Basic 3D Animation tests

Yesterday I got to go to a talk from a Disney Interactive Director, and it was really inspiring.   He knew most of my teachers, and couldn't say enough good things about SCAD and the advantages we have here.  The day before I went to "AtlantAmation", a local film festival sponsored by SCAD, with many student films from SCAD.  While some were better than others, I was also inspired to make my own short film.  I may talk more about that later, but for now, I have several large projects looming over me.
Today, since I am knee deep in another quarter and already losing sleep over it, I will share with you 2 assignments I just completed.  These are both very simple animations using Maya, and are standard animation training exercises which you will see lots of.  The Bouncing Ball, and the Flour Sack.  The purpose of the bouncing ball is to understand some of the most basic principles of animation, those being timing, squash, and stretch.  If you look carefully, you'll see lots of bouncing ball animations online in every type of animation media out there, be it 2D or 3D.  The Flour Sack animation is designed to help develop your ability to emote through a character with no face and limited motion.  You are suppose to show a change in behavior or a reaction to an event or object through body language or pantomime.  Again, there are lots of animations out there of flour sacks.  I have a bouncing ball and a flour sack animation hand-drawn, which is posted on this site.  Just look for them.  Other than that, here are 2 new animations, this time in 3D!

Final Results

Well with the Winter quarter over, I have the final results of my classes.  At least, that is, I have final projects.  In all honesty I don't have as many this year as previous years, but I will be posting a little more in the near future from my Action Analysis class.  It was all drawing, and a really great and fun class, but I have to get together from images first before I am willing to show them.
The biggest project I did was actually the scenes I did in Autodesk Maya 2012, which I posted earlier.  However, I do have something else to show from that class which got me an even higher grade, and an A for the class (YAY!).  That would be a character modeled in Maya using "edgelooping" to follow the flow of the muscles of the character to allow for better animation and rigging.

Originally my design was a lot more... conservative than this... and it was boring as a result (boring as in my teacher said it looked like a men's room sign and required I change it).  So with some help from teachers and colleagues, I *ahem* enhanced it.  This was supposed to be a modernization of Annie Oakley... and I did quite a bit of research on her.  In the end, she should have an another layer of clothes at least.  That and I didn't model a gun.  So for now... screenshots of "Annie".

Oh... and if you are averse to nudity... 1) grow up... 2) avert your eyes.  But really... no details or anything, but the clothes are removable (which means I should be able to make better clothes later) but some of these might be NSFW.  Also, all of these are using the smooth preview so they are not renders, just screenshots.

Overview Front Shot

Upper Torso Shot

Face with Edgeloops turned on

Face without Edgloops

Upper torso Dynamic Angle Shot

Closeup of buckles around boots

Closeup of medals on coat

Closeup of gloved hand

Closeup of ear

Money Shot :P

Back with Edgeloops (without coat)

Back without Edgeloops (without coat)

Front with Edgloops (without coat)

Front comparison to character design sketch

Side comparison to character design sketch

So I made her body first, then duplicated the faces of her body to make the jacket in pieces and merged them together.  I actually used a cloth dynamic in Maya to let the coat and skirt rest on her body better, but the coat is so tight it didn't move much.  The gloves and boots are part of her body and don't come off.  Her hair was made one "strand" at a time, with about 2 dozen modeled individually.  The hat was modeled separately, as well as the buckles around her boots and the epaulettes and the medals. She was a LOT of fun to build, and I am working on fixing up her modeling a little, especially in her coat.  Maybe I'll add an undershirt option as well.  Her face isn't perfect either, so I will go back and tweak it some more till I have a better shape.  But all said and done, I made this model in about a week, and it is my first character model ever!  Pretty impressive for a first I think.

I will post more pictures later with better lighting and so forth, but I am having an issue where the coat is under "stress" (apparently a few vertices are poking through unnoticed...) which results in a funky artifact where the clothes are full of "banding"...  Check it out...

So I'll be fixing that at some point and posting more images later.  I'm pretty happy with it.  And yes... I've noticed she has a large chest.  Everyone keeps reminding me.

So next time I'll post some more on my Action Analysis class, as well as a review of Arriety.  I also got a request from someone to compare GMU and SCAD, so I will be writing up a comparison, although I think it will end up being more about the differences between my experience, a typical public college, and a specialty school like SCAD.

Aloha!

