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This video is just a short video showing off the static rig in Unreal Engine

#KNB221 #CGTOOLKIT #ASSIGNMENT 2 #FINAL RENDER

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This Assignment has been a huge eye-opener for me, it has taught me many new techniques when creating a working rig that can be animated and textured. Along the way there were many mistakes made and multiple errors that came up, however there was one that kept showing up that ultimately made the final rig lose quality.

When exporting the rig as an .FBX, an error showed up that said something along the lines of “75 complex animations found in geometry, 1057 samples taken.” This error broke the head of the rig by displaying the low poly version of it instead of the high poly when importing it into Unreal Engine. It also stuffed up the head’s UV so that the texture couldn’t be applied properly. I believe this error has occurred because of one of the constraints in the skeleton, because when I deleted the skeleton and exported the rig, it turned out perfectly as a static asset.

If I had to do this assignment again, I would work on looking into the pipeline further and get a better understanding of it. This way there might be a chance of me avoiding an error such as the one I came across. I would try and get the proxy geometry and rig finished as soon as I could so I could work on creating a better quality Hi poly version with a much higher resolution texture set. This way the final rig would look a lot more impressive and beautiful when animating it. Although, I am very happy with how the textures turned out on the static model of the robot.

Another thing that I would like to do if I did this assignment again would be to create a more humanoid character and learn a lot more about the sculpting process.

#KNB221 #CGTOOLKIT #ASSIGNMENT 2 #FINAL

Since the last update, I have worked on creating a high poly production version of the geometry. I did this by cleaning up the existing geometry, unwrapping it and smoothing, beveling and modifying the existing geometry. This puts me on track to finish the build on time. In the next week, I will be able to set up the deformation skeleton to work with this geometry, finish adding the ears and eyes and finish cleaning the model up for texturing at the end of week 12 and throughout week 13.

#KNB221 #CGTOOLKIT #ASSIGNMENT 2 #PROGRESS UPDATE 3

This week I didn’t get as much of the assignment done as I would have liked. However, I successfully completed the rig and skin weighting of the robot. This opens the door for me to add on the ears, eyes and canisters easily as well as smoothing the model and texturing him. Although I didn't do as much as I would have liked to, I am definitely on track to finishing the model by about week 12.

8 hrs working

1 hrs reflection/ research

#knb222 #CGToolKit #Assignment 2 #REFLECTION

Over the mid-semester break, I didn't get as much work done as I would have liked to have gotten done, however, I have completed the main rig and skin weighting. This process was a lot quicker than I originally thought it was going to take. Setting up the rest of the controls for the body took a bit longer than expected just from accidentally constraining the joints to the controls wrong over and over again. After seeing how to complete the rig and models, I can now easily add the ears, eyes and canisters to the character and start to texture him.

8 working hrs

1 reflection hrs

#KNB221 #CGTOOLKIT #ASSIGNMENT 2 #REFLECTION

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As you can see from the video above, I have completed most of the proxy geometry, set up a basic skeleton in the robot and set up controls for the legs (IK), balls of the feet and the hip joints. At this point in time, I haven't started to weigh the skin, texture or finish the high poly version of the model, however, seeing how to actually rig and learning the process, I won't have to spend as much time on it as I had estimated. This will give me time to refine the textures and model further giving a better-looking outcome.

To get to the stage I'm at, I have had a few troubles that could have easily been avoided. As I haven't previously completed any rigging, I had to use the resources that were given to me and find new resources to teach me how to do it. I started out by watching a Pluralsight series about setting up a skeleton and rig for a human model, however, a lot of what was shown didn't directly apply to the bipedal robot. Although it taught me a lot about rigging in general, I would often get lost and have to figure out how it would work for my model which was a very time-consuming process. After this though, I found the video Trendt made about setting up an IK rig on the arm and with the knowledge from the Pluralsight videos, I was easily able to set up the legs, feet and hip joints.

