Initial notes for character
My idea for the character design is going to be one of my male characters from first year. I think it would be interesting and useful to develop the character further since the art style was simple. Things I could do is adding a face and change the clothing style, the reason is because the character´s clothing is floppy which might become difficult for me later when doing the animation. To begin with I want to keep focus on the character design and understand the development, rigs, animation etc.
Reference material
My character will mostly be based on the Overwatch character, Hanzo. Other games I will be referencing to are The Witcher 3, final fantasy and more. But I will also be looking into similar looking real humans that can be used as reference material to make it less original to Overwatch. The personality of my character should be confident which is going to be focused on the gesture. But he is also going to be a flexible and quick character.
The style should have a mixture of Japanese style and fantasy, the character should fit into a game world in the future. It´s suitable for the future because I find the genre fantasy suitable in the real world and because it´s unique clothes.
Technique and finish stage
I will be exploring the character by doing silhouettes. There are also a few areas I want to avoid which is anything that is a loose or floppy material. Once I have found my final silhouette, I will create an A pose that shows the front, back and side view. Overall, this is my idea for the character design so far.
For my research I have looked at the Overwatch character, Hanzo. Hanzo has the posture and the personality I want for my character. For the feature I decided to use Steven Yeun and Godfrey Gao as reference for the features. I think these two actors have an excellent role for being confident and cold characters, but it is also shown through their eyes as they are confident.
Final Fantasy, The Witcher and Assassin's creed were the games that had the most suitable garment. I also looked at traditional kimonos and other Japanese clothing's. The concept is to keep the traditional Japanese style but avoid the hanging clothes, that's where I replace it with close fitting clothing.
When creating the thirteen silhouettes I was personally looking for a confident posture. But after going through a few of areas about issues that could occur, I decided to skip the shoulder paddings and remove any weapons. I’m focusing to have a good body proportion due to the pivot bones when rigging and edge loops for deformed areas.
I personally liked 2, 3, 9, 10 and 13, I decided to go for silhouette 9. I removed any weapons or shoulder paddings that would affect the animation later. Silhouette 9 seems more confident as he stands straight, the chest is pushed outwards, and the other leg is pointed forward.
Creating the thumbnail was quite challenging because of the Japanese traditional and Fantasy style combination. During the process for the thumbnails I decided to find the most resembling clothing parts in each category. The Japanese traditional clothing has very loose clothing which would cause issues. On the other hand, the footwear, jacket, undergarment and the kimono belt appealed the most. For the fantasy the high boots, gloves, trousers and the belt. I varied with the clothing, as I progressed, I tried to avoid a few areas. I liked 4, 7 and 8, number 4 was the jacket that might be an issue eventually. Between 7 and 8 I preferred number 7's belt I feel it belongs to the futuristic world and looks modern.
For the colour exploration I personally liked number 3,4, 6 and 7. The selected ones mostly have blue hues because I find it calm but also a dominant colour when it comes the future (technology, sci-fi etc). Although it might seem too original, I chose number 3, the complementary colours are vibrant especially the orange hue. I would say the orange hue is also a known as creativeness and friendliness which would be suitable for the character in the futuristic environment. I could see my character in a futuristic city in Asia, high buildings with their Japanese architecture. An example could be the Shinto shrine where it’s further developed into a more futuristic style, such as the reference images below.
This is my final character and turn around, since I tend to get stuck in details very easily, I decided to create the face once I selected my final character. Godfrey Gao was the actor I was mostly referencing to when drawing the face, I thought his face structure would be more suitable for the character.
Getting the feedback about the turnaround I adjusted the body proportions to the correct size and create a simpler sheet when referencing in Maya. The turnaround before was not lined up correctly which could have caused issues when modelling in Maya.
I have used Maya software before, in first year. But this is my first time modeling a human character, to create the base (body) I followed the tutorial by James Taylor. The tutorial is well structured and easy to follow, I did learn how to use other tools, work in a smarter and effective way following this tutorial.
