Highly Animated

Full motion complete

2009-03-22T08:17:00.000-07:00

I'm down to the last week now before hand in, except for the eyebrow movement, all of the motion in my character has been worked in. I'm now onto the cleanup pass and working in a bit of eyebrow movement (which is relatively simple).

There are a few things to tweak, after a meeting with my project supervisor and secondary reader I've got a few things to consider, the main thing is adding in a shine to the eyes which I can do with a lense over the iris and tweaking the specular to get a nice highlight and tweaking the iris shader to define them more on some frames. The shader levels might need tweaking on other things as well.

Now I'm getting onto finnishing the dissertation and I want to get it done hopefully mid-week so I can get it checked and bound for the hand-in on monday, I'll also be tweaking bits of the animation as well.

Here's what my animation is looking like at the moment:

It's occured to be that the rimlight on the jaw is going a bit wierd, that needs fixing

2009-03-13T16:39:00.000-07:00

For the past week my focus has been on animating the shoulders upwards, she's starting to look more alive now and it's looking a lot better than the constant stare, she's got a looker now for the eye movement and while I was doing that I gave her a new haircut and a hat. A freind of mine on games art offered to texture the hat and did a nice looking leopard skin print, though unfortunately in the end it hasn't been used since a pattern/textured hat dosen't quite work with the rest of the character.

I found one problem with the rig that isn't exactly a major issue but it's something to keep in mind, the 'key all' button on the biped guide causes the mouth bone to break and is no longer driven by the GUI controll I set up for it, apart from that everything seems to be working.

I now have 12 seconds of body animation and by next week I hope to extend that all the way to the end of the animation (an additional 41 seconds), though with a presentation for another module on monday as well as other work that needs doing the work will have to be delayed until monday afternoon, though I may see if I have time over the weekend to squeeze some animation in.

On top of the body animation I've now added a visulization taken from iTunes which is synced up to the track I'm animating to to add something a bit more interesting behind her, and I've added hair simulation for some secondary motion.

Animation and concerning the finishing touches

2009-03-06T15:41:00.000-08:00

I've been working on the lip sync pass since last week and it's finished to a decent degree, now I'm starting to add animation into the eyes. I've started on blinking and I'm going to set up a looker (which is nice and simple to do).

There's a few thing I'm going to be keeping in mind while I animate the other passes of the character, breathing cropped up on the lip sync pass, but just didn't look right. When it comes to animating the body of the character I will approach the issue again and see how well it works when combined with the body motion of breathing. The final animation camera will be locked onto the head and shoulders of the character to keep it more personal and allow me to spend more time on less animation, but to a higher quality.

While the camera will be panning round the character she will be looking at it, perhaps more nervously, the section of the song that I am using it rather delicate and lends itself more to this and makes is a bit more personal with the character.

The hair is still an issue, it's not really styled in any way and was made quickly in comparison with the rest of the model, there is a photo of imogen heap from when she was in 'Frou Frou' that I'll be looking at for reference, so she'll have a trilby and choppy hair covering her ear (even though she doesn't actually have any).

The final consideration is the finishing touches to the background, at the moment I have two ideas for this, one being particles emitting light and fading out away from a source. The other is taking a visualization of the waveform of the music from a music player and applying it to the background at an animated image so that it would match up with the song as it's being sung.

As it stands here is my current progress with the project, though the lip sync could use improvement (and more mouth shapes if there is time).

Moving onto animation

2009-02-27T16:51:00.000-08:00

I've now put a halt on the modelling rigging and enveloping to get on with animation, with about a month to go and about 2 weeks till expo tees I need to start creating some animation. The facial rig will be updated as I go on, but for the moment it is being kept simple for speed of creating the animation.

In addition to an open/closed/wide/narrow controll I've added in a corrective/smile shape to add a little bit more depth to the animation with relative ease.

She is still looking a bit wooden, but I will be building up the level of facial controll as long as I have enough time, I also need to create a looker for the eyes which is relatively simple. I've started on the first pass for the facial animation. I am approaching the animation in this order.

Base open/closed/wide/narrow mouth shape pass
Refine the base pass
Add in the smile/corrective shape
Add in eye and eyebrow movement
Add head and body movement

After getting approximately 30-40 seconds of animation I will add more or go back and refine the animation with aditional controls if time is available. So far I have 11 seconds of the base mouth pass. At the moment She is looking rather wooden, hopefully eye movement should improve this, but adding more face controls (time allowing) would be the most effective method.

I will be working on the report as I move on with animation, but for the moment the priority lies in the animation.

