Office Cinematic _ Facial Animation

Facial Animation Update. Office Cinematic is almost done! Just some touch ups left.

Office Cinematic _ Body Language

I'VE DONE IT.

I was actually running behind on this animation, because of so many things. There were entire days were I couldn't work on this cinematic at all, even though I had scheduled myself to work on it then. I was forced to fudge the schedule a bit. Tomorrow I'll have to finish up the facial animations and expressions and polish up anything else that needs polishing up.

And then, shockingly, I will be done with the office cinematic, come Tuesday. 

That said, I was INCREDIBLY bad at keeping my blog up to date with my work. Pretty much since the last update I was working on this, and finally managed to finish it on time! I can say with confidence now that I can keep to my schedule. :D

Plushy Knight Opening Sequences

Here is the finished animation with facial animation and some lighting and sound. At this point, the animation itself leaves my hands and goes to Scott for lighting, rendering and compositing! Once that's done, I can put it up on my portfolio! :D

Plushy Knight Opening Sequences - Almost Done!

...Phew. Facial animation for the 3 scenes are done. Not complete of course, but given my time constraits, i really ought to move on. I've still got cloth to do for two characters and all...

Seeing this all together now makes me think i might need to change the camera shots on that last scene...

Anyway! I've learned something today. The difference between straight forward animation and pose to pose. For the longest time I never really understood the point of straight ahead animation, and that;s because I've always animated using passes and then going back through and adjusting timing and the poses themselves as I animated. But when it comes to facial animation, going through with passes makes the process more tedious than it would be. Especially when it comes to lip syncing, it's just far easier to forget the frame count and focus purely on hitting the expression and mouth shapes on the first go. I'm not sure what it is, but the way the face and the body moves, how they move and the kinds of motions they make, are distinct. Might be because of the fact that the body uses muscles to move bones whereas the face uses muscle to move skin. Who knows.

Of course, that said, a part of me isn't too fond of straight ahead animating. Because it's like taking a drawing and starting with the upper corner and just drawing EVERYTHING. No sketch, no gesture, just jump right into the detail. Sometimes it'll look good, sometimes it won't, and it's just harder to pick up on exactly why something doesn't look right.

All my own thoughts just from reading up on a chapter on pose to pose vs straight ahead animation in a How to Cheat in Maya book. Which I'll need to get myself one of these days...

Sanctuary Island Cinematic

Still a bit late on this. I have a tendency to put off playblasts until beyond the last minute. But this lil cinematic just before gameplay is Body Language Done. All that's left is to do facial animation and some adjustments to the title sequence. Next post will have all 3 animations with facial animation and polish up.

The biggest question is how I'm going to render this out for my portfolio. I think I might just set up some simple lights and render it out in Viewport 2.0 in maya, since you can still get some good results in that. Which means I'll have to set aside some time in order to get that done. I'm probably going to be working on that all weekend.

Church Exterior Cinematic - Animation Pass 1

Finished this one relatively quickly! Well, not to say this is finished at all. This is just the first (maybe I'd go so far as to say second) pass of the animation. The camera is probably the biggest unknown in this shot, so I've gotta talk this over with my project lead and my art lead. But I've been animating everything, even if it's not on camera, so it should be pretty easy to just change a shot and move keys around if it comes down to it.

This cinematic has a lot less animation required, so I had the chance to go through and add a bit more to it. Probably should've just moved on, but I couldn't help it! SMALL PLUSHY'S EARS CAN WIGGLE AND ALL THAT.

Plushy Knight Opening - Animation Pass

A bit overdue, but about time I put up some progress on this animation.I had already done a camera pass from last week, but finished the first pass on the animation itself today. Gemma has a mom now! You can see her feet. :D

Gemma in Mourning

Been a while since I updated this. D: Well, this is a bit overdue, since I should be updating with each deadline I lay down, but I have a tendency to forget. So expect me to throw some other stuff up with not too great quality. I can work on it later.

Actually, these renders below would've had a better render if, for some reason, the mental ray sky wasn't causing horrible banding in Gemma's coat. I have no idea why. So, in order to not spend too much time on this, I just disabled the physical sun and sky and turned on the default light. It looks like screenshots from the viewport. D: Like crap, in other words. But at least you can see the normal maps and spec maps working.

Anyway, this is Gemma in mourning. It was a few tweaks to her coat and her shoes as well as a bit of a texture swap. I'm satisfied to say that she looks like she's wearing pretty different stuff. But not too sure if I should've made Gemma's coat completely black or left it as the dark navy blue that I have it now.

Hm. Probably need to turn it black. Whenever I get a chance to update these crappy renders.

But I've rambled enough. On to the pictures!

Words words words words.

Plushy Knight Opening - Storyboards

Plushy Knight is currently a video game in production here at FIEA, which I am lucky to be a part of. It is a heavily story based game, and because of that, requires cinematics in order to tell that story. 

Below are some storyboards I drew up for that very opening. Currently it is in 3 pieces (because they were technically different cinematics), but they play consecutively during the game.