Monthly Archives: December 2024
3DCA Fundamentals Final Submission
Show Reel:
Design Proposal Presentation:
WEEK 6 – 8: Walking Cycle
Walking cycle is one of the basic movements in character animation, but also one of the most difficult movements. Making walking loops is an essential exercise for any animator. So for three weeks, from week 6 to week 8, we trained on 3D animation of the character walking cycles.
In the walking cycle, the actions in a cycle can be divided into four states, namely contact, down, passing and up. From the side view, the figure’s center of gravity moves up and down in a sinusoidal manner.
plan of walking cycle
Here is a blocking animation of walking cycle that I made in week 6.
This is the spline animation based on the blocking version in week 7, but there are obvious problems, for example the function of parameter TransZ does not fit into a straight line resulting in a kind of “twitch” of the object’s displacement in the Z direction.
The gif shows the version submitted in Week 8. There are still many details that need to be further improved, and I will solve them gradually in the future training.
WEEK 11: Render & Composition
Step 7: Render in UE5
After setting up the scene and lighting, the next step is rendering. For detailed rendering parameter Settings, I refer to the following video.
(Compared to Maya’s Arnold renderer, UE5’s rendering speed and image quality are much faster XD)
Step 8: Composition & Sound effects
According to my personal habits, I edited the video in AfterEffects, restored and calibrated the color space, and then add sound effects in PR, thus completing the entire film production.
WEEK 8 – 10: Rigging, Animation & Scene design
Step 3: Rigging
Once I finished texture painting, the next step is the rigging my model. I usually use the ADV plug-in in Maya for rigging, although in the course we introduced the Control Rig system in UE5, but I really need more practice on it, so I still choose to use the ADV plug-in to complete the robot rigging in this project.
Rigging in Maya with the plug Advanced Skeleton
Step 4: Scene design
I chose a UE5 factory scene asset, selected the model needed, and redesigned the texture in substance painter to match the visual style I had envisioned.
Once the components redesign is complete, the models are imported into Maya and ready for character animation.
Step 5: Animation
After integrating the model and building the scene, the next step is to do character animation and add camera animation.
Step 6: Import scene from Maya to UE5
Once the scene was built in Maya, the next step was to import the scene to UE5 for lighting and other rendering Settings, and in this step, especially the transfer of animation files, I encountered technical difficulties that took a lot of time to resolve. First I tried to export the FBX sequence of the character animation, but after doing so, the following problem occurred:
The animated sequences were strangely stretched, and the models were wildly split.
Unfortunately, even when I finally asked the technician for help, it didn’t resolve the problem, so I had to use another export solution: the alembic cache file.
way to export alembic cache file in Maya
Before exporting, follow the following Settings:
- Merge all meshes
- Optimize the model, especially the non-standard mesh
- Select the options shown in the following figure in the alembic cache export window
Once the abc file has been successfully imported into UE, you can open the animation cache file, which should have the same number of material slots as in Maya, and paste the corresponding material in to get the correct animation sequence.
WEEK7: Project initiation: Character design
For the final assignment of this semester, my idea is to make an animated short film that depicts the robot escaping from the assembly line to pursue freedom after awakening its self-consciousness, focusing on action performance.
Step 1: Reference collection
I wanted to make a cute robot character, a humanoid robot with science fiction characteristics, so I started to refer to some cute Q version of the robot image. Transformers, as a classic robot IP image, inspired me in character design. I extracted some design languages from the classic characters Optimus Prime and Bumblebee respectively to design the following role.
mood board for character design
Step 2: Modeling & Texture painting
Based on the above inspiration, I designed this robot character (which looks like a combination of Optimus Prime and Bumblebee XD).
Three Views
The next step is UV unwrapping, I finished this step in Rizom UV. Then, I drew the material of the robot in substance painter. In this selection, I referred to the yellow color of Bumblebee. At the same time, the UDIM workflow allowed me to design some details on the texture, such as LOGO painted on the surface and scratches on the metal painted material.
UV unwrapping in Rizom UV
Texture painting in Substance Painter
In the next chapter, I’ll cover the process of rigging model with the advanced skeleton plug-in in Maya, and introduce the workflow I used for environment design.