ANIMATION
In this animation section, I will talk about the types of animations I had to create and the techniques and challenges that came with it.
Walk Cycle:
One of the first things I worked on as part of my full animation production was a Walk Cycle. Several of the early shots would need the female character walking in a straight line so it was important that I created a strong walk cycle.
I opted not to create a walk cycle for the Goliath, nor any sort of run cycles. I wasn’t planning on any prolonged locomotion sections for him, and the places where he does move were brief enough that I could animate them dynamically.
An early test I did to demonstrate the walk cycle, as well as explore the process of importing animations into Unreal Engine.
This acted as a sort-of early look-dev and helped in gauging what was possible within unreal.
The assets used for this test were from an unreal market place package called 'Infinity Blades Grasslands'. This pack was intended just to be used for these preliminary tests but I ended up utilising various objects such as arches and pillars within the final film.
Hammer Weight:
Animating the hammer was one of the most important elements of this entire project. The ability to demonstrate the weight of this heavy object and have the Goliath believably manoeuvre it was half my statement of intent.
And it took me a little time before I really figured out the techniques to successfully achieve that. I had anticipated the pivot problem early on and prepared for that; which got me some of the way. But once the hammer was off the ground, maintaining that sense of weight was difficult.
What I eventually learned was that the hammer needed to remain as stationary as possible through the air, any quick movements or sudden directional shifts instantly break the illusion. This was easier said than done however. Thankfully, the Goliath rig included a very comprehensive weapon rig that allowed for single handed, two handed or weapon driven control. The first two are fairly self explanatory, but the third was the important one. It allowed for a constraint setup where the IK hands were both pinned to the weapon. This meant that instead of animating an FK arm with a prop in hand, you animate the hammer itself and the hands come along for the ride.
Hammer anim on FK
Hammer anim on weapon driven
Instinctively this feels like a bad practice, but after playing around with it, it was abundantly clear that this was the way forward. By animating the prop itself, it’s far easier to restrict wild motions and allows you to achieve a smooth path for the prop.
Editable Motion Trails
This leads me into motion trails, which I used extensively throughout the project, especially on the hammer.
Shot_0150_MotionTrail Example
Motion trails allow you to visualise an object's path through the world and makes it very easy to create appealing curves. I could attach a motion trail to the head of the hammer and identify any areas where its motion was too jarring or sporadic.
With IK controls like the hammer, it was easy to move a control around to fix any issues. But with FK chains, correcting a bad arc was more fiddly, as the problem could be compounded across multiple joints.
Either way, Motion Trails helped in identifying issues, even if their solution was still a challenge to solve.
Sylvanas' arm approaching Gimbal Lock
gimbal lock
Gimbal lock was a very annoying and unforeseen issue I encountered several times throughout the project.
Gimbal lock occurs when two Euler rotational axis align and prevent the object from rotating along the desired axis.
This was a big problem for me during the shot where the Goliath bends down to pick up his hammer, and then raises it up above his head. The rotational order was resulting in some weird evaluations. Thankfully, the Goliath rig was well made, and included options to switch the rotational order. With some testing, I was able to choose an order that avoided the lock in that scenario.
In the image to the above you can see Sylvanas arm encroaching on gimbal lock. It's not the end of the world, but it results in some unexpected tweening and makes appealing arcs even harder to achieve. The Sylvanas rig didn't include any options to switch the order, so I had to find an external addon to solve the problem.
The video on the right is a good explanation of gimbal lock that I watched a few months prior. It helped me to understand and recognize the issues I was facing, and gave me a good idea of how to solve them.
shot 0130 alternate
Shot 0130 was one of the most important shots of the film and one that I suspected would end up as a showreel piece. Because of this, it was important I got it right. However my process in producing the shot was perhaps slightly inefficient. From my initial concept and previz, the shot consisted of the Goliath slamming the hammer down, whilst Sylvanas performs a diving roll to safety. However once I began to animate Sylvanas' dive, I wasn't happy with how it was looking and tried searching for reference of a more reserved roll.
I ended up animating this version on the left where Sylvanas rolls across the ground in order to get behind the pillar. I spent a decent amount of time refining this animation only to change my mind once again, and decide that this new version lacked the urgency needed for the scene. Therefore I searched for better reference for a dive roll and tried my hand at my initial idea once again, and eventually worked up to a solution I liked.
I'm unsure what this situation taught me, other than indecisiveness costs time and effort, but I do believe it was important that I tried both my options to get the best result. I certainly wasn't happy with my first attempt at the dive, but seeing the regular roll in action at least clued me in to the fact that the dive roll was the way forward.
stepped preview bug
Very late into production, I was blocking one of final shots when I noticed some weird deformations with Sylvanas' hips. I had been working with the rig for several months at this point and had never encountered this.
Fearing that I had somehow broken the rig, I tried to reimport my reference but the issue persisted. I checked my previous animation files and they were all fine, but I couldn't figure out the cause for the issue in the current file. There are no controls that deform the hips in this way and the weird deformations would morph and pop depending on where the character moved.
It took me a while, but I eventually discovered that the reason for the odd deformations was due to the fact I was blocking with the stepped preview enabled. For some reason the evaluations on the hips gets confused when blocking in stepped and display in this weird way.
It was a minor issue, but one that did perplex me so I thought I should mention it here.
Overall, the animation portion of production was fairly uneventful. It took up most of my time, but the majority of my issues came from the face (which I've already talked about) or the exporting process (which I will explore in a future section). The challenges I faced were the same each time; trying to get consistent arcs, strong silhouettes and believable weight. But none were cataclysmic roadblocks, just an inherent difficulties of the animation process