During the process of creating the different body parts I had some trouble modeling the hand. This was mainly because I didn't focus as much on the hand when making my 2D character reference. The areas I adjusted was the thumb rotation, the thumb should have been rotated to the front and not the side. I pretty much looked at how my hand would look like in a relaxed position, I tried to follow the structure and sort of solved the issue.
Another issue I had was the fingers, in the before GIF the fingers are too curved which made the fingers look tense. I modified the upper part of the knuckles straighter and adjusted the position of each finger so it wouldn´t be in the same axis.
Whilst finishing the feet I realised the toes wasn't necessary since my character will be wearing boots. I deleted the faces between the toes and merged the vertices together and adjusted the shape.
The final body turnaround of my character, it's not very accurate but it's not a big issue since clothes will be added later on. I also scaled the wrist larger since my character is muscular. Although I'm happy how the results turned out for my first time modelling a body.
Continuing to the most difficult part, the head. I had some issues with the character side turnaround since it wasn't lined up correctly with the front turnaround. The tutorial had some areas where he skipped some parts which made it confusing to follow, so I had to figure it out myself.
Throughout the video there was an issue at 12:36 where the edges are selected and then collapse edges. But the results came out differently compared with the video. I wasn't the only one that had the issue at 12:36, others who followed the tutorial got the same results.
The results made the nose detail to disappear which looks too smooth. There were also ngons around the nose and bottom of the nose. Getting some help, we used multi-cut and merged the vertices to get the quads.
I adjusted the nose shape by using my reference of the actor Godfrey Gao, the nose looks a lot better than before. The nostrils are a bit larger and not as thin as it was on the image above. I made the nose wider and moved the nose tip higher. At the end I used the creased tool to define the eyes and lips. I really like this tool as it brings everything together.
Once finishing the face I tried to get rid of the tris which ended up as a ngon. I merged vertices together and used multi-cut to get rid of the tris and ngon.
The head modeling tutorial (above) didn't include the ear details so I found a quick ear tutorial I followed. Since my character's hairstyle is a bun I decided to include the ear details. The ear might not be very accurate but it looks like an ear and that's what my goal was.
Finishing the other half of the face I duplicated and merged the vertices together, the issue that came up was a line across the middle of the head. I deleted the extra edges and it smoothed out the surface. There is still a line on the skull, since hair will be added it's not a big issue.
Merging the head and neck together caused some issues. My mistake here it that the head has more edges than the body, this means I had to add some extra edge loops to the body. These extra edges created hard edges where I had to adjust them back in place manually. Luckily, my character will be wearing clothes, so this mistake wasn't a big deal. However, this is something I need to plan in the future when merging different body parts together. Considering this is my first time modelling a head, I would say I'm quite happy with the results.
The final turnaround for my character, there could be some adjustments done on the character. Such as the calves, back and stomach etc. The edges appeared when I had to insert edge loops to the body when merging vertices to the head and body. I also think the head might look too small for the body, but I will be scaling down the arms a bit since I think it creates the illusion of a smaller head. I fixed the edges and vertices on the hands, arms and neck, those areas will be visible when the clothes will be on.
But so far, I'm satisfied with the body proportion as I hope it won't cause any issues when I come to the rigging part.
There were three trises on top of the boots, I was really struggling with this part as there was always a n-gon or tris left. After spending a long time fixing the trises I put a quad in the middle with multi-cut tool and connected each corner with the quad.
For the boots I extruded the faces from the feet and tried the get the high boots shape. It was quite difficult since I didn't have good reference for the shoes. For the boots reference I used my own boots as a reference. This allowed me to get an accurate perspective and shape. At the end I used the crease tool to define some areas such as the sole. I decided to skip the shoelace as it might cause some issues, I would have to create holes and then add the shoelace. And I’m not sure how I would connect the shoelace with the actual model. But if it were for a game the shoe laces would be a texture using baked maps.