From the work I have completed I feel the next direction for me to head is to learn how to connect the model to the rig so I can have an animated model instead of just an animated skeleton. Then I will have to finish the model and rig which shouldn't take as long as was first predicted because of the knowledge I now have.

#KNB221 #CGTOOLKIT #ASSIGNMENT 2 #MILESTONE

For week 8, Vincent and I split into working on each of the buildings with me taking the building shown in this image (Building B) and Vince taking the other building (Building A). As well as making the modular pieces that Building B will be created out of and extended with, I unwrapped every model in the scene apart from Building A as Vince was still working on it.

#KNB222 #VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENTS #WEEK 8 #CHECK IN

For week 7, I started the project by creating the courtyard at the right scale, this was important as the grey box version had a scale that wasn’t right. By fixing this up, we have a base to create all the other buildings and objects off of.

#KNB222 #WEEK 7 #VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENTS #CHECK IN

For Assessment 2, I have chosen to focus on building and rigging a complete character, specifically the Bipedal Robot character as seen in the concept image above. This character intrigued me as it reminds me of a droid from Star Wars, and as Star Wars is one of my favourite series ever, creating and bringing to life a robot similar to a droid (with hopefully as much character) would be something that I would strive to achieve. This stream will also teach me more about modelling which will always be useful, it will teach me how to rig a character and give me more practice at animating a character.

Because I was inspired to choose this brief from Star Wars, I will aim to make the character as if I was creating it for Star Wars. With this goal, I will be able to adjust the character and how it will perform to suit the character as a lovable and comedic character such as R2-D2 or BB-8. To setup the rig and sculpt the character, I will have to use resources such as Pluralsight to understand how the programs work and how they will help to create the character.

To create this character, I will have to break down the modelling and rigging into the upcoming weeks. As of now, my plan is as follows:

Week 7 Modelling Week 8 Modelling/Texturing Week 9 Modelling/Texturing Week 10 Rigging Week 11 Rigging Week 12 Rigging/Animation Week 13 Animation

As of the time of uploading this post, I have not started creating the character, however, I have started researching and planning what I will need to accomplish in the next few weeks.

#KNB221 #CGTOOLKIT #ASSIGNMENT 2 #PROGRESS UPDATE 1

Assignment 1 Reflection

The first assignment has been a big learning curve for me. Not only for the content covered in the subject, but for how I manage my time, work through the pipeline for each task and in general how to create a better-looking outcome. I feel like as the milestones progressed, I put more and more effort into creating a better product and I want that to continue in the work I do in the future. In terms of content, I have experimented with character creation, something I have always wanted to do but never have done before, animation, which is something that I love doing and am half decent at, compositing and finally lighting. Out of these, my strongest ability is the animation, I have animated multiple scenes before and hope to continue to animate more. From the start of this assignment I haven’t been satisfied with my animations, and that I believe comes down to me and will only improve if I improve my habits. The animations always felt rushed for me, as if I always left them till they were either too late, or I thought that I left it till it was too late so I would move onto the next parts of the assignment that I was less confident in.

Through researching and experimenting, I have learnt how to light a character and started learning how composite the character in the shot, which is something that I would like to learn more about and do more with in the future. I believe that composition is one of the most important parts of any kind of film making and although I know a little bit about it, I want to learn how to composite a shot really well as it will help in every kind of film and photography. Another part of the milestones that I was really intrigued by was the ARTV1 tools and creating the basic geometry character models. This is one of the first times that I have experimented with character creation and is something that I have always been interested in doing. The character creation is also something that I would like to improve on and do more of as it incorporates elements from modelling, texturing and rigging, all of which will be used in the creation of virtual environments and storytelling assets. I think that the main improvements that I need to do are create habits to manage my time and stop me from getting distracted as this is definitely a huge problem that if fixed can completely enhance the quality of my work.