Final rendered scene

Well I have finally been forced to stay up overnight this quarter.  I was getting scared there and thought it wasn't going to happen.  Of course it had to be the night before a big presentation.  But I'll get through it, that's what Think Geek caffeine gum is for.  :)

Well today I will share with you the final rendered scenes of my project for Digital Form, Space, and Lighting.  All those objects I showed earlier, well now they are all put together, with lighting, camera effects, and even environment fog.  Enjoy!

More 3D goodies

Hello again!

I'd like to start off apologizing to anyone who has listened to 7th Row Center and figured out I had some bad information about The Secret World of Arrietty, and Studio Ghibli, and Hayao Miyazaki himself.  I realized that Patrick Stewart was in Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind, not Tales of Earthsea.  I was thinking about another fine British actor, Timothy Dalton, who played Ged/Sparrowhawk in the English language version.  Also, Miyazaki did not direct Arrietty; it was directed by Hiromasa Yonebayashi, who was a key animator for several other Ghibli (and non-Ghibli) films, such as Spirited Away and Ponyo.  Miyazaki has been credited as a writer and executive producer, so he was involved, just not as the director.

I'm sure I got more wrong, but if you have any questions, complaints, or comments, feel free to drop us a line at 7throwcenter.com, or on facebook, or reach me directly on this site or my facebook page, or find me on twitter at @WeaklyAnimated.  I know I haven't been that active on any of these lately, but I want to make sure I get good grades first, everything else comes after that.

Now that THAT is out of the way, I have some more images for people to view.  I have been working on modeling and texturing these models for a few weeks, in preparation for a scene focusing around the life and world of Harry Dresden, one of my favorite characters of literature.  If you are unfamiliar with Harry Dresden, I HIGHLY recommend you check out the Dresden Files novels by Jim Butcher, or the audio books narrated by James Marsters.  So while I work on the lighting, take a look at the objects themselves.

For those with keen eyes, yes that is Discord from My Little Ponies.  Don't ask.  I still have more tweaking to do, but these are pretty much finished.  The rest of the scene is all about lighting and camera work.  Soon, I should have fully lit scenes using 3-point lighting for you to enjoy.  Comments and feedback are welcome as always.

Cheerio!

Mid term update

Sorry about having no updates so far this quarter, with my wife in town and classes in session, things just got a bit busy and I haven't been updating as a result.
Today I'd like to let you know that I will be posting some images of files I've modeled in 3D software (Maya) for one of my classes later this week. I am still perfecting it, but since midterms are here, I have no spare time and need to get these files onto the next step, texturing.
Till then, Sayonara!

Great Metallic Balls

I have been really busy this last week.  With the completion of the GENERATE challenge (of which the Patchwork Pirates got 5th place), I have had to work on a hand-drawn animation of a waving flag (not an easy one for students to figure out), as well as an animation that involves following various principles of screen design and focusing on showing Z-depth (which is really just depth on a 2 dimensional screen), not to mention a presentation for a proposal for a term paper.  Busy all around really.
The cool thing is there are now 3 new excellent animations finished for my classes, all of which look better than I thought they'd turn out.
Also, I figured out why the bob-omb animation looked so bad.  Apparently I uploaded the wrong file, although the final one still has compression issues, but it looks a zillion times better.

Besides the bob-omb animation, I have the others to show as well.  Here is the flag waving pencil test:

This is the flag wave animation.  It took me several hours to complete, and I had to essentially start over at one point when I suddenly realized what I was doing wrong.  I kept drawing the various keys and inbetweens wrong, and it suddenly clicked, and I figured out how to make it work.  This is the result.  It is short, but fluid.

Next up is the Screen Design Z-Dept project, or as I all it... Marble Maze:

This animation is intended to loop.  The point of the exercise is to show depth in a 2D screen.  There are several ways to do this including scale, overlap, perspective, and more.  I originally intended to draw this out in Photoshop and then bring it into After Effects and animate it there.  However, after struggling to make it look the way I wanted to, I started modeling it in Maya, and decided it turned out so well, I'd just do the entire thing in Maya, and proceeded to do just that.  I used Maya 2008 (and 2012 for rendering on campus), and only used basic shapes and methods, but with very effective rendering techniques.  All the lights use Ray Tracing and shadows, the wood surfaces use many layers of textures to make it work, the rendering used mental ray, and Final Gathering, in order to get such effective colors and lighting etc.  It took me about 12 hours or so to render the final version (and I had to render it twice... one scene once... cause they earlier ones didn't look good), but luckily I could use multiple computers on campus, and managed the entire thing in about 4 hours.

