Animation Practice

A final edit of my cliff jump here, I still need to play with the lighting slightly but the animation is pretty much there.

Animation Practice

Here I tried a few different run cyles, its quite hard to see from the video, but there are slight differences in each. The heand and shoulder movement is lightly different, as is the tilt of the hips.

I used this to help me decide on a run cycle to be used before the jump. putting each beside each other helps you recognise minute differences and the overall effect they have.

Animation Practice

This render shows I've got a little further with the fall, however the main reason for this render was to test the water. I don't have a mental ray light in the scene yet so the water isn't shimmering properly yet.

I took a render here to show the initial jump, its quite difficult to see as there is no scene elements, but I'm trying to 'squash and stretch' the character as he jumps.

Animation Practice

A final render of the fall, I'm particularly happy with this one as the character looks down just before he trips, the landing is also good as he bounces slightly. I need to add lighting to the scene but aside from that I'm pretty happy at this point.

Animation Practice

This render shows most of the movement finished, however it will still need polishing. need to look at lighting and camera angles too.

Here is most of the fall without the landing, this perhaps looks a little bit fast, also some of the hit points with the stairs need playing with. overall I'm happy with the flip over though as this was quite hard to achieve.

Animation Practice

This shows the scene in its current state, I'm fairly happy with it at this point. The scene needs lighting properly, I like the flight and how the body reacts to wall, however the landing could probably do with a little bit of bounce as the character appears to fold to the ground.

Animation Practice

This shows the animation at quite an advanced stage, however I have not tackled the body hitting the wall yet.

Here I put the walk cycle into the scene, however you can see I'm having trouble getting the character to move across the floor realistically, this is something which takes a lot of tweaking to get right.

At this point I was going to have the character kneel down and touch the bomb before the explosion, this is an idea that I later scrapped and had the model bend at the waist. This is to save seconds for the walk cycle at the beginning of the scene as well as create more natural looking movement.



I have managed to get the walk cycle looking better here, the bend at the waist has also come into the scene, the bomb looks fine and the blast radius is where I want it. Now to finish the movement!





I started by working on a couple of walk cycles, these were created using the copy and paste features n 3DS Max.

The cycle on the left is perhaps more feminine, in the end I used a mixture of the two for my bomb animation which creates a nice balanced effect.  

3D Character Design

Animation Practice

This shows the walk up and the trip, up to the first connection with the staircase. The animation is coming along but I'm having trouble getting the body to flip and still look convincing.




Here I have the initial walk cycle up to the trip, it still needs polishing.

Motion Graphics

3D Character Design

Project Research

I've been having a bit of trouble with the Physx plugin I'm using to create ragdolls, here is the thread I've started on Nvidia Developer Forums, hopefully I can get this sorted soon.

http://developer.nvidia.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=5399&st=0#entry16657

here ive got a little further, adding an animated "sketch" of the regiment, this part will have narration explaining the troops and their equipment.

I created the pass through effect with the map using mask paths and animating the opacity of the mask.

Animation Practice

I've started to put together my initial animation, its quite rough at the moment and the movement needs touching up.

Motion Graphics

this will be composited onto the first sheet when I have the paper and the camera match done in 3DS Max

Motion Graphics

Motion Graphics

Ive decided to render in a higher res and sharpen things up, as well as focusing the camera more, although I still have to work on the camera animations.

Motion Graphics

A first draft of my opening shot

Motion Graphics

Some elements I've started putting together to be animated, I'm trying to find out a way for producing a sketching effect without having to do a path reveal

Motion Graphics

I really like the part with the map at the start of this one

3D Character Design

3D Character Design

Animation Practice

My week plan for the module

Animation Practice

Another ragdoll test, this time trying with a staircase

Animation Practice

For my final animation I have decided to put together three 10 second pieces including; a fall down the stairs, being thrown from an explosion and the voluntary cliff jump. I'll include a slow motion wrap around shot for each to fully show the movement, scene elements will be fairly basic but enough to give an impression of the scene.

Project Research

I've found a good article on photorealistic and outdoor lighting here:


http://www.itchy-animation.co.uk/light.htm

Gives a good general overview

Animation Practice

Here I rotoscoped a fall from a rope swing, when the body lands it gives a good example of squash and stretch as the body lands and the legs kick upwards. I used after effects to save the video out in an image sequence and kept the framerate low (8fps), I then used this sequence to trace the fall and saved each trace out in sequence so it was recognised as a batch file by after effects.

Animation Practice

Here I rotoscoped a long jumper, this gives a good example of squash and stretch on the take off and landing, i have included a slow motion example to fully show the movement in the air.



Whilst this is a very long winded method of producing animation, but it does require you to draw every frame and therefore every position the body moves to during the jump and gives you an understanding of the movement involved.

Animation Practice

Another interesting fall

3D Character Design

A concept I've been working on

Animation Practice

A stairs fall here, this shows how the body skips over the steps at speed.

Animation Practice

I used this tutorial to help me with ragdoll basics

Animation Practice

A few ragdolls of my own in 3DSmax here

Project Research

I decided to do some ragdoll tests in Crysis and TF2, just to look at the mind of movement I may want to replicate.

Motion Graphics

openiing credits from "The Pacific", some really nice sketch type motion graphics here

Animation Practice

A video of a man being thrown by a small explosion here, very dangerous!

Motion Graphics

Heres a nice piece of motion graphics used in a cut scene for Napoleon: Total War (yet to be released). I like the idea of a top down map with infographics over the top, perhaps as level instructions?

3D Character Design

Ork type character I've been sketching

Animation Practice

This voluntary jump could be interesting to recreate, I particularly like the way the arms and legs flail in mid air, the camera angle is interesting too.



I since decided to use this as the basis for one of my animations, although not an actual rotoscope it will be based on this video.

Animation Practice

A short test I found on youtube to show the effects of a close explosion on a ragdoll

3D Character Design

Rufus from Street Fighter IV is an interestingly proportioned character (fat!), in the game he has  physics applied to that belly which wobbles around and looks pretty funny, it just adds another bit of visual interest to the character.