Face rigs and shading

2009-02-20T12:44:00.000-08:00

I have been working on the facial rig of my character as well as tweaking the rig for the main body, some of the character has also been re-scaled by adjusting the rig as well.

Currently the facial rig has been set up with a wide and narrow mouth shape, these could probably use some tweaking, but this could be remedied once the mouth open/close has been stored out. I'm using a bone to control the jaw, this is also controlling the lower teeth and tongue and makes it a bit easier to make the shapes of the face. I'm going to set up constraints on the jaw and set it to drive the 'Open' mouth shape which needs fixing as you can see the corners of the mouth are looking rather strange when the mouth opens. There also needs to be some more control for the mouth sides and the unique mouth shapes like 'oo', 'b,m,p', 'f', etc.

The eyebrows are set up for 'scruntch', up and down and the eyes are able to blink. I'm going be adding a 'more open' shape for the eyes as well as setting up more movement in the muscles under the eyes.

Admittedly some of this detail might not be as necessary as I've now taken a toon shading route, I've been playing around with the shader settings and this is the first version I've come up with, the colours are currently a bit bright and some of the blurriness could be adjusted, but the 'rim light' actually gives quite a nice effect and really pulls her out from the background.

At the moment it is a more unnatural light compared to the examples above, but due to the nature of toonshading the 3 point lighting I've used previously doesn't quite work initially, so I'll have to work on that

The most urgent problem is getting the character ready for animation, I am taking part in expo tees, so that gives me less than a month to produce a descent bit of animation, as for the final hand in date, it's a little bit over 5 weeks away, so I'll have to start working on the dissertation as well.

Character clothed, haired and considerations on style

2009-01-23T10:29:00.000-08:00

I'm finalizing the character now, I need to get onto the rigging stage so I can start animating. One consideration is the style, my Project Supervisor expressed concern over the soft nature of the current character vs. the more angular features of Imogen Heap and the synthetic nature of the track.

The current progress of the character is looking like this:

The main focus now is getting her moving, I can get on with rigging her, but the problem is how the envelope and facial rig will be affected by any changes to the geometry if it needs changing. To attempt to combat those issues I will need to have multiple versions of the character. For the moment she will be staying like this, I can UV map the model later if needs be. I could use mudbox to change the style of the character or keep her at a lower (or no) sub-division level. I'll probably have a few versions of the character, or 2 or more sets of shapes to use with the shape manager, depending on the subdivision level.

Granted this is a rather crude approach (simply not sub-dividing the model). Another option is editing it in post, I'll have to look into that later, but for now I need to get her moving.

Dissertation (again) and another change to the project

2009-01-09T09:57:00.001-08:00

A short update even though there hasn't been one for about a month, my dissertation is now over 6,000 words but there hasn't been any progress on the actual model, rigging or animation

After looking into reference for Imogen Heap I found the video for her song 'Hide and Seek', after a meeting with my project supervisor and discussing the video I will now be focusing on the character alone and getting rid of the environment and the short bit of narrative that surrounded the performance. I will also be considering the lighting and style of the video, I may choose to light it in grey scale with a Lambert shader or simple black and white toon shading. While this is something to consider the main agenda is to get the model ready for animation.

Note: the format of the video is actually in portrait

Dissertation

2008-12-06T09:06:00.000-08:00

As for modelling on the head there have only been some slight

alterations, I've also started scaling up the basic low poly

female body mesh in XSI. I'll be using a bit of reference to get

the form right, but since the main focus is on the head it's not as

important to get it looking perfect. My main focus this week has

been on the Dissertation, I've got it up to 2000 words for my

introduction. I have looked into the work Image Metrics have

done on the Emily Project and thier in house software and

facial capture techniques. This then links to the Rock Band

Trailer by Passion Pictures, who used Image Metric's

technology to help create the facial animation. Finally I have

looked at Jason Osipa's Book 'Stop Staring', as it is a

benchmark for facial hand keyed facial animtion and rigging,

as well as contraining a wealth of principals surrounding facial

animation technique.

The last part of the introduction covers 5 points on how to gauge

the success of the project:

- Can emotion be seen in the face in relation to the

performance?

- Does the lip sync match up with the music?

- Can the face rig be manipulated to suit the performance?

- Is the motion fluid enough without looking 'cartoony'?

- Does the character look realistic (has it fallen into uncanney

valley territory?)

It has occured to me that the last point there has not been

covered in my 2000 words, so I will probably have to edit

what I have done so far to fit it in.

