Result

I enjoy working at this animation for facial expression very much. Comparing with the motion in last version (08 | Rendering And Nuke Color Correction), the squarely mouth problem was solved. All facial expressions are able to deliver the emotion accordingly. Even the smile one is still not since enough, it may needs much more mesh for me to set keyframe on cheeks and eyes, which is a long process for me to study on.

The whole progress is challenging but with a steep learning curve, especially for the skin area at the neck. It is not easy to define which is which to separate the upper part and lower part in paintweight tool. And when the motion is too exaggerated, it got distorted, which is obviously not the thing I want to see.

Reflection

At this self-practise, I need to bear in mind with uncanny valley as well. As my model is a human-like one, my motion is tend to be as humanize as possible, with other elements not quite finalized yet. It became a sense of unease when I reviewed my result. But still, it is quite a nice way for me to practise the the facial expression motion with shape editor in Maya.

For this week, I’ve slightly animate the facial expression as a test. Then I rendered my outputs with separated passes, which I then able to input in Nuke to adjust coloring. I’ve also learnt the concepts of passes in Nuke are actually quite similar to other 3D software, such as Cinema4D.
In this way, with similar methods, I can take the frames and then layer them using blending modes to rebuild the beauty pass in Nuke, so from there I can make my choices meticulously and adjust how the shot can be improved.

Facial Motion Test

Work In Progress

The facial expression are separated into various sliders in shape editor to animate them controllably.

Nuke passes

Result

In my color adjustment, I mainly adjusted my direct specular and indirect diffuse to add greenish in lighting for some spooky feeling. I didn’t spend too much time on it, it is just a first trial for me to understand how Nuke function and get familiar for my finger muscle with interface of Nuke.

Regarding to the facial expression, I suppose I should not animate all parts of meshes in same timing. I will definitely enhance the facial expression, especially the mouth movement, as it is too squarely in this version. As always, it is believed that subtlety is the key for all kinds of eye-comforting and realistic motion.

Result

This week, it is aiming to add subsurface to ears and face. As human ears are commonly pinkish with thinness that slightly showing blood vessels, subsurface scattering in this case can able work with texture in similar ways. Also it stimulates when light penetrates a translucent surface like a grape, and is absorbed and scattered.

Work In Progress

It is the work in process for my model. As ears are slightly transparent in their texture, I adjusted the subsurface to create a transparent texture for the ears. Meanwhile, the texture of red veins have applied, to provide a little bit details and imperfection to my model.

Here is my reference of how to show realistic eyes with correct lighting in subsurface.

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Furthermore, for subsurface of cheeks, nose and forehead.

Last but not least, adding bumpmap to lip.

Reflection

So far, I am quite satisfied with my result, I have learnt how to make my character realistic with imperfections. All of these slightly details create an unique identify for my character. Again, I believe the key to adding subsurface is subtlety with adding imperfection to create realistic face model. Overall, there are no perfect human face in reality world.

Result

This week I set keyframe for all mesh to the final design of each emotion. However I haven’t confirmed with the motion yet. Therefore, it is a result for some screenshot for each emotion first.

Work In Progress

Do you know how much muscles involved in one single smile ?
According to howstuffworks.com :

If we look at a smile that only raises the corners of the lips and the upper lip, it takes only five muscle pairs, or 10 total muscles, to do so. However, if the smile is further reduced to a robotic expression of just raising the corners of the mouth, then it takes only two muscle pairs (four muscles) to smile.

Therefore, I believed the smile facial expression is the most challenging facial expression to animate. The geometry for this model is not quite enough for me to adjust the minor expression.
In human being interaction, insincere smile can quite easy to identify by human being. That is our nature to read others facial expression for us to interact with others in this nowadays society. Therefore, the animation to modify a sincere smile is the most difficult one. I am not satisfied with my result, but I think it is a good start for me to improve my animate skill as character design is not my familiar subjects.

Reflection

For me, controlling the paintweight brush is quite challenging. Sometimes, my brush was not accurate enough for me to paint the skin area I targeted, and in turn it made me spend loads of time to smooth for a blurry area between and black and white area.

Next step, I would like to animate them in one final showreel to show all emotion. In this way, I can demonstrate how the rigging and shape editor helps me to animate the model.

Result

Try to imagine what would you do with a lost item, such as a wallet on street?
In reality, it is expected that pedestrian will pick it up cautiously with head turning to look around for its owner. However, in my character’s design, adding exaggerating body language to present his personalities, tipping toe to look around, and holding his arms on waist while observing the object, communicate to my audience with his personalities,
eg. conscientious and inquisitive, without a word of dialog. Being extreme is a way for me to follow the animation principle (Figure 6b.5) and add excitement in the motion for audience to understand my character.

With adding animation principles as below.

This week, it is the classwork for animating two types of weight, hard ball and soft ball in Maya.

With The Animator’s Survival Kit, every animators know bouncing ball on floor depends on spacing and timing. However, when it apply on stairs, I have to implement the textbook knowledge into practical situation.

Result

Hence, loads of eyeballing adjustments of work in this classwork, which I can hardly descript in written English. I observed my ball in loop play, and somethings were still not right to my eye. After over and over, finally this result is the most acceptable version as the types of weight can be easily identified between hard ball and soft ball.

Result

Maya was the software I had used it around 5 years ago, and I shifted to Cinema4D for a while, as I thought the Maya default render engine didn’t perform well even if I put so much efforts in it. However, after all these years, with Arnold renderer, I am quite surprise with its rapid respond and excellent performance. Despite Maya still crashed for tiny things sometimes, I think I feel more confidence to work with Maya again, as Maya is still the major 3D software in VFX industry. I don’t think there is any reason for me to not work hard to overcome it.

Finally, after weeks, all assets were put into the kitchen scene. What a nice kitchen dinning area for two! I am glad I did it!

Still, for these kitchen scene, I am not satisfied with the texture of cupboard, curtain and fire stove. The wall is too rough as well. Too much exposures around the windows. Loads and loads of things I can keep on complaining. However, within this period of Term 01, I have trained my finger muscle to get use to Maya. Moreover, I’ve kept myself focus in details with aesthetic judgement, which I think it is another endless topics for every artists and designers in this ever-changing industry.

It is a classwork for practising modelling and texture. Also, I learnt how to use maya camera to frame one single frame to output a snapshot.

Result

I think the noise for this scene is way to much, but lighting is quite easy to control. I only used three points lighting for my objects, especially for the glass bottle, the Arnold render is way more qualified than my expectation. Comparing with my experience a few years before, I only used physical render for my output, which is much more time-costuming.

Work In Progress

Then, I would like to add a metal spoon on table.

I would like to add this cupboard to my scene, some details have not decided yet. But I think it is a good practise for me to deal with Maya software, as it is not same as Cinema4D, even some concept may be familiar but I need to train my finger muscles to do all the shortcuts correctly.

Week 4 classwork

Building a water tap model and adding UV mapping on it

Result

Work In Progress

I would like to apply the texture to my model.

Reflection

I suppose I will not very keen on this topic of UV mapping in my future career, as it gave me such a huge frustration after hours and hours working time. Even I can fix my tap in this assignment, hard to imagine another task for UV again with aims of as distortion-free as possible.
As UVs are vital because they provide the link between a surface mesh and how an image texture gets applied onto that surface. They are basically marker points that control which pixels on the texture corresponds to which vertex on the 3D mesh. But still I am gonna say, I hope I can be a specialist in other fields other than UV mapping.