Animation Practice

Industry and jobs

Although this type of animation could be and is used in films, my primary industry for this piece focused on games, so I have been looking on the website gamesindustry.biz. There are many animators jobs on the site and it seems to be one of the most sought after professions, this example at Rockstar North particularly caught my eye

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/jobs/rockstar-north/uk-and-europe/character-animator-id40987

Whilst animations for things like explosions and falls down the stairs are often handled procedurally, there are certain situations within a game that require a keyframed animation, such as a cutscene or scripted event within a level.

Animators often also use blended animations or inverse kinematic methods, which still require animation to be present, they will then use the physics simulator to make sure the model isn't clipping with the enviroment. Therefore skills such as key frame animation are still used within the industry.

Some of the experiments I have done such as different walk cycles could be useful as an in game animation for a controlled character, as would the run cycles.

Animation Practice

Here is my final edit of all the animations and shots



Im happy with this overall but there are several things I would change were I to do it again. The landing in the bomb scene could do with tweaking as the upper body seems to fold in on itself when it lands at the end of the scene. I would have liked to add more scene elements such as a sightly more realistic bomb or textured walls. overall I think the camera angles are good although I would like to have done something slightly different with the slo-mo shot if I had time by adding a second camera.

Were I to change the stairs animation the first thing to change again would be the landing. Although I have managed to get the somersault into the fall and body does bounce slightly as it hits its final resting position, however the legs are not perfect as they come to their resting position before hitting the ground, again i would have liked to add more scene elements, aside from this I think the animation is solid, although the slo-mo shot could perhaps have been more elaborate.

I am fairly happy with the final scene, however i did have trouble getting the lighing in the scene right, as it was the biggest scene and needed mental ray lighting in order to show shimmer on the water, the light had to be reasonably close to water whilst aso lighting the character. The final effect is not terrible, however had I had more time I would have made the lighting better. Movement wise I am still not entirely happy with the run up, as the knees are still slightly too bent, the jump is good as is the initial fall but the body could perhaps be doing more as it enters the water.

I rendered all shots out from Max in .tif sequences and then imported these to After Effects, I could then edit the shots as I wanted them and add transitions such as fades. I also added mental ray lighting to the scenes to produce shadows and better light the scene.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.  

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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.

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

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My week plan for the module

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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.

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.

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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.

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Another interesting fall

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

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I used this tutorial to help me with ragdoll basics

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A few ragdolls of my own in 3DSmax here