Here is my final turnaround of the rest of the clothing. I came across some issues with the polygons on the lower and upper body which caused some ngons and tris. However, I did a cleanup with the cleanup options (mesh > clean up)
Jacket and trousers
I began doing half of the body and mirrored everything afterwards. I did some touch ups with each side so it wouldn't look too symmetrical. I used the same method for each clothing, I extruded the faces and adjusted the clothing shapes. Since the jacket and trousers are a bit baggy, I focused on bringing out some edges and used the crease tool to enhance the details.
Forearm garment
For the forearm garment I used the same method besides the crease tool. For the wire thread around the forearm I adjusted the vertices diagonal and used bevel to add some extra edges. Lastly, I extruded the faces and used the crease tool.
After going through different hair methods for my character from week 5. I have been also thinking about adding hair to the beard and eyebrows, this is if I have enough time. At first, I was planning to use the block method as it might be easier to create a bun for my character and there won't be much movement on the hair. However, I would like to explore and try another method such as using the planes. But I'm not sure how to use this method for the bun.
As I have been doing some research and looking into the different hair methods, I have decided to use the hair cards. It would be great to learn something new and especially when hair cards are used in the gaming industry. Using the hair card method will give polished results. Since the hair is in a bun, I think it will be easier to create the hair cards as it will go in one direction. But as I come to the actual bun, I will have to do some further research.
I have been looking into plenty of tutorials of how to create hair cards. This tutorials shows how to create xgen hair in Maya, this method was pretty easy and informative. I'm considering using this method as it gives great results and saves times. The image carousel are the results I got using the method, alpha and RGB images.
Since it's my first time creating hair, I had to follow several videos and see the different techniques and process. Looking at the various techniques there were the two videos I liked the most, they show the process of hair sheets, placing the cards, texturing etc. I also think the hair sheets will be easier to place since my character’s hairstyle is in a bun. To give it a more realistic and natural hairstyle I will need FlyAway cards, these are the hairs that sticks out and the other hair cards as well such as breakup cards. [5]
Bonus tool
I found a bonus tool in Maya that allows me to create a curve and add ribbon mesh. This creates the plane automatically on the curve. I found this method quicker and will allow me to get the correct shape for the hair faster as well. But I could also create it manually, although this might be useful when I create the bun to get the swirl faster.
I will be using these very helpful reference images to create the hair bun, I think there is a lot of information of the placement of the hair sheets, create hair textures, etc. I found these two tutorials extremly useful since it's very similar to my character hair bun. I also think the reference with the wireframes of the hair sheets will be a great guide to follow. And the other tutorial by Vadim Sorici that shows the how he creates the xgen hair geometries.
Bun - Select Torus - Selected object live (magnet icon) - CV Curve Tool - select curve and create ribbon mesh (Bonus Tool) - Duplicate special
After trying various techniques of creating a bun I decided to use the bonus tool where I used the "Selected object live (magnet icon)" on the polygon torus. The magnet makes sure the vertices is correctly placed on the edge of the torus. Using the same method as above, I selected the curve and created ribbon mesh and duplicated special 360 degrees. This was the most efficient way to get a nicely shaped bun.
Here is a turnaround of the hair cards, this took a long time to place out. I began with creating the 1. base hair, 2. mid-hair, 3. high hair, 4. Strip one 5. Strip two and 6. Flyaways. I followed the research and reference images I have done, the process went smooth which I’m happy with. Having areas with shorter and smaller hair will make the hair look realistic. Those hair cards are the smaller cards placed on my characters.
Before placing another card, I had to UV map one plane first before duplicating it. A big mistake I did was creating a new plane everytime which created a mess in the UV editor. I had to restart everything which I wasn't happy about, on the other hand I learnt from my mistake. The second time went a lot smoother and gave me better results.
1. Diffuse - 2. Ambient - 3. Normal Map - 4. Specular
Left image are the textures I used for my hair, these textures were placed on lambert material and the hair were created in Xgen with an Arnold hair material. I had to redo the hair so many times as the plane kept getting glitched and I couldn't undo it for some reason. But this was also a process to experiment the hair and learn Xgen properly.
