Animation Final

Animation Final

My brief was to design a toy which would improve a child’s condition who is suffering from Psoriasis, a chronic and acute condition of the skin, and the relationship they have with the hospital, so that both parents and healthcare professionals can monitor the patient’s behaviour in relation to their condition and the toy. My idea was using a popular theme of superheroes which appeals to children. The superhero would serve as the module unit and would have a 3D scan of the child’s head as the superhero’s head, which would give the child voice reminders to apply treatment. The hub which would be the superhero’s lair where their treatments would be contained, such as cream and a humidifier.

1) Proposal/Abstract

My idea was to create a film set where an advertisement video would be filmed for the product, and the superhero character would act as an actor. 

2) Research/Pre-production

I researched lots of tutorials on Youtube on how to create the effects I wanted in my scene.

Fog/Smoke: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHnd6BK_WHI 

Walk cycle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-QLI1h7WYE 

These really helped give me an insight into what every feature in the process was and how it effected the animation.

Storyboard:

Stage 1

The film set is closed and only very little light is been put onto the hub

Stage 2

The lights in the scene are turned on as the actor and director come into the set

Stage 3

Then they are fully in the scene but off camera. They are both rushing around the set trying to find props and other equipment that they need

Stage 4

The superhero figure (Actor) moves into the view of the camera

Stage 5

The superhero figure (Actor) is surprised and shocked when he learns that there are sharks on the set 

3) Self-evaluation

What worked?

Although the smoke coming from the model stopped early, I felt that it worked well in the scene and settings such as the transparency and colour looked good. The green texture on the fish tank worked well as reference for the rotobrush tool in After Effects for adding in a video of a fish tank.

What didn’t work?

As much as I tried, I failed to successfully create a skeleton for my model. I managed to get the IK joints to work on the legs and arms but I ran into many problems when I tried to bind the skin to the skeleton.

What you found particularly good or enjoyable?

Surprisingly I found adding textures to surfaces and adding lighting to the scene and animating it really enjoyable as it brought the scene to life.

How might you want to continue or expand the project in the future?

I think first I would want to fix the fog animation, and then secondly I would try again to rig my character correctly with a fully working skeleton and skin binded. 

4) Final Animation:

Digital Media Final - Stage 6

Digital Media Final - Stage 6

After the last stage I wanted to make the film window appear less 2D in the scene by distorting the window and placing it accordingly in the scene.

Keyshot:

Using Keyshot I was able to import a green grid image onto a ground plane and align it in the scene to act as the ground. From there I wanted to create the shadows for the film window of the dog in the physical world. I did this by adding another ground plane and flipping it horizontally, sizing it correctly and snapping it to the ground so that it was in the correct position.

After Effects:

Using After Effects I was able to use the transform-skew tool to edit the film window so that it appeared 3D in the scene and I could align it properly with the shadowing effect I did in the previous step.

Digital Media Final - Submission

Digital Media Final - Submission 

1. INTRODUCTION

PetRo is a homogeneous modular Pet-Like Robot designed to work together with people as part of a human-robot team operating in dangerous, difficult to access or unpredictable scenes of operation. For such a team to operate effectively and successfully, without the need for specialist training, there should be a certain level of understanding between the user and his/her robot. From the user’s perspective, body language, and non-verbal communication are additional modalities that could be relied upon for a better understanding of the robot. Indeed, non-verbal and emotional expression by a robot could benefit communication with its user, particularly if these expressions are intelligible and are part of a wider multimodal language. The robot’s emotions can be construed as reflections of internal states and conditions – their expressions should be intuitive to understand, as if they were natural. Postures, gait, and body expressions can communicate a wide range of emotions. Adopting a multi-modal approach, where bodily sounds and musical utterances are also used, can reinforce the expression of emotions and facilitate their perception. Combining breathing rates, heartbeats, postures and movements as well as music is proposed in this paper to deliver an intuitive way of understanding the robot’s current state. We believe these modalities can deliver a vocabulary of emotions that is limited, but one that should be reliably and quickly recognised. This approach is different to the expression of emotion in speech. It is however, similar to what has been proposed. It is more akin to making PetRo a robot that is at the same time an “assisting” and an “interactive stimulation” robot. We also believe that the nature and the richness of the User Experience (UX) yielded by PetRo should be inspired from the relationship between companion dogs and their owners. Dogs are of particular interest in that they have been domesticated very early in human history and are now owned mostly for companionship.

