Ronnie Leah, BA (Hons) Computer Animation Arts, UCA Rochester.

Today I decided to bring together all of the shots I had animated so far for the animation in order to see how everything looked together.  I wanted to bring all of the clips together as I began feeling confused as to how to display certain shots as I was loosing track of where exactly I was in the animation. This was due to me picking out random scenes to animate at a time rather than go in order. In order to fix this I firstly took each Maya scene I had created ordered them. I then cleaned up each scene by deleting unneeded geometry as well as adding in the new models to make each scene consistent. I then went through and began the second pass of each scene. I did this by adding small tweaks here and there, mainly animating additional parts of the characters rig to create extra movement for a smoother look. Although I did not do this for all scene, the scene in which I did do this for look as lot better. I hope to continuously do this until the shots look the best they can within...

 Today I began animating the first part of the fight between the two characters. I purposely haven't animated both characters in the same scene up until this point as I wanted to get the hang of working with the rigs.  I tried animating the shot before the main action in which the Cyberpunk character swings his sword towards the Samurai, however the movements did not look fluid and it felt like something was missing. This made me nervous to animate the rest of the fight sequence as I did not want the fight to look unnatural. This left me feeling stumped as to what I could do to improve the shot. I referred back to my drawings to see what it was which made the animatic look more interesting. I found that it was more visually interesting due to the anime like action lines which followed the sword as it swung. I therefore researched to see if this was an achievable effect to recreate in Maya. I managed to find a video which used MASH to leave trails after showing text on the scre...

 Today I followed a tutorial in order to create a rope bridge which interact with its environment. I thought this would look more interesting than the pre-viz model and hope to be able to use it in order to show the bridge breaking in a realistic way.  I found the tutorial quite straight forward, with the bulk of the video showing how to use MASH in order to get the chain links as the rope. I found that my bridge did not sway nearly as much as the videos one once clicking play on the animation, however I think this is due to the settings being different. I will play around with them to see what effect I can create with this bridge. If I am unable to use this bridge to recreate the Samurai splitting it in half, I have a backup video which shows how to create a different type of bridge with physics. 

 Today I completed more of the animation by animating the Samurai preparing for battle. I decided to make the still shots from the animatic look more interesting by having the character stretching in anticipation for the fight.  I feel there is still more that can be done to smooth out the animation, however the idea I had for the shot is laid out nicely. I enjoyed adding the smaller details such as the characters facial expression changing. I wasn't completely sure I liked how the camera moved however will see how it looks against the other parts of the animation.  I also completed the shot were the Cyberpunk character runs in anticipation to jump the bridge. This again was presented quite cleanly in the pre-viz so I started by getting the initial key frames from that. After I blocked out the general movements, I decided to experiment with a closer shot to capture the leg movement. I also decided to go with a more dramatic jump to emphasis the action. I'm happy with how ...

 Today I began animating the final version of the animation using both of the new character rigs. I decided to start with two scenes which contain both characters individually in order to test the workflow of using both character rigs.  In order to save time I decided to import both characters into the previz scene I wanted to recreate. I could then animate the character to the same actions as a first pass and then go back through and add in additional detail for the final animation version.  I chose to complete one of the running sequences for both characters as they are the most intense movements the rigs will have to withstand. Meaning if both rigs work for this aspect of the animation, then I will most likely be able to complete every other shot of the animation.  My initial concerns for animating the Samurai scene was that the knees of the character would not bend in the correct way, therefore making the character look odd. However after playing with the rig for...

Today I remodelled the katana the Cyberpunk character uses for the fight and textured both of the characters weapons in Substance. In order to create the Samurai's weapon I simply used the weapon created for the previz and UV and textured it. 

 Today I exported the texters to the final character rigs in order to see how the character looked in Maya. I wanted to test how the textures would look when in the Arnold renderer. Initially I was worried that the colours would be off as Maya uses a different colour sample than Substance painter, however the model looked almost identical which was a relief. 

 Today I asked my tutor about the issues surrounding the blendshapes I was adding to my rig. I found that If I tried to move the bend the character, the head and its geometry would become unaligned.  This was due to the head blendshapes being created while the head had transform information applied to it. When creating both the blink blendshape and eyebrow blendshape, I moved the head so that it the mirror tool could be used. In doing so I made it so the head no longer transformed on the same rotation as the rest of the body.  In order to fix this the head had to be unskinned from the model and then have it history deleted. It then had to be rebound and skinned back to the skeleton. After doing this I then had to go back through and redo both the characters blink and eyebrow movement.  I used the same method before in order to create the blink and eyebrow movement and was able to successfully connect it to the main bod this time. I referred to the character expressio...

 Today I followed along with the video tutorial in order to make the Samurai Characters eyebrows move.  I started by duplicating the head to use as a blend shape and adding in two joints for the eyebrows. I then selected the area effected by the brows and binded them to the eyebrow joint.  I could then add in animation and begin adjusting the skin accordingly  Once I had created both expressions, I duplicated them and connected them into them in with blend shapes.  Then all I had to do was connect this up with the face in the main rig, h owever this caused the face to break from the body and changes size. I was unsure how to fix this issue and so waited until I could ask my tutor. 

 Today I continued with rigging the Samurai character to add in a blink control. This was only necessary for this character as the Cyberpunk character does not have eyes.  I started by duplicating the characters head and then adding in an upper and lower eyelid joint.  After adding in the joints I had to skin the weights around the eyes and then add in animation to on the joints to get a rough guide as to see how far the joints should be rotated to close.  I then adjusted the positioning of the eye lids by using the skinning weights. I did this as cleanly as I could get this with the skin weights and then used corrective blend shapes to make them look better.  After finishing one side of the model all I had to do was mirror the skin weights and blend shapes. However I encountered a problem which meant that the skin weights were not lining up and so the eye would close at awkward angles, different to the left eye. This was due to the characters head not being str...

 Today I colour coded my rig and set limiters so that the joints could not move in unnatural ways. This was done in the channel box and attribute editor. This wasn't very hard to do, however it took a lot of time finding the right angle to bend my joints to.  I also added a visibility control at the bottom of the rig so that the controls can be toggled on an off in the viewport.  The main body is now rigged for both characters. All I need to do now is the head controls.