All these hair textures will bring out the level of the hair, noise, bring out details, this will make the hair look realistic. This was also a long process to create since I had to find the correct shape I wanted. This was done by using modifiers in Xgen, I used noise, clumping and cut.
I inserted the hair textures which came out very well, I had to duplicate a few cards to fill in the bald areas. The filter type (Shade > Colour > Filter Type) it was set to Quadratic, this made the hair have more bald areas and made the hair look less realistic. I experimented with the different filter type options and found filter type: off which gave a more realistic and less gap between the hairs, it also made the hair look smoother.
Before the final hair there were a lot of misplacements, the adjustments I did was rotate the hairs, scale them larger and smaller and make a couple of hair stick out more.
My final hair turned out quite well, the process I chose have been planned very well considering the research I have done. It took me a long time to understand the process of making the hair cards since I had no understanding of it at all. There are still a few bald areas showing but it can be fixed by UV mapping and texturing by using a soft black brush to hide those visible areas. Other improvements I could have done is maybe adjust the flyaway to get the realistic hair appearance.
Finishing my character I did a cleanup using the cleanup option to locate any ngons. I had a couple of ngons around the temples on the face, armpit and a few other areas that can be seen on the left image. Although I ended up with a few trises, I didn't manage to get rid of them. The biggest reason these issues appeared is due to the extra edges on the face, this caused issues when merging with the body.
Second clean up I did were the trises, there are a few of them left but it shouldn't be a huge issue. I tried to get rid of them but didn't manage to. Third clean up is to make the topology look cleaner and not as messy. Since I have worked so much in smooth preview I never thought about it until receiving some feedback how the it could affect the deformation around the hips such as example. Since the edges aren't in a straight line it could cause some issues during my character moves, this could cause another face to stick out weirdly.
Going through my character, the topology was quite bad. This could cause issues when animating with bad topology, especially bad deformation. If my character were to deform such as the hips or pelvis, the area would most likely start to crease because the edge flow doesn't support it good enough. [10]
I will be fixing the edge flow, I didn't pay much attention to it or knew it could cause these issues. This is also something new I have learned and from my mistakes. This is something I will definitely consider thinking about next time modeling.
Receiving some feedback about the topology of the face, the bad topology could have caused weird stretching on the face. I retopologize the face by inserting an edge around the nose and mouth area since trises and ngons kept appearing while doing the clean up. I also used the quad draw relax tool which helped me make the polygons shape even.
Once I fixed the topology I started setting up the rigging by following this tutorial. The human IK comes in a T-pose which I didn't know in first place, I regret not making my character in a T-pose. Although I followed the tutorial [11] which switches the poses from A-pose to T-pose.
In the definition tab the arms kept getting a warning sign that the skeleton isn't straight and it could be causing issues, this was because the skeleton was in a A-pose. This was fixed by making a copy of the A-pose skeleton and switch it back to a T-pose which removed the warning. Once binding the skin and setting an animation frame the character was set into a T-pose.
1. Change A-pose to T-pose
2. When binding skin I didn't select the whole skeleton, only the arm which was the only join that had colour.
3. I restarted the rigging and selected the whole skeleton and bind skin, the hip joints controls everything.
When doing the rigging the largest issue was the shoulders and clavicle (image above). This was affected because of the loose clothing my character is wearing. I set value to 0 and removed the painted areas in the lats.
On the left before image the arm is folding inside the shoulder which deforms weirdly. I painted the skin weight where the highest value is on the deformed area, but I had to smooth it out a lot since some areas might deform weirdly when the arm rotates. It also made it more difficult since my character is wearing a loose jacket.
I had some issues around the head and neck area, this was due to the hair. The hair got hidden inside the object which made vertices point out when rotating. And I wasn't able paint the skin weight as wrong vertices got selected. I used hammer skin weights which gives smoother deformation and prevents vertices from moving.