2. FINAL

For my final piece I will creating a film where the 3D CAD model of PetRo will interact with a dog from the physical world, digital meets physical.

3. STORYBOARD

Stage 1

Both the digital and physical elements will be in the scene, and PetRo will begin to lower his head.

Stage 2

Once PetRo has lowered his head it will then begin to rotate his head back and forth to the side while also making noises, as the dog in the physical world begins to move his head as he is intrigued with PetRo.

Stage 3

PetRo begins to move back away from the physical world, shortly followed by the dog.

Stage 4

PetRo comes to a stop and the dog sits patiently. PetRo continues to rotate his head back and forth to the side while also making noises, as the dog avidly watches.

4. FINAL FILM

5. SELF-EVALUATION

-What worked?

Everything went as I planned, adding in all of my elements and bringing them together worked effortlessly in After Effects.

-What didn’t work?

My time management/time frame didn't go as expected. I would of liked to of left more time to render out my CAD animation because I had to reduce my quality to make the final.

-What you found particularly good or enjoyable, etc?

I really enjoyed been able to use After Effects, I found the program relatively easy to use and I was able to find many online tutorials on Youtube etc to help me with creating parts of my film.

-How might you want to continue or expand the project in the future?

Some possible plans for the future are to increase the length of film by adding more movements, such as adding more interaction between the digital and physical world. E.g. PetRo could try to enter the physical world but instead knocks over the window. 

Animation 1 Final - Stage 2

Hub Model - Textures, smoke/mist effect and After Effects

Importing IGS file from Solidworks into Maya:

Then adding textures to the surfaces:

Making the fish tank green as later this will make it easier for After Effects to select it.

Adding smoke/mist effect:

After Effects:

Using the Rotobrush tool I was able to select everything apart from the fish tank and then remove it from the video, this then allowed me to put a recording of a fish tank beneath that layer.

Rendered Video:

Animation 1 Final - Stage 1

Character Walk Cycle

Walk cycle of my character as part of my final project. Further down the line I will be improving the timing of the walk to make it more realistic, at this point it's just proof of an animation and has helped me to practice animating a rigged character.

Digital Media Final - Stage 5

Digital Media Final - Stage 5

1st I duplicated the png sequence, darkened the top layer then cropped away part of the top layer to reveal the brighter layer underneath. This is just a quick test to show how I would combined different renders on top of each other to show the animation moving from the 2D to 3D world.

Other method tried:

Keyshot (Render er):

Adding ground plane across the pass through section of the model to add the shadowing and lighting effects to the model.

After trying to render out the animation I found that just one frame would take around 20 minutes to render. After consideration I decided not to continue with this method as it would simply take too long to render out the animation and file size could also be a problem. 

Digital Media Final - Stage 4

Digital Media Final - Stage 4

Scaling down the size of the dog video and keeping the animation render full screen to give the effect that the animation is moving forwards and backwards from the 2D and 3D world

Character Rigging - Toy Figure

Character Rigging - Toy Figure

Importing a model from Solidworks:

After converting my assembly into a few different file types, I found the best way was to convert it into a IGS file, and also keeping the model as an assembly instead of converting it into a single part as this helps to keep each limb divided when taken into Maya or it will end up as one big surface model which is incredibly had to manipulate.  

Imported IGS Assembly:

As I was saying before with the IGS file, it kept the the parts separate when it gets imported into Maya which was great, as it allowed me to bind the skin of parts to different joints. 

Once I had matched each part one by one and correctly bind them to the skin, I was then able to make the joints into an IK Handle which allowed me to move each limb.

Correctly naming all of the IK Handles so I know which handle is assigned to which limb.

Digital Media Final - Stage 3

Testing Performance render frames layered over film

By rendering my CAD model using Keyshot I was able to render out a performance version to quickly test how it would be layered over the film. The performance render was exported as batch png files which I imported into After Effects as a png sequence. I then placed this layer over the film and quickly rendered out the video as a FLV file as it would be a small file size which would be able to be uploaded to Youtube. 

-Rendering Process:

-Combining videos:

-Rendered video:

Improvements needed:

I will need to improve the walking speed of the robot in comparison to the dog. As you can see the dog moves forward quicker compared to the robot, so speeding up the robot or making it move backwards before the dog moves will make it more realistic.