In other news, keep your ears open for the latest episode of 7thRowCenter, where we talk about the power of cheese.  These movies are so bad, they are Gouda!

Till next time,

GUTEN TAG!

Tools of the trade

Hello again everyone!

I have something exciting to show you later this week, unfortunately, I have been too busy to complete it just yet.  I have been working on an animatic for the first animation.
For those who aren't familiar with that term, it is essentially an animation made using the storyboard images, in order to get a better sense of timing and layout.  It is also a good way of showing people the concept behind the idea of a scene, and sometimes end up as extras on a DVD or Blu-ray.
I am over half way done with the animatic now, and it shouldn't take too much longer to complete, so I should be able to post in online, via YouTube, later this week.  Of course, I will also post a new blog entry when I do.

For now, however, I want to talk about some of the tools I use to make the animations.  There are a huge variety of tools, both hardware and software, that people use, and I cannot pretend to know them all.  But I will give a list of a few of the ones that I do use.

Hardware:
Paper
Big surprise, I use paper to draw.  I usually use 3x5 notecards for storyboards, but for all sketches, I use a sketchpad, usually by Strathmore.  Green covers, marked Sketch, are the ones I use the most for sketching, while the brown covers, marked Drawing, are for final drawings, but I am always on a look out for recycled paper as well.  When it comes to drawing the final images, I use drawing paper, which is usually thicker and nicer, but not as thick as Bristol board, which is used mostly for my nicer work, such as poster-style art or pen-and-ink drawings.  Although I usually use Strathmore for most of my paper, sometimes I find good deals on other brands, such as the "create" style spiral bound books at Borders Books, which usually convince me to buy some of those as well.  I use Bristol Board for all my nicer work, usually poster-style artwork.  This current animation project is using the Create book, while the web comic I am working on is in a Strathmore Sketchbook.
Pencils
Yup, I use pencils with my paper.  I find that unless I am drawing very detailed shadow work, such as following form and contours with detailed lighting, I usually just stick to mechanical pencils.  They are always sharp, sturdy and easy to transport, and can be very comfortable and accurate.  I like to use graphite at around HB - 2B, but I also use blue (aka non-photo blue) graphite for the initial sketch which allows me to remove any unwanted lines easier.  I have also used a variety of charcoal to draw, but I usually use that for larger art pieces, and not for digital work.  However, one animation, which I hope to post soon, was made entirely out of charcoal.  I did not have the time to achieve the effect I desired, but I think it turned out very well despite that.
Computer
In the world of computers, there are usually 2 camps of thought, Macintosh and Windows.  There are other Operating Systems out there, such as Linux, but they are not as popular overall.  I do have friends that swear by Linux, but most of them also use other computers as well.  As far as I am concerned, I have worked with both PCs and Macs.  I have built PCs, and I grew up with Macs.  I always prefer my iMac for anything important, such as work and artwork.  My PCs are almost always used for gaming.  I have run into several things that Macs actually do better in terms of graphics, but you will find people who will argue against it.  I can say that in my experience, I have run into fewer bugs, fewer viruses, fewer compression errors, and fewer compatibility issues when I use my Mac.  If you love your PC, great.  I will give you some advice about things I have run into on a PC to keep a look out for, but if you have a high end machine, you should have no real issues.  I currently use a 24" iMac, (although I would really love a mac tower), and also a custom built i5 processor PC.  All my work here will be done on my iMac.  This is mainly cause the software I use is on my iMac, and some of it is not even available on the PC (how about that for a change).
Tablet
While I don't use it as often as I should, I do have access to a relatively small graphics tablet.  These are usually made by Wacom (pronounced Wack-um), and are very useful for digital artists.  They are very expensive, and I need to upgrade to a newer model, but that is something I will have to save up for.  Regardless, tablets are great for fine detailed work an accurate drawings in the computer.  You can draw straight in the computer with one, or trace an existing drawing, or edit a scan/photograph with extreme precision.
Scanner
Having a background with National Geographic Society, I know a think or two about scanners, since my main job involved work with the scanning technicians to make the best images available.  The scanners they have there are very expensive, large, and accurate.  I have access only to small, cheap, and somewhat lacking scanners, but they are good enough to get the job done.  I am not scanning in high quality photographs and positives/negatives, I am only scanning in drawings.  To that end, I use a Canon Canoscan LiDE.  It does have some artifacts, but with the right editing, they are easily removed or reduced.  I use a scanner for this work because I like to draw on paper rather than straight into a computer, plus you have flexibility of mediums and techniques.  I will explore direct digital drawings with tablets at a later time.
iPhone
I know I need something better, something more dedicated, but for now, until I can afford a better solution, I use my iPhone for a variety of purposes.  I use it to take pictures for reference shots, I use it to record sounds outdoors if I need something like a car engine, I use it as a calculator to figuring out frame rates, etc.  It is very useful, but there are better things out there for each job.
Home Theater
I use my HDTV with 7.1 surround sound home theater to test my animations when they are done.  I can play things on my PS3, either as files or DVDs (I cannot make Blu-rays yet).  It is a great way of seeing the final product and showing it off, especially when playing with surround sound.
Accessories
I have a lot of accessories I use as well.  For example, I use a PowerMate, by Griffon Technology, for "scrubbing" and navigating timelines.  I also have a variety of hard drives, including La Cie drives, and Western Digital drives, not to mention a MyBook drive used as backup.  The grand total of space I have right now is around 1.75TB, but I backup only 1.5 of it.  I am only using around 500GB at the moment, but it is good to have breathing space.  I also have JBL speakers, surround sound headphones, several USB mics, and much more.

