Character Animation

This Animation is to show the gorilla and the little girl acting like a gorilla. The animation isn't how i wanted it to be but i found it really had to get the positions of the characters correctly. I would have also had liked it to be longer, but i was running out of time.

The background was of a picture i took at the london museum of the outside territory. I then wanted there to be glass between the two characters to show they weren't in quite the same environment and separate. I used a transparent block to try and get a glass effect.

I had problems with moving the whole characters about, this was due to me not including a main controller in the rig, it meant i couldn't put the two characters in the same scene without them clashing, so i had to render them separately and import them in together in after effects.

Although i feel i have for-filled the brief, i think i could have done certain things better. The character modeling i could have halved the character and mirrored it so it would be exactly the same on both sides.

When rigging, i should make the rig both IK and Fk to be able to move the Characters in a more realistic way. Some of the handles i could have put in different places and make them bigger so it was easier to make the characters move.

Over all the time schedule of the project was not exactly how it i would have liked it to go, i think i spent a lot of time deciding on what i wanted to do rather then getting on and doing it.

Rendering

Had some major problems rendering, and found i was doing it all wrong. I was trying to render straight out to quicktime, and found i had to do it to something like Tiffs. Then i had to import the pictures into after effects where they were compiled together, and then finally i rendered it out as a quick time.

Getting gorilla into Poses

Getting him in these positions was quite difficult as he keeps deforming where he isn't quite skinned properly.

Animation Final walk cycles

Here is my Walk cycle for pocohantas, I need to make her more gorilla like so that it connects with the brief.I managed to make the gorilla a walk cycle to show that the rig does work. Again i need to adapt it to be more gorilla like.

Animation

When i began to animate i noticed that some of my geometry was not properly skinned to the skeleton, so i had funny deformations in it.

After a test render shot i found that in my texture there were white lines where it didnt quite match up properly. To get around this i could have taken it into photo-shop and drawn over the lines.

The gorilla i made too tall as the legs mess up and it looks like he needs a walking stick to walk along. I found it very hard to animate him the way i wanted. I also think i made the character too chunky, and his arms needed to be a bit longer to reach the ground.

Eyes

To create the eyes I got it from the book, Maya Character rigging, I tried to keep it very simple, I create a nurbs sphere and textured the nurb to look like an eye, the eye lid was created out of another Sphere and parented them together picking the eyelid first so i can still move the eyeball to look around, and the eyelid will still open and close. I had to create these in a separate scene and import them as i was not able to create them within the scene i had, it also made it a lot quicker to do rather then repeat the process. I made the Pocahontas's eyes brown and just changed the textures eye ramp to different colors.

Rigging, Skeleton

The skeleton i had to do a couple of times for the characters as they seemed to come out of position and i couldn't always get them straight. I had to name all joints like the same in the book to be able to create the rigging correctly.

I did some practicing of rigging for the leg and foot to try get the movement correct. Using set driven key i was able to make the foot roll, twist and move realistically.

When i skinned the character the head didn't move with the rest of the body as i didn't join the skeleton all together properly so i had to ensure all the skeleton was joined correctly.