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.

Texturing

For some reason when i rendered out a single image of the girl, white dotted lines appeared on her, i tried to see if i could get rid of them by using the paint tool over them, but i don think its really worked.

These are my UV textures from my UV texture editor.

I wanted to texture both my models using the UV editor and piece the bits together so i could make a more detailed texture, but as it took a while to do the rigging i decided to texture in the middle of rigging and try to do a quick texture, so i used the Paint Weights tool in Maya.

First i added a base colour of skin tones for the little girl and then used to tool to add the rest of the colours, The Boots and arm cuffs where textured the same as the gorilla to show that she wants to be like the gorilla.

The gorilla was origionally going to be brown but once i had textured him he looked more like a bear, and so i decided not to have brown and change the colour. I was thinking of Black however i wanted the character more cartoon like so i decided to use Blue for the colour of his fur.

Character orthogonal drawings

Modeling in Maya

MODELING IN MAYA

-POCAHONTAS

-GORRILLA

(Picture 0) Extra unneeded faces

(Picture 1)

I had a go at re-modeling Pocahontas in Z-brush, but i found it quite difficult and i still didn't get the desired effect that i wanted. so i decided not to use the model and just texture in the fur that i wanted to create.

(Picture 2)

This is the final model that was ready for texturing.

(Picture 2/3)

On this model i used the sculpt geometry tool which made her look more round and better then square, the problem i had with this was that i didn't sculpt her in half and mirror her, so she isn't symmetrical, this was because the model i was using i had already mirrored her, and to go back would have taken too much time.

(Picture 4/5)

On this model i tried to add more polygons to help smooth her over a bit, but i think i added too many polygons as it was difficult when it came to texturing and binding the skin.

(Picture 6)

The planes i used was the pictures of the model i had created with clay, it had the main idea i wanted to use so i saw not a lot of point in doing a orthographic drawing for this one.

(Picture 7)

This was where i started the gorilla, i was extruding the faces to create him.

(Picture 8)

Here i was trying to make his head a better shape then just round, and give him more definition.

(Picture 9)

This is the mesh of the Gorilla before i changed him to a more organic form.

(Picture 10)

This is the final model i used for my gorilla, i used a tool called Sculpt Geometry tool which allowed me to pull him out and make him more round and a fatter gorilla, i feel he looks a lot better like this.

(Picture 11)

This Gorilla i began to rigg and use, however in my formative i was told he wasn't very organic so i then learnt a new tool in maya that would help this.

(Picture 12)

I started to create a gorilla using the extrude tool to get a feel for how i was going to model him.

(Picture 13)

I was unsure of how to start the modeling, but i used a maya book called Learning auto-desk maya 2008 to create a penguin, then applied the same principles to the model.

I found using Polygons rather than Nurbs was easier to use in the long run.

The reference books i used to help me model was that of MAYA Character Rigging, by Cheryl Cabrera, Character Modeling with Maya and Z-Brush, by Jason Patnode, and Learning autodesk Maya 2008. All helped me gain a bit of insight as to what i was supposed to be doing.

I had many problems when i was modelling, one of which was when I somehow doubled-up on my geometry and had more faces then i needed, I tried to delete the faces and match them up, how ever it was all up the arms and legs so instead i went back to an earlier model and re-started to model him, as i thought it would be quicker to solve the problem, i also didn't want any problems when i had to skin him.

I tended to smooth the whole mesh rather then sculpt the model until i found i could use the sculpt geometry tool. so in future i will only smooth once finished the model.

Pocahontas character designs

Final Design idea