When rotating the foot, it deforms incorrect and stretches. The adjustments I did was painting skin weight on the whole ankle, on the before image the middle part of the foot was painted. In this case the middle part doesn't deform at all. Considering the material of the boots the deformation won't be as heavy, because of the height of the boots and leather material gives less flexibility.
When bending the fingers it would fold inside the hand. I tried smoothing it and move the vertices but nothing helped. Although there should be individual fingers moving, which I haven't done yet.
Following Autodesk tutorial caused some confusion when painting skin weight as they paint all fingers and then individually. After getting some help I painted each finger individually and the outcome was much better. Although on the hand GIF (right), the knuckles isn't smooth which locks the position of the knuckles and makes them look pointy.
After spending lots of time on the fingers I managed to make them work even though it’s not perfect. I think this is the closest I can manage to make the fingers work properly. I personally think fingers are the most complicated to paint skin weights on. I kept getting the same issues as above and when doing mirroring it wouldn’t mirror, the other skin weight would disappear. I had to do both left and right hand manually, even though it takes a lot of time, it allowed me to get a more accurate skinning on the fingers.
I still think the fingers look a bit weird, issues I noticed are the fingertips that are too long. This is something I will keep in mind for next time. Although, I'm glad I kept trying to make the fingers work and got a better understanding which area deforms. I went back and forward between the frames if I could see any issues on the deformed areas, then I selected the vertices and used the add or smooth tool to get the correct adjustment.
Feedback
Doing some preperation for the mocap I got some feedback about my character addressing any issues. The geometry, propotions etc seemed to be good, although I had a few issues with the skinning. The wrists, shoulders and elbow would influence the neck, to fix the issue I selected the vertices that influenced the neck and used hammer skin weights. This tool gives a smoother deformation and gives similar weight values as the near vertices [14].
Another issue is where the neck joint was placed too far down. At this point I thought I would have to unbind the skin and redo everything. Doing some research, I found a tool named "Move skinned joints", this allow me to move the skin joints without causing any issues. I selected the neck joint and selected the tool "Move Skinned Joints", in the attributor editor I couldn't change the value. The issue is because the attribute was locked, by right clicking it would unlock attribute and allow me to change the value.
Continuing with the issue, luckily, I tried to import my model to Motion Builder and came across this issue before the Mocap session. When setting the source: Stance the head and neck joint were very low.
Trying everything I finally managed to fix it the issue. I had to: unbind the skin (keep history) > Delete control rig > Non-deformer history. I also I deleted the ctrl_reference and group in the outliner.
Continuing from there I followed the tutorial A-pose to T-pose LINK [20]. The reason is when deleting the control rig, the warning sign came up on the definition tab. Therefore, I had to redo the A-pose to T-pose to get rid of the warning sign. Luckily the joints were still in the same place since I kept the history, so there wasn’t too much work. Although this was a very complicated and weird situation, I'm glad I managed to solve the issue, this was also a repetition for me and get a better understanding of the software.
Character description
Takishima is a male character who is a samurai, his goal is to protect his family from enemies who wants revenge. He is a silent character as he wants to stay hidden from everybody besides his family. With his tall and heavy body he can still make fast movements and his other abilities such as stealth, climb and his sword skills to defeat his enemies.
To get a better idea of my character movements I looked into animation examples and video games such as Sekiro. I will include some samurai movement such as attacks to give my character more personality and put him in some action. I also looked into movies but found it quite difficult as the attacks where covered by the actors most of the time.
Below is my Move list, I added some GIFs on the left side that could be useful when doing the motion captures.