As of this moment, I am unsure of exactly which specialised stream that I would like to further explore, however, I have narrowed it down to focus on either building a character rig or something in the visual effects development stream. I would love to focus on the character creation stream as it will give me experience in modelling, texturing and rigging which is important in all asset creation. It also gives me an opportunity to further develop my animation skills and give me a better understanding and experience in the animation pipeline. I would also like to develop my skills in visual effects because it is something I haven’t had as much experience in and would find it interesting to try out. Despite which stream I choose to focus my time in, my objectives for the next assignment is to produce something that is quality and that I can not only be proud of but keep for my future portfolio and maybe even show reel.

A job that I would love to do in the future is a visual effects artist at a studio like AltVFX or Cutting edge. These studios do a lot of work for Australian television and film and that is what got me interested in animation and visual effects. These studios also do a lot of visual effects that relate to the visual effects stream for digital matte painting and creating believable worlds out of already existing environments. Another dream studio that I aspire to work for is Pixar animation studios. This studio creates the most incredible animations, characters and stories I have ever seen. I love how they take situations that are unbelievable and make you feel as though they could happen. Their animation quality is beautiful and is something that I aspire to be like.

For the two streams that I am looking at, I will definitely require a lot of extra knowledge that I currently don’t have. For the character creation stream, I will mostly need to understand how a character model interacts with a rigging skeleton and how to actually create that rig. Finding out how a rig interacts with a model is something that I know the basics of and have had experience in with animating, however, I will need to research it further so that I can understand what will work when I am creating the actual model. I will also have to learn the rigging tools because I have never created a skeleton for a character before.

I have a current understanding in animation, basic motion graphics and VFX, modelling and texturing, all which will be useful working towards my goal of working at one of these studios I mentioned earlier. However, throughout this semester and the rest of my time at UNI, I will have to better develop my time management skills, understand the pipeline in more detail, get a better understanding of VFX and animation and learn how to rig a character that not only works but is easy to use.

To further develop my understanding of these concepts, I have found a few resources. The first resource is provided by QUT and is Pluralsight. This tool will be invaluable to my research as it will take me through the process of how to not only set up a rig for animation but will also explain how to matte paint and other such VFX. Another valuable resource will be the School of Media Design. This resource shows the basics of rigging at a beginner’s level, this will help me as I have never done any rigging before. The final resource that I have found is the UE4 YouTube channel as they show how to implement everything else into a real-time 3d environment.

Hopefully this will all aid me in creating the best product I can possibly create in the second assignment.

#KNB221 #CGTOOLKIT #ASSIGNMENT 1 #REFLECTION

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Milestone 1C Reflection

This week the main thing topic I had known in was definitely the animation of the character, but I feel as though much like last week, I rushed it a little. This was because my Mac at home couldn't operate the ARTV1 toolkit on Maya. So I had to stay back at uni to complete the Maya section of the Milestone. This is probably the where I spent the most time though, after creating a character that I was happy with (which ended up being a lot easier this week as I knew the process,) I had to figure out the actions I wanted the character to do. I ended up going with a shotting taunt as you can see from the video. Then animating the character proved to be more difficult than I intended it to be. This was because I didn't have the clearest image of what I wanted the character to be doing in my head. To streamline this process and effectively get a better quality animation, I should have drawn thumbnail sketches before hand to keep me on track.

The next thing I did was conduct the lighting experiments on the still character. I have talked about why I chose each style of lighting in earlier posts, but after experimenting, the final style I created was a mixture of the two. I realised that with the Rembrandt style image, It would be hard to see the whole animation play out and I wouldn't be able to create the effects as effectively in the final video as I did. But I wanted the side angle style that the top down spotlight didn't offer. So by having the light angled like the Rembrandt, but increasing the cone angles, I created a softer light that lights more of the scene. If I had more time on this milestone, I would experiment on more different and creative lighting conditions. The lighting of a scene is something I haven't had much experience in but it fascinates me how the lighting itself can tell a story.

