as frame 6 with only the two legs swap position. Same goes for frame 30 and 36 matching frame 12 and 18 respectively.

I used the heel life attribute at both frame 6 and 24 to give the lifting effect that normal people does when they are lifting their legs up. I tilt the foot at frame 6 and 24 to give the pointed effect when it is being lifted up and at frame 12 and 30 I tilt it back straight to show that it is about to step on the ground.

Finally, the 3 videos below are personality I animated into the character but do take note!

This personality I did is not going to be submitted as my final project as I am doing the mani jumping of the block so do note.

I will not go into detail as I will be explaining more on mani jumping off the board as all this personalities I did was during my free time and I am not submitting them. I just wanted to experiment around with IK and FK handles. The above video show mani in a happy mood and doing a simple dance move. I used FK for the arms to make it look more natural.

The above video shows mani walking arrogantly like he seems upset with something. I put more details in this such as moving up the shoulder to show an angry mood and tilting the hips whenever he swing his hand up. This gives him a more fierce and angry feel to it. I also added him clenching his fist and bending his elbow to make it look natural.

The above video shows mani walking like he is very cool with his left hand pointing a finger out to greet his friend.

Big Dog animation

This week we were told to animate the big dog, if you have not seen the animation, do look at the video above before continuing to read the rest of the text. First thing first, we were told to animate the big dog to look exactly like the reference video. Basically, the big dog is being kicked and is trying to balance itself to avoid falling to the ground. The whole animation shows the how the big dog regain balance after being kicked.

Our teacher taught us a very useful method to animate this big dog. It is to start animating the body without the legs first which I feel that is really very efficient. Without seeing the legs moving all over the place, hiding them first and adjust the body slowly helped me to concentrate on one thing at a time.

Moving on, the body is easy to animate as it is pretty much rotating it that's all but now the hard part comes. In order to make the animation look smooth, I have to coordinate the legs and body to move natural while trying to re-balance itself. The bending effect of the knee was tedious to make it look natural but it I managed to make it look smooth.

Spiderman animation

This week we were told to animate spiderman swaying his body left to right. Applying the concept I learnt from previous lessons about IK and FK. The above video shows the beginning of my animation, as you can see, the animation is not up to standard yet. It looks unpolished and the fist is not clenched, on top of that it does not look natural.

After looking at the second video that is just above this texts, you can tell that the spiderman animation is more polished and moves naturally. I will elaborating more on how I did the animation and eventually accomplishing it. Firstly, I used IK for the legs so it will stay put and will not move when I am editing the body. Secondly, I used FK for the arms so that I am able to rotate each joints to make it look as natural as possible. On a side note, I will not be going in-depth to explain how IK and FK works as I already explained in my previous blog. Thirdly, I rotate the hips to make it natural. For example when the hip move up on the right hand side, the left leg will be straighten and vice versa. Lastly, tilting the head as well.

Spiderman model 3

This is my third and final pose I choose to model. The reason I chose this pose of spiderman is there are some aspects of the leg I feel need effort into modeling which other models I did so far do not have so it will be something different from the other 2 model. 

Front View

Back View

Side View

Side View

Reflection

These pictures above are the different views of the final outcome of spiderman I had modeled. I can safely say that this is the best model I have modeled compared to the other I model, I am not saying I did not put in effort to model for the other 2 but on the contrary the rest was challenging in its own way that is all.

To start off, the most prominent part of this pose is both the legs and it was pretty difficult to get details right for them. However, after trying both IK and FK I finally came down to the decision of using IK as it will not move together with the body when I try to edit the body. After thinking for a long time, I decided that the arms should be done in FK as it will be easier to edit the shoulder.

I put in a lot of effort in both the legs and arms for this model, as you can see from all views above. I even went to the extent to edit the foot of spiderman using footroll, ballroll, ball twist and ball rock tool to give the right effect for the leg. As you can see the left foot shows the tip toeing effect. I used the knee pv tool to help adjust the knee to ankle portion to look better. I believe that ankle could have been done better but after several rotation that was the best I could do.

Spiderman model 2

This is the second spiderman pose I chose to model. I chose this pose was not because it looks cool, I feel that this is a very challenging pose to model but I really want to give it a try. I won't know whether I am capable of modeling this unless I give it a shot so I did.

Unpolished version

Back View

Front View

Final polished version

This is the final outcome of the pose I modeled and I am proud of my effort as I really struggled to model it as there were many details I needed to pay attention and them sharpened out to make it look exactly like the reference picture.

Reflection

By looking at the polished version and comparing it to the final polished version, there are many outstanding details that differentiate them which shows how much effort I put in to adjust and make the aesthetics of the model as good as I could. 

Now to explain each and every details that make this pose stand out. First is the chest portion of spiderman, at first glance you can tell I made the spiderman's chest up and out which resembles the reference picture. Secondly, if you enlarge and zoom into the picture you will be able to see the fingers of spiderman have been model in a way to give it as much detail as possible to make it look realistic. The space between fingers and how bent the joints of each of finger was given consideration when polishing the model. Lastly is the the hip of spiderman, from the front view you will notice that the spread of the thigh of the legs looks really close to the reference picture.

Before I end this reflection, I want to say that I did not model the head as well as I wanted. It was challenging to make the head tilt downwards. That is the only shortcoming of this model I did, I will polish my skills and show you in the next model which is coming up. 

Spiderman Model One

As you can see from the above picture, it is a picture of spiderman in a certain pose and I will be using it as reference to assist me in modeling it in maya. I will be trying to replicate this exact pose in maya to look as accurate as possible.

This is the final outcome of the model I did and I am pretty sure it is as close as it gets to resembling the reference picture. If you feel the picture is a bit too dark to see, you can scroll down to the following pictures as I added and adjusted the lighting to make it brighter and easier to see.

Front View

Back View

Side View

Reflection

First to thing first, I would like to mention about what I have learn in my lab lessons prior to making this model. In order to be able to model spiderman into such complex pose, I must first learn how joints works. Like in real life, joints are points that connect different parts of our body together allowing us to move. However joints can only move in certain way, for example elbow cannot be bend in opposite direction as it does not seem logical. Knowing these, I was able to move joints around and aiming to make the whole pose look realistic.

The use of IK and FK movement for the different parts of the body help make this pose look so realistic. For this model I used IK for both the arms and legs as I want make them stick at their current position and will not be affected when I am modeling the body of spiderman. On a side note, the use of FK allow you to rotate the 3 joints of arms and legs to specific direction but it will move if the main body is moved. As for IK, it allows you to only move the wrist of the arm or the feet to specific position and maya will move the whole leg or arm to make it look natural. Basically IK is using inverse kinematics while FK is using forward kinematics.

As you can see from the front view of the model, the shoulder of spiderman was made to bend forward as his hands is holding on a rope. In order to make it more realistic, I made to stomach move inwards like how real people's stomach would react when their hands i stretching for something. From the back view you can clearly see that the spiderman has a nice curve on its back to show the hunch back.