Now on to the YMCA project

On to the YMCA indeed. Its been a while since I actually went in to any detail on this so here is the story so far. My group have decided to each create a separate room in the YMCA and create our animations around a single stylised theme using an animated YMCA character.

I originally created this character a few weeks ago, since then I have rigged a skeletal structure for it, I just need to finish tweaking the rig.

We have also visited the YMCA and measured the building from which we have created a scale model in Max for everyone to work from. This way everyone’s characters will be in the same proportions with respect to doors and windows etc.

Last semester I actually created a few separate scenes each with character animation in it and came across some serious complications when trying to merge the animated scenes together. For this reason we have decided to create our own animations and then merge them in to one seamless animation using premier pro. However this is not without its own set of complications to consider:

1. Camera settings – every one must be using the same FOV on the camera or the scenes will appear to shrink and grow as we move between environments


2. Character scale – all characters must be the same scale in relation to the height of the room and doors. To resolve this we have agreed on 3 different heights of our characters and once I have completed the rigging I will send round a copy of the model with one of each size character in.


3. Start and finish points – To ensure all the animations flow smoothly we need to make sure one animation finishes in the EXACT same place the next one starts. To ensure this is the case we have devised a clever little system. Each person has the same copy of the whole building and will model and animate in their own room with out moving the room at all. Each animation will start looking at the door of their room, animate through an opening door, around the room and end up looking at the same door (now closed again) from the inside. When all the animations are complete we will as a group animate the camera from the last persons finish point to the next persons start point through the buildings corridors.

To name but a few.

On to my progress and future plans.

As I previously mentioned I have created and rigged the YMCA man. There are a lot of problems with it at the moment though. As you can see the mesh ‘kinks’ when moved too much.

I believe this is being caused by two factors. 1st is that the mesh does not have enough segments around the joints to deform smoothly

and 2nd the absolute weighting of a particular bone over the central vertices is incorrect.

I need to solve this problem soon so that I can email the finished characters in the model to the group so they can begin their animations. Once they have the model I will have to teach them to use it as they have never animated a character using this particular style (I may do a video tutorial for this so people can watch at their own pace as many times as they want). (Self imposed) DEADLINE: Thursday 6th November

For my animation I plant to have the camera enter the room whilst some music is playing and show it for a few seconds before changing to another genre of music and then repeat the change another 2 times whilst in the room to show how diverse the events are. I need to pick some music before I can begin the animation of timing the lights. (Self imposed) DEADLINE: Wednesday 12th November.

I need to have the scene modelled but not necessarily textured soon. (Self imposed) DEADLINE: Friday 14th November.

I need to have the animation ready to be rendering for a completion DEADLINE of Sunday 30th November as this is when the group has decided we will begin the hallway animations.

Learning curve.

I’ve got a few things that I am going to need to learn to complete this module to the standard I would like.

1. Character animation – Last semester I used a similar rigging system to animate humans but this is slightly different. We all know how humans move, we see it every day and with a little study it is relatively simple to replicate movements in 3D. This character however, whilst it has a lot of similar aspects it also has ‘bits’ where people don’t and I am going to need to completely design a movement pattern for it to avoid an un realistic (that’s right, the human brain still expects it to walk in a certain way even though they have never seen it walk before.) movement pattern.


2. Light animation – I dabbled with lights last semester but a 30 second animation took me over 60 hours to complete. This animation is going to have to be really well timed to the music for it to work as the lights help to set the atmosphere. This is going to be a challenge.


3. Choreography – Again in time with the music I am going to have to animate several characters whilst making sure they don not bump in to each other.


4. Multi pass camera rendering – This is something I have often heard of but never got around to learning. It is the process where by the render makes one image, then moves the camera along its motion path slightly and composites the new image over the old one to create the frame and a motion blur look. Whilst it is not essential for me to learn this for this animation there is no time like the present, It should help make the image look more realistic. I intend to animate my camera in a way that motion blur actually forms a pivotal part of the scene and is not just there for the sake of it. It will be like pre post production or something.

Have I bitten of more than I can chew?????

Only time will tell.