I have a hand in on wednesday for creative character so

that takes priority for the moment, but the next course of

action on the project it to edit the jawline of my character,

refine the basic female mesh to form the body and join it

up to the head (currently the head has 18 edges on the neck

and the body has 12, so it shouldn't be hard to add in the

edges to make them match up.

Refining the head, Rigging and Writing

2008-11-28T10:07:00.000-08:00

I've been working on the overall shape of the head and have refined the model a fair bit though after a meeting with my project supervisor he recommended I bring out the cheekbones, work on the eyelids and shape of the eyes. The head should hopefully be finnished soon, and I will also start work on the upper body, I'm going to look at the basic XSI female body as a starting point for the body though I may also start another one from reference. Here is some of the progress I have made with the head.

I've created a curve based neck for a smoother and more natural movement, while I've only got a quick envelope test you can see what it does

I've started on the first quarter of my dissertation, currently its a little brief but I'll start making notes and improve upon the base of what I've got, I'm looking to focus on comparing motion capture technology to keyframe since motion capture has come a long way in recent years.

More on topology

2008-11-14T08:58:00.000-08:00

While initially I was planning on editing the basic mudbox head I started noticing it might not be the best way of approaching the modelling, my main concern was the 6 point star (also 2 minor complaints I had with the mouth area) and so clear-cut mouth area.

To make sure the model would deform as I wanted it to I decided to make my own, from photo reference of Imogen Heap and a quick design to base the modelling on. After completing the modelling based on the 'Joan of Arc' tutorial (adding in additional detail on the eyes, mouth and other areas to improve the deformation) I will edit the form in Mudbox, but for now this is a WIP image.

I'll be rigging it once I'm done modelling, one point to work on is having a curve rather than a bone for the neck to increase movement rather than a single static bone (considering that this is going to be mostly focusing on the head). Once the facial rigging is done I'll create the body and simply parent the head to it (in order to make sure I've got the head ready to animate A.S.A.P.). I'm aiming for a more painted feel to the character looking at the GTA IV concept art, team fortress 2 and the latest Prince of Persia title (though the more you look at Elika the more you see the outline dosen't quite compliment the style as well)

Topology time

2008-11-11T07:08:00.000-08:00

I'm working with the basic head in mudbox and photos of Imogen Heap to create a head model, from the topology of the head it looks like I will have to reorganise the polys in XSI before it is suitable for animation. Also there is not a clearly defined mouth or eyes, more a suggestion of the space they take up.

Starting to feel a bit of pressure now, with the workload, but as long as I keep busy it shouldn't matter.

...maybe realism isn't the best idea...

2008-11-07T11:17:00.001-08:00

After having a look at image metrics (who are really bridging that gap between CG and reality) with my project tutor my project has taken a turn to using a slightly more stylized approach in a sense of not trying to emulate reality and land in uncanny valley (see Beowulf, visually pretty, but you might as well have zombies acting).

I think I will pick up the modelling of a 'realistic' head later on after my degree.

One thing that is apparent with image metrics is the stillness of the heads (for their approach to realistic facial animation, rather than their work on computer games) when they use video to create an animated head, so to avoid trying to emulate them I will be using the upper body of a character as well as moving the head around at a greater degree. The video I will be using for reference is 'It's good to be in love' by Frou Frou, I'll be directly referencing parts of it and filling in others to get about 30 seconds of animation in.

Leaning towards realism

2008-10-30T17:16:00.000-07:00

I've been set the task to get a head modelled, rigged and animated by next Friday, I'm not sure if I can get all that done by then, but I'll damn well give it a shot. I'm following the stop staring method of facial modelling and it seems to be giving some good results and I'm currently working on the eye area.

I'm aiming for a more realistic animation and I've got good reference from a 3d.sk photo set from 3D world magazine. Though I really need some good reference for female singers, I also need to really consider the differences in motion between a male and female performer as well as a multitude of other things. Luckily I kinda get a bit OCD about animation and end up thinking about it a lot. I'm trying to take notice and analyse the way women move, and little details that can create a better performance... though I'm rather reluctant of just staring at women because it's just plain creepy, maybe I can get a mate to help out or just find some suitable video reference.

Other modules:
Creative character animation - I've made a start with animating and I've done an acting video to reference from, it's a fairly interesting performance so here it is.

Getting this thing started

2008-10-27T17:17:00.000-07:00

It's about time I started blogging, all the cool kids are doing it.

I'm going to use this blog to keep track of what work I'm doing and keep a note of any work, projects, or other things that crop up. I might even get some interest from people, exciting.