#cgtoolkit

Assessment 1-Milestone 1C

( KNB221 CG Toolkit)

These are the lighting environments I have done for the grey box.

1. Night Lighting

This night lighting environment is created based on the visual inspiration below. It is during the full-moon time that the moon is rather bright and round than normal time, the sky is not entirely dark and black but with blue and purple tint instead. The opacity of the cloud has also been increased which is reflected by the bright moonlight, and the star brightness has been lowered down.

Visual Inspiration

2.Wonderland Lighting

The second lighting is actually the older version of the sunrise lighting, which the bloom effect of the sunshine is too much so as the brightness of the overall environment. However I feel it might be more appropriate to be considered as wonderland lighting or heaven lighting, where the sun light is extraordinary bright that casting through the building to create a special atmosphere that does not actually existed in reality but the imaginary Utopian environment.

Visual Inspiration

3.Sunrise Lighting

This is the improved version of the second one, which I have reduced the bloom effect of the sun light and the color of the sky has also been adjusted with proper temperature and gradient. I also added the fog emitter to the environment to create the sunrise atmosphere where the temperature is low that there will be fog while the sun light is casting. 

Visual Inspiration

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.

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PROGRESS POST HERE

DOWNLOADABLE FILE HERE (images included, not attached)

What would you do differently?

If I could go back and do this assignment again, I would dedicate more time to it and study more. I didn’t do as much as I’d wanted due to other projects involving modelling and animation that took up more than 50+ hours of my time a week. I believe I would’ve gotten far more done and to a higher quality if I was able to spend more time on the work.

Another change I would make is to take 3D animation 2 before this class, it felt like I was missing a fair bit of information going into this class that other students had over me.

As for tasks I went to high poly modelling too early, instead of working the proxy. I had issues with too many vertices and maintaining loops when working from a high poly mesh, outwards.

Highlights

The thing I’m most proud of in this work is the face and how it animates, but the face was already showcased in the video below so it’s not seen as clearly in the final render video:

13.5 hours in total

CG Toolkit Assignmnet 2 Final

If you were to go back to the start of this assessment to do it again, what would you do differently to complete the task

I would prioritise my time a little better. I ran out of time towards the end days of the assignment timeline, which lead me to be unable to fix certain parts of the mesh. The animation in Blender works fine, but as soon as it is exported into UE4 the mesh distorts.  I was unable to upload the video of my rig moving to Vimeo as I had run out of space, h0wever have tried to represent the IK movements this with the pictures. 

Overall I am happy with my outcome.

Breakdowns

Character: I made my characters in illustrator, he is made up of 10 different parts all saved on different layers. This is so once the character is place in after effects it is an easier time to use the plug in dulk. I used Dulk to rig and animate both my characters.

Effects: I made all the effect inside of after effects by following tutorials and guides online. The first mistake I did once I finished creating some of effect is that I forgot to make the background transparent which become an issue inside of UE4. I tried to use software called particular for after effect to create some effects. But the effect showed in the images are made will default after effects.

UE4: I had trouble with UE4 this time as I have never dealt with the 2d side of the program before and it is all new to me. After looking up some tutorials I keep working out and finding easier way to set up my scene. For all my animations I render them out as a png sequence then made to folders inside of UE4 one being the import images and the other for the sprites created from the images. Then once you have created the png’s into a sprite you able to place them in the world without creating a material. Once you have all your sprite you can create a 2d flipbook which makes the sprites into an animation

  If you were to go back to the start of this assessment to do it again, what would you do differently to complete the task?