Self evaluation
As a new student in Anglia Ruskin University, it took me some time to get accustomed to the new lifestyle and teaching method here. Before choosing 3D Character Animation as one of my modules, I had ever considered not to take this subject, as I knew how bad my 3D was. With only one semester study on 3D and half-an-year break after graduation from my previous college, I had little memory of how to use 3D MAX.
I could still remember that I tried to make a walking biped in the first week of this semester; it took me a while to search for different buttons as well as the button for biped and footstep. After I tried the course and found it is difficult for me to catch up, because the rest of the fellow students were quite excellent and had great knowledge of it. I have talked to Jo about it and asking for some tutorials to help me with 3D and even had interest in attending the lectures of the second year…as I was really worried about it...
I have no idea why I eventually chose 3D Character Animation, probably I like to stay in a class that I could get involved in discussing with a nice lecture of talent, who plays a role both as a teacher and friend. Furthermore, 3D is useful in the real life if I could master the advanced skills.
Nevertheless, I have to admit that 3D is really a time-consuming module, which cannot be completed just within one week or two to obtain our final character. It is a learning process that cultivates us a good study habit---treat every single mesh as seriously as possible since the very beginning of the whole project, or it would take us more time to go back to adjust the mesh which didn’t match with each other due to the separated vertices in between.
Following the lecture is the most important as far as I am concerned even though lots of 3D tutorials can be found online, however, to find one that is suitable for one own is hard. In this module, the skill to make my character is based on the school lectures. By quickly taking the important notes down and practicing with the daily exercise, which keeps a record of how we had learnt to a certain and will definitely benefit for the personal future education. Different people have different ways of learning, perhaps this is a good way for me to get improved and enhance my memory.
The most difficult part in 3D Character Animation is the head modeling and skinning. As a head contains several units such as eyes, nose, mouth, ear and so on. All these need to be done very carefully and slowly in order to achieve a good visual effect at the end. Patience plays a significant role here! I believe that most of us got frustrated during this module, so did I! I have been struggling for making a head, body and skinning. Various methods have been attempted to find the easiest way or most convenient solution for me to work on the character. Finally I employed a method with reference images as the way to model my character’s head while using box extrusion (convert a box to Editable poly and extrude the first box to gain more boxes to form the whole mesh gradually) to work out the character’s body including the clothes, trousers as well as the shoes. Skinning seems like a turning point before the animation. Therefore, it is very important to have a high-standard skinning effect before the animation is launched. Also, the size of the bones needs to be big enough so that it will cover all the mesh to a great extent while skinning.
I am pleased that I have completed my character and its animation eventually according to a clown show storyboard. The animation is only 24 seconds, yet it demonstrates a clowns’ spirit thoroughly, which I wrote earlier in the video source and character profile. One of the outstanding features of my character is his costume, which makes the character unique and differs from the ordinary character. The whole animation is a clown show that reflects the role a clown plays on the stage of society---amuse his audience with a goal of making people laugh!
Hopefully I will keep working on my 3D character if I have an opportunity to proceed with it to a higher level; I would love to add more activities/show of a clown. During this study process, I’ve learnt a lot either from the lecture, the fellow students as well as some other useful tutorials; I am delight with what I have made. Thanks to the wonderful teaching method, I believe that it will be no problem for me to work further on 3D next semester for the virtual environment, as I have gained a lot of experience from this semester!
Appendix
Modeling problem:
During the whole process, I have been struggling for creating a nice body of the character, as there are certain edges not connected to each other very well, which affected the whole character’s movements, due to the tiny holes everywhere; different methods have been experimented to pursue for a better visual effect. Even though I didn’t employ it at the end, but I would like to mention it here, as it was a valuable study process for me to gain some extra skills and experience apart from the classroom-exercise. Modeling the whole body with reference image is one of the useful methods, which I learnt from the tutorials that existed online. The tutorial source is: http://www.bauervision.com/3dsMax_Modeling.html
First of all, import the relevant images (including front and left view) a material bitmap in a plane which will be used as a reference image placed in the background. Start with drawing a box from the chest and then Convert it to Editable Poly to clone a lot more boxes down to the ankle (the same methods as we make the clothes, pant and shoes earlier). It is important to see both the mesh and background image, so I set the object (box) visibility: 0.5, so that the box becomes transparent, which makes it easy to follow the shape of the reference image.
Following the same procedure, make the arm and then apply Symmetry as to get the other side of the body and Material IDs has been used to enrich the color of the clothes . TurboSmooth has been employed to make the mesh more accurate and to smoothen the whole object.
However, after I completed the modeling by using this method, I wasn't that satisfied with the result, because the body didn't look like a clown’s style or either the costume. Even though I considered and tried to modify it into a clown’s jumpsuit, but it became even worse and difficult to proceed from that point. Finally I gave up with such an “advanced” tutorial and turned to the original method and my previous experience with creating clothes and shoes by using a plane, which Jo gave lecture in the classroom. It seemed that I learnt more from what she taught and more convenient for us to adopt it and bring it into practice.
Regarding the bones, I was planning just to envelop the bones by adding a biped and I did try that at the beginning, as I took for granted that it would be quick to complete skinning for the whole character. However, something unexpected happened. For instance, the mesh didn't go well with bones and quite hard to adjust the single bone from a biped, especially the fingers, which would influence each other so easily if there is a slight overlapping in between. Furthermore, as the size of biped was originally fixed, so that it was hard to change one single bone within a biped. Also, the distance between two objects, normally it is the joint area which makes it mismatch with bones. According to all the disadvantages above, I turned to adding bones one by one and skinning it at last.