The final part of this production was to compile render the camera movement and compile it in After Effects. This part of the production was one of the easiest parts of production as I have had a lot of experience in it. I put basic effects on the hue and saturation of the video that animates when the character shoots his gun hand. This was a simple effect that gave a lot of emphasis on the action which is something I wanted to achieve.

5-6 hours production

2 hours reflection/ researching

#KNB221 #CGTOOLKIT #MILESTONE1C #REFLECTION

The First photo is the second lighting experiment that I conducted and it was inspired by the two portraits below it. I wanted to experiment with a Rembrandt style shot, so I angled the spotlight to the right of the character and I changed the cone angles so that the light was only on the character, so no background was showing. This gives the character a feeling of isolation which is something I wanted to portray in this image.

#KNB221 #CGTOOLKIT #MILESTONE1C #LIGHTING EXPERIMENT

The image on the left is the first Lighting experiment that I created. I wanted the character to be lit as if he was the one chosen for an important task, so I used a spotlight and angled it so it was shining directly down on the character. I took inspirations of this top down spotlight technique from images such as the one to the right of my character. I wanted to show my whole character so I increased the radius of the spotlight to show the whole body and the surrounding area.

#KNB221 #CGTOOLKIT #MILESTONE1C #LIGHTING EXPERIMENT

#KNB221 #CGTOOLKIT #MILESTONE1C #RENDERPASS

Final render next to Final Colour render pass

#MILESTONE1B #KNB221 #CGTOOLKIT #RENDERPASSES

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Milestone 1B Reflection

Coming into the 1B milestone, I was feeling very confident with my ability to produce a quality item. The character creation using the A.R.T toolkit was something that I was excited to dive into, create a character and get animating (as I have done a bit of animating in Maya before and was excited to extend my already developed skills). However, from the start of this, I ran into complications. When I went to install the ARTV1 plugin, I realised that it was only compatible with windows operating systems, and I only have a Mac book at home to work with. Due to this, I had to use my friend's computer and I had to Install UE4, Maya and the ARTV1 plugin, all on an internet connection which dropped out every so often, and a big shuffle around of data to get enough hard drive space to install the programs. Let's just say it was a very frustrating process that definitely took up the majority of my time working on this milestone.

Because of these issues, when it came to creating the character, I was so worried id be pushed for time that I rushed the creation of my first model. I experimented by widening the shoulders, playing with the torso pieces so they would taper into the pelvis, and adjusted the limb sizes to give the build of a muscular man. after experimenting and building the character, the proportions looked all out of whack, so I decided to use the base character with very slight adjustments like slightly widening the shoulders. This I think created a better outcome overall for the animation, however, I would like to dive deeper into the character building system.

Animating the character was the easiest part of this milestone for me. I smashed the animation out in under an hour, but I wasn't too adventurous as I was still very cautious of the time I was taking. If I were to do this milestone again, I feel as though I could produce a much higher quality animation that conveys a lot more emotion to the faceless character.

The final stage of this process was putting the components into UE4 and rendering outcome. I had some difficulty with importing the animation for the model into the sequencer. The model would pose in the first frame of the animation, but wouldn't actually play the animation. After playing with the settings I figured out that by baking the animation into the model, the animation worked first go. This was something that I either didn't see in the explanation video or forgot to do.

Overall, I feel like this week was a lot better than last week, and I just need to work on the workflow and my time management to get the milestone completed at a level I am proud of.

6 hours worked in UE4, Maya and After Effects.

1 hour reflection.

#MILESTONE1B #KNB221 #CGTOOLKIT #REFLECTION

This is the final Render of the character animation and integration into unreal. I chose a blue background and a light cream/orange colour for the character's body as the colours are complimentary colours. As you can see the character stands out from the background. The cream colour also is a colour similar to a light wood that a wooden doll is made out of.

#MILESTONE1B #KNB221 #CGTOOLKIT #RENDERPASS

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