Having rigged my finished character, this week the bulk of my time was spent animating my character in DUIK. With tweened animation, as an animator you're at an advantage, as the nature of your toolset allows you to block out key poses as keyframes ahead of time and go back and add the detail later. Pose-to-pose was the approach I have chosen to take with my animation, not only because the tools I am using necessitate it, but also its a way of working that plays to my own strengths as an animator.
One of the core design principles I took on board when animating was to make sure that components were always in motion as to lend the motion more realism and the character a proper presence on screen. This design philosophy is something that is adopted by most CG animators, to compensate for the more mathematically calculated and rigid motion which comes with tweened animation as opposed to traditional or hand drawn animation. Secondary motion and overlapping action are also core animation principles which are key to realistic and convincing motion, so for me it was important to include these at this stage of the animation as much as possible.
Secondary action can also place emphasis on a motion, for example in my animation when my character moves her head one way, her strands of hair sway in the other, to and fro, before coming to a gradual stop. The way I achieved this was by placing the hair strands on their own individual IK chains, meaning I simply had to tween the controllers and the strands would behave accordingly. I also parented the bones at the top of the hierarchy to the rest of the head so that they were not misplaced when the head moved and rotated.
In the beginning I had expected to use at least one of the two rigs I had created for every shot in the animation. However, in practice I ran into a few snags, which lead me to create an entirely separate individual hand rig for the shot where my character picks up Vlad's character. This was for numerous reasons, including the fact that the original side-rig which I was intent on using, was not to the required resolution, as well as the fact that simply the animation did not fit the standards I wanted ot hold myself to when using the assets from the side rig. So I quickly created new assets in Photoshop to construct a hand rig with fully moveable fingers and a thumb.
In fact, for the final animation I didn't really end up using the side rig all that much at all, instead I repurposed some of the assets to solve a problem I was having with the scene where my character is supposed to take a drag from her cigarette. Originally the plan was to have her simply bring the cigarette up to her mouth using the IK chain I had created for the arm, however in practice this proved problematic as the arm contorted into an unnatural position when I tried to bring the controller up to my characters mouth. I tried changing the orientation of the IK chain mid-motion, however this lead to the motion feeling unnatural and janky. So, after much contemplation, I came up with a solution to change the head mid motion from a front view to a side view (the head asset from my unused side-rig) so that the controller could reach the mouth without contorting the mesh in a way which seemed unnatural. There is also a scene in our animation where my character is supposed to rise from the water, with the camera positioned behind her, which required me to produce a version on the back of the character's head which could be used in a simple tween.
One of the core design principles I took on board when animating was to make sure that components were always in motion as to lend the motion more realism and the character a proper presence on screen. This design philosophy is something that is adopted by most CG animators, to compensate for the more mathematically calculated and rigid motion which comes with tweened animation as opposed to traditional or hand drawn animation. Secondary motion and overlapping action are also core animation principles which are key to realistic and convincing motion, so for me it was important to include these at this stage of the animation as much as possible.
Secondary action can also place emphasis on a motion, for example in my animation when my character moves her head one way, her strands of hair sway in the other, to and fro, before coming to a gradual stop. The way I achieved this was by placing the hair strands on their own individual IK chains, meaning I simply had to tween the controllers and the strands would behave accordingly. I also parented the bones at the top of the hierarchy to the rest of the head so that they were not misplaced when the head moved and rotated.
In the beginning I had expected to use at least one of the two rigs I had created for every shot in the animation. However, in practice I ran into a few snags, which lead me to create an entirely separate individual hand rig for the shot where my character picks up Vlad's character. This was for numerous reasons, including the fact that the original side-rig which I was intent on using, was not to the required resolution, as well as the fact that simply the animation did not fit the standards I wanted ot hold myself to when using the assets from the side rig. So I quickly created new assets in Photoshop to construct a hand rig with fully moveable fingers and a thumb.
In fact, for the final animation I didn't really end up using the side rig all that much at all, instead I repurposed some of the assets to solve a problem I was having with the scene where my character is supposed to take a drag from her cigarette. Originally the plan was to have her simply bring the cigarette up to her mouth using the IK chain I had created for the arm, however in practice this proved problematic as the arm contorted into an unnatural position when I tried to bring the controller up to my characters mouth. I tried changing the orientation of the IK chain mid-motion, however this lead to the motion feeling unnatural and janky. So, after much contemplation, I came up with a solution to change the head mid motion from a front view to a side view (the head asset from my unused side-rig) so that the controller could reach the mouth without contorting the mesh in a way which seemed unnatural. There is also a scene in our animation where my character is supposed to rise from the water, with the camera positioned behind her, which required me to produce a version on the back of the character's head which could be used in a simple tween.
Strike A Pose Study Task
For this study task we were required to manipulate a character rig (Moom) in Maya into a series of poses which reflected various actions and emotional states, using reference imagery we produced ourselves. Reference imagery is something that is very important in animated performance. As the actions of animated characters are entirely produced artificially by an animator as opposed to by a performer (in most cases outside of performance capture) sometimes the smaller nuances which lend depth to the character are lost in the translation. I am yet to work on a project in which I am animating in Maya (unfortunately), however this exercise proved useful as a pointer for future reference in how to translate reference imagery into a convincing animated character.
Moom's controllers make manipulation fairly simple, he has IK chains for his legs, FK chains for his arms and a separate controller for manipulating the face mesh. The way Moom's controllers are laid out also provide me with a pointer for how to structure my own character rig in Maya, which is something I most definitely want to try in the future. One thing I would like to keep note of in the future is how the attribute editor can be used to manipulate the fingers of the Moom rig, something I was not aware of at the time I was creating these Moom renders.
For this study task we were required to manipulate a character rig (Moom) in Maya into a series of poses which reflected various actions and emotional states, using reference imagery we produced ourselves. Reference imagery is something that is very important in animated performance. As the actions of animated characters are entirely produced artificially by an animator as opposed to by a performer (in most cases outside of performance capture) sometimes the smaller nuances which lend depth to the character are lost in the translation. I am yet to work on a project in which I am animating in Maya (unfortunately), however this exercise proved useful as a pointer for future reference in how to translate reference imagery into a convincing animated character.
Moom's controllers make manipulation fairly simple, he has IK chains for his legs, FK chains for his arms and a separate controller for manipulating the face mesh. The way Moom's controllers are laid out also provide me with a pointer for how to structure my own character rig in Maya, which is something I most definitely want to try in the future. One thing I would like to keep note of in the future is how the attribute editor can be used to manipulate the fingers of the Moom rig, something I was not aware of at the time I was creating these Moom renders.
Anxious
Exhausted
Happy
Pride
Sad
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