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!
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