CG Toolkit - Brandon Gerrish

This video by Jason Baskin is a tutorial I have used to better understand the way to use and create a basic rig for my character for this project. I have decided to use this video because my character only has 2 moving limbs the two legs of the robot and this will also help create an IK option for my rig to move the legs easily. 

Week 9 - Creating mesh for character

Break week - start the rig for the character and refining the mesh topology 

Week 10 - Refine the rig and character model 

My timeline for this production pipeline to create this character and rig it ready for animation is as follows. 

Week 8 - Start research, mapping out and blocking out the character model in Maya and finding research on how to block out.

Week 9 - Start getting basic skinning and joints completed in the model and test the character’s movements

Break week - Continue work on refining the model and rig of the character

Week 10 - Refine the character rig

REFLECTION

Reflecting on my experiences and work throughout milestone 1A - 1C I could have spent more time on the pipeline of the workings and have learnt that leaving the pipeline too late will result with the finished product being rushed and missing most of the main components to make a refined work. I have learnt quite a lot of new tools and tricks using the Unreal Engine 4 and using the sequencer to apply my existing animation techniques in order to use the real time render engine. My knowledge and application of After Effects has been renewed and expanded with learning about different tools and render passes I could use in order to achieve an interesting result from my Unreal Engine animation.

Examining the new tools I have learnt from this I understand that I need to further learn more about the tools in the unreal engine but more so the tools and supporting programs such as Maya and After Effects to import and export interesting results for the animation pipeline.

Out of the specialist streams provided I have decided to give my shot at character development the first option to create a character and rig it up. I have decided on this choice because of my inspiration of game studios such as Hi-Rez, Blizzard, Naughty dog where their character designs and the animations of their characters was something I wanted to do myself. Tasks for this would include starting to develop skills in character modelling and character rigging outside of using Art v 1.0 for Maya and to look up appropriate guides and resources on how to develop this character.

The industry job role I have related to this task that I would like to do is character concept art which is associated with this task due to the abilities needed to design and create a character also designing the required skeleton and rig to make the animation for the character the best it can.

Some resources I can start off with to begin with would be to improve my modelling and sculpting knowledge of Maya and to explore more guides on how to create characters using Maya a requirement from job roles of character artists. Looking into programs such as zbrush, python, C++ etc etc in order to achieve some of the goals for this project.

This is my final rendering of my lighting experiment using Unreal Engine 4. I used the default directional light and focused it onto the character using a slight blue hue to it to light up the character from the front. I used a basic character generated from the art tool for Unreal Engine 4 in Maya. I tried to create an animation for the character of the character standing idle and then waving towards the camera but I did not save it out properly and is only a still model of the character. I have positioned this character in a corner to get a variety of reflected lighting off the walls and the floor onto the character. The challenges from trying to use the character creation tools in Maya and limited understanding of the program and tools. I was experienced in using and manipulating the lighting in Unreal Engine 4 from my experience of using it in my Virtual Environments studies and experiments. 

I’ve also experimented using adjustment layers and other alpha channel techniques using the saturation and the changes in hue to try and get another more interesting result from my renders. I have decided to change the hue of the background to a red/salmon colour and to add additional text as if this was a character introduction. I had a little difficulty applying this however it was due to some of the changes I have tried to apply not showing up on the output window. Overall if I were to do this again I would spend more time adjusting and experimenting with the lighting of my scene and try and to do more adjustments post production in after effects for an interesting result.

These are screenshots of my lighting experiments in my environment. I have experimented using the spot lights in the top image to create a very dramatic effect where the light casts very harsh shadow representing a single lit spotlight on a street corner or an interrogation room with the coloured light of the spot light giving an ambiance to the floor. 

Reflecting on the character rigging task this week I went into this week with no prior knowledge of creating character rigging but I have used character rigs and animated with character rigs before in previous animation classes. New knowledge I have of character rigging is very little due to not being able to create a character and other technical difficulties with the process of the animation.

I could not reflect on the difficulty of the task due to not being able to create and rig a character for the animation process due to programs not functioning as intended. The installation of the Maya Rigging tools from the Epic Games launcher has proven to be challenging and requires more time than needed to attempt to create a character. 

If I had more time during this pipeline I would have further researched and experimented with this the program sooner and to spend time finding a fix for the issues preventing the creation of the character. I would have also attempted to add motion graphics from After Effects into the character animation and to see if I could create some effects to add with the character animation. I would have also experimented with various camera angles and possibly have done a moving shot of the character which I have not done in previous units.

I have created a screenshot of the blocked out scene of this animation in Unreal Engine 4. Using the referenced image provided I have basely blocked the scene out with buildings and a staircase which I have decided to use that for my test camera movement.