Digital Media Final - Stage 2

Testing sizes and alignment of animation renders on top of film

Using photoshop I was able to quickly render the animation frames the same frame size as the film and then lay them over the top of it. This allowed me to test for the size and angle of the animation renders in the scene without me wasting time and pushing out a fully rendered animation which would take hours.

Start of Film:

End of film:

Textures, lighting and shadowing will come at a later stage. My next step is to look into the timing of the dog walking and replicate this in the animation renders so I can get them in time with each other. 

Digital Media Final - Stage 1

Testing out Adobe After Effects

Trying to use the rotobrush tool to cut the dog out from the scene.

After trying to cut out the dog from the scene I realised that the quality of cut would be poor and would look far worse compared to the quality of the animation renders from the CAD model. Cutting the dog from the scene also look a lot longer than I expected, so I will be keeping the dog on the original film and will add the animation renders over the top.

Stop Motion - Moving Mouse

Using Stop Motion Studios for Android I was able to create a stop motion animation of a moving mouse. After I mounted my phone on top of a water bottle I then positioned the mouse for its first frame, then slowly started to move the mouse and alter its position slightly every frame. The finished animation is displayed as a gif above.

If the image doesn't play automatically just give it a click to watch.

Maya Animation - Rocket

Using the key frame timeline along the bottom of the program I was able to add the first key frame of the animation by pressing ctrl + s. Then by moving the whole model along the vertical axis, stopping it where I wanted the animation to finish and pressing ctrl + s at my chosen key frame along the timeline (50th), I was able to make the rocket appear as if it was flying upwards. I also wanted the rocket to spin so I remained on the 50th key frame, added a rotation to the model and adding another key frame on top of the existing one. The final result is shown as a gif above.

Using my existing model of a rocket, I wanted to add it into an animation.

Digital Media Midterm

Midterm

1) Proposal/abstract:

For the midterm I will be creating a portfolio of my digital images.

2) Production log:

Preproduction and production:

Images:

1)      

-Before

-Trying to duplicate the amount of toy figures in the image

-After

-Achieved by creating a cut out of the toy figure and duplicating it and placing them accordingly. The adding shadows on a separate layer using the burn tool.

2)    

 -Before

-Trying to add more colour and contrast to the buildings in the picture.

-After

-Using hue and saturation, brightness and contrast and colour balance I was able to improve the quality of the photo.

3)    

-Before

-Trying to add more colour and contrast to the picture, and also increase the brightness.

-After

-Using hue and saturation, brightness and contrast, colour balance and exposure I was able to improve the quality of the photo.

4)    

-Before

-3D rendered scan of my head (Rendered in KeyShot)

-After

-Use of Photoshop filter (Artistic/Colour Pencil/Cutout) and added lines in the background, then saved as a PNG

5)     

-Before

-Trying to make the final model and ball appear as if they’re in motion

-After

-By adding motion blur to the ball I was able to make it appear as if it was travelling. The metal bar required more work. I had to first create a motion blur, then duplicate it several times and play with the opacity of the layers to get the image how I wanted it.

6)      

-Before

Original Image 2:

-Used as one of the images in the image blend

Original Image 1:

-Used as one of the images in the image blend

-After

-Using a layer mask for image 2 while it was on top of image 1, I was then able to use the gradient tool to blend image 2 into image 1 by dragging the gradient tool from the top of the page vertically down to the bottom of the mountains. This allowed me to just include the sky from image 2 and not blend in the entire image.

3) Self-evaluation

·         What worked:

I felt that basic image editing such as hue and saturation etc worked very well, and I was able to add them as a layer mask so that I could come back to the Photoshop file and edit them at a later date. Filters were also very easy to use, I felt the drop-down menu was very descriptive and accurate when I was trying to find a filter to use, and they were very easy to navigate.

·         What didn’t work:

Although I feel that the shadows I added worked, I think that I could still improve. I also think that I could improve my skills in non-destructive workflow, by starting to clearly name layers and maybe trying to organise images using folders, so that if I was ever to return to my previous work I could quickly pick up where I left off.

·         What you found particularly good or enjoyable:

Enjoyed adding characters and objects to images and creating shadows in the scene.

·         Development:

Maybe starting to use Adobe After Effects to experiment with editing video.