Software:
Adobe Photoshop
I use Photoshop CS4, but in all honesty, most people don't need something that new or advanced.  For basic editing, you only need Photoshop Elements.  However, for animation, having Photoshop is great.  I am used to it, I know it very well, and I use a lot of the advanced tools all the time.  You can easily use CS, CS2, or CS3 as well, having CS4 only adds a few new nice features which you don't need.  Unless you do medical work, or 3D work, there is NO REASON in the world you should get the extended edition.  It is great, and I do have it, but I never use the extended features.
Adobe After Effects
Again, I use After Effects CS4.  It has been a while since I used After Effects, so I am relearning some of the tools, and I find that it is a very good program.  I used to use CS, but have been out of the loop ever since.  I will be exploring some of the newer features, and experimenting with it.  But After Effects is essential to these animation, because it is the main program that puts all the elements together into an animation.
Adobe Flash
Once again, I have Flash CS4.  I am not familiar with Flash, in terms of animation and programming.  So for me, it will all be a learning experience.  I will not start out with Flash at first, since I am trying to get back into animation after such a long hiatus, and want to stick with things I am familiar with.
Apple Final Cut Pro
I am not using the latest Final Cut, but it is still sufficient for my needs.  This is the program that takes all the scenes, the music, the text, etc., and put them together, and renders it into one single file ready to burn onto a disc.  I have the entire suite, but I have to figure out how to use more of it since I only ever focused on 2 of the programs in it before.  This is not available on the PC, but the Mac/PC equivalent, which I will also explore and experiment with, is called Adobe Premier.  Premier advertises that it burns Blu-ray discs, but Apple computers lack the hardware at the moment.  (Then again, so does my PC).
DVD Studio Pro
The second program I learned in the Final Cut Suite.  Also not available on PC, this program lets you create the menus and options for use on a DVD.  You can burn a final product with this program.  I think that Adobe Encore is the Mac/PC equivalent to this, but I must explore it more.
Maya
This is for people who want to explore world outside the second dimension.  For 3D modeling and animation, Maya is a must-have.  While many companies have their own software (Pixar uses Marionette), they are not available to the general public, and learning Maya is usually the best way to get a head start in the right direction.  This is a very advanced, expensive, and complicated tool.  I am trying desperately to better familiarize myself with it, but it will be a while before I can really dig my teeth into it.  I need to get a few 2D animations out first to get the workflow organized and refined better.  You can also use Studio Max and other software to create 3D effects and models.  Maya comes with MotionBuilder, which I fully intend to explore, and also Combustion, which I am not familiar with... yet.  There are other tools 3D artists use, such as ZBrush, which gives you more refined control over various aspects of the modeling and animation process.  ZBrush lets you brush in details to a model with ease and accuracy.  I need to save up to get this.
Other
There are lots of other programs I use.  I use Quicktime and Sound Studio to record audio, but I may be exploring other options.  I use Soundtrack Pro also, for mixing sounds.  I use Firefox, Safari, and Chrome when I do web work, as well as Dreamweaver for creating websites, which I will probably not use much for this project.

Well, that is it for now.  Another long post, but a there is lots of information in it.  If anyone wants more information about what tools I will be using, or have suggestions for any tools you use that might work better, please send me an email.  And no anti-mac/anti-pc spam please.  I use both, I like both, I just prefer my Mac.  If you prefer your PC, more power to you.