Explanation - reference
Standing - Heavy breathing, shoulders going up and down
Crouch - Example how low the character is going to crouch but different placement for the feet
Jump Kick - Similar Jump Kick but less off the high kick
Jog - Quite similar for the jog and sword on right hand
Attack - Start pose is standing, right leg will be forward and the swing will start from left to right diagonally
Importing my character to motionbuilde I came across the warning sign again even though everything was completely fine in Maya. I think this was because I exported all as an FBX and opened in MotionBuilder, in this case I would have to define the skeleton which created this warning definition tab. Trying the other option in Maya I sent my character to MotionBuilder which worked completely fine. This option was also better as it already has set up the skeleton for you.
Doing my first attempt setting up the market set I came across the issue were the toe would rotate to the side. I gave it another try and did my second attempt with the marker set and made it more precise. Even if this was my second attempt, I got a much better understanding what each marker meant and how to navigate through Motion Builder. Following both LinkedIn Learning and the tutorial from the module site I feel like I have learnt a lot in such a short time.
For some reason I came across this issue where my actor ended up in a sitting position, I'm not sure why this happened and couldn't solve the issue. I saved the file when everything was working the way it should but this issue came up.
Instead I decided to restart everything and do the third attempt with the markerset. This time was a lot better as I scale and moved different body parts which made it more accurate. There was also another issue with earlier file where I had an extra sphere in the scene (next to the feet).
I created a plan to keep everything organised as I feel like things got too messy and confusing. Using the guide to help me through the process as I also have the prop included. Most of the actions have the same issues which can be adjusted in motionbuilder, although the crouch is going to be the most complicated one.
Before doing the trim I imported the prop which will be for the attack and jog action. I downloaded a free sword asset from turbosquid and rescaled it. The blade length is from the hand to the floor, this is the real life scale as well which is around 80-90 cm.
Starting with the Idle, the most common issue with all my animations are the head and neck. For some reason the neck and head must be rotated, I tried to retarget the head and neck, but it was only for the neck which extends it. The actor's arm looks very stiff as the shoulders are too low and arms too far apart. On the “idle-after” I made him look more relaxed by lowering his arms, arms closer and head in a natural position. Having the heavy breathing is important as my character would be jogging and running all the time in the environment.
I retargeted a few areas where the hip level was too low since my character has a larger scale than the actor. The shoulder position were too low which also was done by retargeting, but this could be done with the control rig as well.
Receiving some help, I deleted some frames from the base animation where the feet created weird noises, this method worked since the baseanimation layer have keyframes on the whole animation. The largest issues were the spine, head and neck which was rotated weirdly. The crouch animation is one of the biggest issues of all the animations, at this point I will probably come across similar issues and the workflow will be easier.
Throughout the whole walk cycle process, I had a couple of issues with the knees, shoulders and feet. With the control rig I sort of managed to improve the walk, I might have to do further adjustments as I feel like there is still something wrong with the knees and feet. From the original animation the right leg moved correctly whilst the left one had a bend on the knee. This led to knee popping which tend to happen often when I work with walk cycles, this must have been caused because of the hip level and the feet too far away. I’m quite satisfied with the walk as I feel like the actor did well with the exaggerated walk.
When locking Z, the character won't snap to the skeleton, this issue appears with walk cycle and jog as well. Receiving some help, it wasn't necessary for the jog kick to lock in Z or loop as it's not a "walk cycle". I had to make sure the start and end pose were the same, however the start and end position isn't the same which could be an issue, however it's not necessary for this assessment as it will get very complicated.
I adjusted the start pose and copied the full body pose control from start to end. I struggled a bit with the x, y, z and rotation options in the pose controls as I find it quite confusing. But I played around with it until I got the correct start and end pose.
There were some issues when the character was jumping in the air but using Zero key will go back to the original frame.
There weren't a lot of issues with this jump kick animation, it was mostly the noises around the feet.
With the same issue I tried to use an old method to make my character lock in place, this is the exact same steps as the walk cycle. The old method is something Jacqui showed me 1 to 1. I didn't manage to make it work but gave it a try.
Although I got the same start and end pose by copy/paste in pose controls. But once I tried to fix the translation in Z hip to create an ease in and ease out, I started having issues. The character was in one position, but the feet was floating forward, I tried to adjust the feet translation, but it didn't work.
