Final Blog Entry Rationale - Iaven

So the time has finally come where I have finished the assignment. Honestly I never thought that the time would come where I have a fully rigged/textured model, with rendered animations.

From the first moment that I had gotten this assignment, I knew that I didn't want to model something as depressing as Olivia, I wanted someone fun and bubbly with bright colours. The inspiration that I got Iaven from was Alice in Wonderland, with the art direction and colours fitting my need for something positive. Iaven was inspired by multiple characters, Alice, The Mad Hatter, Bunny in a Waistcoat and the Cheshire cat. Iaven's design has changed quite a lot from the first concept to the last but his core identity as a small child with a bowtie was kept consistent.

With two classmates we got the idea to have a joined story with characters that would live in the same world. This was actually really fun to create the story and characters together with friends and it made the experience so much better!

During his development we had Peer Critique sessions where we would show our classmates our characters to get feedback on and such. I don't know why but I got a very large amount of positive feedback, this isn't necessarily a good thing though because when it was time to apply the feedback to our characters I didn't have much to change even though I thought a lot of things that I couldn't see needed to be changed. The very last peer critique session that I had was to judge our walk animations. Catherine helped me with this and actually gave a lot of helpful advice that I applied to my animation shortly after.

The modeling process was actually not as hard as I anticipated it to be, although some could argue that because my character was so simple and that is the reason for my easy life. I didn't do some parts of modeling such as wrist twists because I had sleeves, and some blendshapes because my character's face doesn't move for the most part, most notably the jaw. Instead I just applied one shape that allows my to manipulate it into different expressions.

For my walk cycle, I originally had the classic walk where the arms are swinging side to side and I made Iaven slough forwards slightly as well. To personalize this I wanted his walk to be very 'proper', as in a very straight back and smaller arm swings with upraised hands. Because of the way he looks this turned out extremely well and I was very happy with what I did. For the context of the walk he looks very smug so I thought that he just caught his sister (Catherine's Character) doing something naughty and he was bringing his sister home to his parents. As the walk evolved and I added in animation layers the story made less sense to the point where I just changed it to him walking through a meadow, and something catches his attention so he looks over his shoulder.

My background concepts consisted of various location such as the forest, town and inside his parent's floral shop. The location of his walk animation I think would be a meadow that connects his house and the secret carrot patch that he is walking towards, he sees something that he is scared of in the middle of his walk cycle, which is a bird flying past and he raises his arms in surprise. Once the bird disappears he resumes his normal walk cycle.

Overall this was a pleasant experience with 3D that I thought I wouldn't like at all, due to a not so nice experience with 3D at an animation camp few years back. The teachers that I got were all very helpful and I'm glad that all my questions didn't drive them all crazy (hopefully!).

Thank You!

Pre-Render Test

This is the pre-render test of my character walking. I had quite a few animation layers of him doing things but I decided that him walking and looking around felt in-character and looks quite cute as well. The lighting in this scene is not what was rendered, he was overly saturated and overexposed in my test renders so I had to lower everything quite a bit to the point where he looked like he was walking at night time in the maya scene! The lighting was a little bit of a struggle for me but I think I pulled it off in the end as he looks just how I wanted him to.

First Test Render

There was also this thing where I accidently set the export quality to 100 instead of 1, therefore the renders that was coming out took forever! I set it to render overnight and it only did around 34 in 11hours, whoops! I also had some help from the teacher in placing the shadows and whatnot. I did some test renders for the shadows and they turned out hilarious due to some parts of the character's polygons still visible!

[The final Render Quality/Lighting]

Minor Adjustments to Walk Cycle

Infographic

Hair Movement

I'm not sure if it looks a little heavy, but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

[EDIT]

With the teachers help I was able to offset the hair to allow it to follow the head movement instead of with it. She also helped me with a mirroring the Rotate X from the right hand to the left hand. With that I now need to do my wrists and make the bow bounce. It was recommended for me to bounce it along with the cog, then offset it in the graph editer using the infinity.

[EDIT 2]

Added in a bow movement.

Personalized Walk Cycle

The context in which I decided to put my character into walking. I was thinking that he has quite a smug walk as he is an older brother and wants to seem mature enough to his parents that he is capable of being responsible. I decided to make his arms not swing as far as they did in his regular walk cycle, because with the arm swings he looks a little too aggressive for his given personality.

Iaven Walk Cycle Fixed

With the teachers help I was able to move along some frames so that the arm swing would sync up with the opposite leg instead of the one next to it. This helps the character feel a lot more natural with his walk cycle. The next thing that I will do is make the hands less stiff by clenching them a bit.

How I was told to do it was through the graph editer which was very helpful.

I was told to select all of them and move them +=12 frames then I moved the three next to the last frame and move that to the front. This allowed for my arms to swing correctly.

Iaven Test Walk Cycle

Playblast from my maya file. I tried to do the key steps first and it turned out pretty decent.

[EDIT]

I tried to exaggerate some movements like making his bob lower/higher and making his feet go out further than when I originally key'd it. One thing that I am noticing is that some parts of his shirt and neck are not skinned properly - so I will have to go back to my original file and just fix a some parts of his skinning.

When I am happy with his basic walk I want to try giving him a little bit of personality such as making certain parts of his body bob as he walks such as his bow, hair and tail. I haven't done much with his hands yet but I will probably get to that sooner or later.

[EDIT]

So I realised far too late that my arms were not swinging in the correct direction. Therefore I had to redo the arms and the way that they swing but here is some funny clip that came out of me attempting to fix the right arm.

Iaven Pixel Art