Render problem:
A certain render problem has been encountered in this process; I also consulted some fellow students regarding my problems, they really tried to give me good suggestions but still couldn't find out the reason why it happened like that. Eventually I figured out that the Exposure Control under Environment and Effects option was set to be Logarithmic Exposure Control which resulted in low quality of the rendered images as well as all the animated scenes. Then I set it back to Automatic Exposure Control and it rendered out quite high quality images.
Character animation
As was introduced earlier in the character’s storyboard, the animation of the character will be a showcase of a clown’s performance, which demonstrates the personality of a clown and identify his unique body language. The scene starts on a stage where Mr Joker is going to use his own manner to introduce himself and greet with audience. The design is focus on the movements of Mr Joker from different perspective and how he amuses audience with his exaggerated facial expressions.
Scene no.1
The first scene shows the beginning part of the performance when Mr Joker is just presented himself in front of the audience, he waves one of his arms with the other one on the waist. Note that his upper body twists slightly along with his moving arm, not only the arm itself move against the body.
The animation itself is easy to complete, yet the lighting (Omni light) for the first scene is more important, because it is the beginning of a show. Therefore, the stage lighting starts with dark and gradually becomes very bright by adding its Mutiplier value under Intensity/Color/Attenuation section. Also, the camera moves towards (by reducing the Target Distance) the character as it is going to get closer to Mr Joker and make an emphasis.
Scene no.2
The second scene is that Mr Joker demonstrates his big red nose, which is one of the most typical representatives of a clown’s image. In this scene, Mr Joker is pointing at his nose, the significant part here is to show how to rotate or twist the fingers by simulating the human “finger-pointing” action. The camera here is placed also right in front of the character. As is shown, the shadow is behind the character, meaning that the light is ahead. However, I begin to use the Target Spot as a light in this scene due to the lighting condition/problem. Omni light was applied before, but the animation didn't look bright enough after being rendered, hence, I turned to employ Target Spot according to 3d max tutorial. Moreover, , the shadows were set to be Area Shadows under the General Parameters section and the shadow color was set to be grey with 0.7 Dens under the Shadow Parameters section. All these setting have been chosen after a few times experiments with comparison on the character.
Scene no.3
This scene is to display Mr Joker’s costume by following the movements of his hands pointing from the head until facing two hands toward the audience. The difficult part in this scene is that it is an action for two hands; therefore it is not easy to manage them having exactly the same movement at the same time. In addition, there is quite lots of rotation of both arms and hands, which might result in that certain area is distorted by mistake without any notice. As it is shown in the last clip, the right hand of the character has been distorted after the animation, which I couldn't even “remedy” it, as envelop didn't work so well in this area.
Scene no.4
Mr Joker is trying to show off his special clown shoes that differ from the others. The animation in this scene has been improved after I did some user-test. A good advice has been taken into consideration and then the animation was revised again. The reason inducing this difference in the transformation is that the movement of the foot affects the calf slightly, which makes it obvious to see whether the foot works well or normal. In the old version, I only made the foot move but with the calf static, which looked a bit weird. However, this movement succeeded in the new version and looks much better.
Scene no.5
One of a clown’s characteristics is that he doesn't walk straight in a line. Therefore, in this scene Mr Joker walks in his own way, which seems a bit funny yet unique. As I didn't use biped to envelop the mesh (instead I skinned it by adding bones one by one), I couldn't make the character walk so freely like a biped does, also, the character didn't walk straight, so it took me a bit longer time to mimic every single walking movement.
Scene no.6
A clown is always good at many things such as juggling. So is Mr Joker! He is one of the best jugglers who master the skills how to juggle three balls or even more at a time. Look! He is pretty enjoying juggling and amusing his audience simultaneously. A good point in this scene is to consider how to juggle by oneself and calculate when the ball drops and when to rise the hand to catch the ball. After having several times of experiment in the real world on my own and I found out how to deal with the timeline as to enable my character to be a “best juggler”! On the other hand, the movements of the eyes are important as well, for it is a reaction among the body, eyes and concentration. It is the eyes that connect the brain and body language together.
Scene no.7
The last scene is to use the Morph modifier for simulating facial expression. It sounded complicated and difficult as I expected earlier, however, after I have viewed Jo's and some fellow students’ notes regarding morphing, I finally managed how to use it onto my character.
The entire procedure is as below:
Detach the whole face from the rest of the body, as it is only the facial animation that will be morphed. Then highlight the face and clone it.
1. Rename the copy one as “surprise” (expression word) and change the expression of either the eyes or the mouth of the mesh. Note that it is a complete copy from the original one, I attempted to delete some vertices on the face, and then the morpher didn't work.
2. Select the original face and apply Morpher modifier from the modifier list.
3. Click on an empty channel under Channel List, a small box appears saying pick from scene. Pick the “surprise” face and now the morph starts to work with showing a green sign next to the panel. The facial expression will be changed by adjusting the small arrows on the right side showing the weight (0-100) of the morph.
The final facial animation has been done through the mouth to a great extent and slight transformation of the eyes. The camera stays right in front of the character and then drastically gets close up to the face in order to highlight the morphing details.
Final character animation