Even if I didn't manage to make it work, I sort of got a better understanding of the curve. However, I will be using the demo file Jacqui sent me only if I couldn¨t make it work.
For the hands I posed the fingers to grab to katana sword, I also did a spread the fingers a bit on the other hand. Since my character is running, the hand will remain the same. I found this easy besides that the fingers FK was out of position, luckily this didn't affect anything.
The jog cycle had a lot of issues, I was mostly struggling with the knees as it was rotated weirdly and would twist inwards which made the knees pop. The feet are also a going outward and are twisted but not noticeable unless you look closer. I would say that I found the crouch and jog cycle the most complicated ones when trying to edit the data as there were so many issues in most of the body parts. Looking at the before jog cycle, the neck and head position is not correct at all, when adjusting I kept getting the noises which looked very unnatural. I went back and forward until I got a smooth animation. I decreased the arm swing as it deformed in a weird way and didn't want so much exaggeration around the arms.
For some reason I had issues trying to the the start and end pose as it didn't allow me to use the rotation, x,y,z in the pose controls. As I figured it out I understood I had to have the full body active to be able to use the controls.
For the attack animation I used the end pose for both start/end pose. This was because it would be a smoohter animation when the character going back to place. As my character has an antipication in the beginning his right foot slightly moves his foot to the side, it's not visible on the GIF below.
Finishing the last animation, I felt like the process was so much easier and quicker since I already finished 5 animations beforehand. The attack animation didn't have a lot of issues besides the toes and head, I did add hand poses as I found it necessary for this animation especially when he is holding a sword. Even though I have finished all the animations I feel like there is still a lot to learn. I have a better understanding how MotionBuilder works, but there are still so much to learn. But those weeks I have been working with the software I understand most of the process, which is also a repeated process for all the animations. This was the most complex part during this module as there were so many new stuffs to learn and try to understand MotionBuilder and the whole process itself.
A few weeks back I imported my character to see how it would look like in Unity. My character wasn't smooth in Maya because I never smoothed it, neither in MotionBuilder. Since I found this method a few weeks back I decided to go for this method, I managed to smooth my character in Unity with the model settings (left side). Another reason I didn't want to smooth my character in Maya is because it would reach a high polycount.
For the attack and jog animation I had to adjust the sword placement as it would go inside the character. This was done through seperate animations. I found this quite easy as I have used the animation window before for other projects, so this went quite smooth.
I tried to find a solution to hide and show the prop through different animations. I couldn’t find any tutorials online or forums related to it. Trying to figure it out myself I created a separate Sword animation consisting of 4 layers. I want the sword to show for the attack and jog animation and hide the sword for rest of the animation. To hide it I just added a scale property and set the value to 0.
The tricky part here was to make sure the sword only appears for the jog and attack animation. I tried the bool parameters and imported the sword animations to the Character animator using transitions to the HideSword and ShowSword.
There is probably an easier method but what I did was. As example "Attack" has 219 frames, in this case I changed the "Swordshow_attack" to 219 frames in the animation window. This meant once attack animation plays the sword will appear at the same time. Since the first three animations (idle, crouch and jumpkick) are without the sword I put the frames together. I set the same frame for sword and the character.
I went through all the animations, all animations were fine besides the crouch animation. The right arm went inside the leg, going back to Motion builder I adjusted the arm and elbow and is had a weird bend. I also move the knee inwards as it deformed strange.
Here are my final animations imported to Unity, I am quite happy how the animation looks in Unity and how I managed to enable and disable the sword. Since my character doesn't go all the way back (Jump kick animation) to the original position the character moves forward a bit. I added some directional light and created a box using 3D planes in Unity so the scene wouldn't look too empty.
This assessment has been a long process where I learnt to model a human character, rig and animate. My goal for this project was to understand the process in these three different subjects, rigging and animating were the areas I didn’t have much knowledge in. I was able to achieve these areas through research, tutorials, reference, feedback and help from tutor.
For this project I chose a samurai character from my first year where I developed it into a realistic 3D human character. Basing it on a real human actor, Godfrey Gao for the face features and game character Hanzo from Overwatch due to his personality. I think the actor and Hanzo have an excellent role for a confident and cold actor due to their appearance. This character would fit into a future game world, therefore I chose the genre fantasy as it suitable for the real world and their unique clothes. I decided to combine the traditional Japanese style and fantasy garments, to keep it realistic with the traditional garments. Since the Japanese garments have loose clothing it could cause issues for the animation, clothes fitting clothes were the option. The concept was to keep the traditional Japanese style such as kimonos but avoid the loose clothing, for the close-fitting clothes I used references from the game's Final Fantasy, The Witcher and Assassin’s creed. Coming to the final concept the feedback was extremely helpful as I don’t see my own mistakes sometimes. The scale for the body proportions were incorrect which could have caused issues if I were to use as a reference in Maya.
The beginning of the modelling process wasn’t very difficult as I have experience in Maya. However, this was my first time modelling a human character which was challenging as I don’t have great knowledge about human anatomy. During this development there were some stuff wished I could have done better, especially planning the process. An example could when merging the head with the body, the head had more edges than the body, this caused tris and n-gons and hard edges around the body. Throughout this whole modelling process, I followed various tutorials, very informative, learning and made me work efficient.
The hardest part in the modelling area were the hair cards, I had no knowledge about the process. The reason I made this decision is because I wanted something challenging and hair cards are used in the game industry. I learnt how to create hair textures with xgen in Maya which I still find very confusing, I would give this another attempt in the future and learn the plug-in. This wasn’t the perfect process as I did quite a lot of mistakes, although my second attempt went smoother and gave me better results. Relying myself on the tutorials and references I was able to achieve something I thought I wouldn’t be able to do. I’m pleased with how the hair turned out for my first time.
Approaching the final step of the modelling, the cleanup tool made me realize me see all my mistakes. I learnt that working in smooth preview could affect my deformation, this also caused a bad topology. With the feedback I need to think about the edges and make sure they are in a straight line, otherwise my character will deform weirdly and stretch. It’s also something I need to keep in mind for other projects and make sure to have a decent topology when I model something next time.
I’m not familiar with the human IK besides that I have used the human rig before. When setting up the rigging I regret not making my character into a T-pose since the human IK comes in that way. Although I got to learn how to set up the rigging from an A-pose and T-pose, the reason I went to the A-pose it so I could have a better vision how the garments would fold and sit. I didn’t do enough research for the rigging and skinning area which slowed down my process. I struggled painting skin weights especially around the fingers, but also because the fingers had the wrong measurements. At the end I managed to sort it out with some help and got a better understanding how specific areas deform using the key frames and smooth tool.
The most complicated of this project was animating in Motion Builder as it was my first time. Since the actor had a different physique compared to my character, I found it difficult with the marker sets as I had issues with the scaling. Most of the actions had the same issues which were the head and neck, the neck joint was placed in the wrong position which could have affected the outcome. I understand the process but not the functions in MotionBuilder, I found the x,y,z rotation and position in pose controls strange. I struggled locking character in place, I had to use, and old method Jacqui showed me and give it an attempt. At the end I used the demo file since I didn’t manage to make it work, I’m still glad I gave it an attempt even though it was very difficult. Even though I have completed all the animation it’s still very complex for me and a lot to learn. The process was repetitive which contained of retarget, trim clips, re-position character and loop. Those weeks I have been working within the software I learnt understand the process but there is still so much to understand in MotionBuilder.
Overall, I’m pleased how I have approached the assessment as I have learnt a lot about the pipeline. It has been a successful project, although I could have improved my planning for the process, so I don’t cause unnecessary issues. I could have made sure the head didn’t have more edges than the body as example. But learning this way will develop my skills and I will use this approach for my future projects.
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