Bob Poster #241

My Final Poster for Bob. 

Final #241

My final film can be found here. I rendered the Maya files using Mental Ray with both motion blur and raytrace shadows. I then used Premier Pro to edit my film together combined with sounds from Kevin Mcleod (Tango De Manza), Red Jim and Percy Duke (Carpet Walking and Balloon Stretch). Bob and Sally Sounds were made using Garage Band after recording both myself (Sally) and Christopher Pitt (Bob).

Climbing Sequence #241

Because Bob has to climb up a wall I decided to make a climbing sequence using the same principles as the run sequence. I needed to know the order in which the limbs and hips went. The first was from a neutral position to extend the first arm, then the second arm, then a leg then a leg and then the hips would move up. 

This frame from a youtube climbing video shows the leg moving up.

The body in the crouched position, after extending both arms and legs, just before moving the hips.

This frame shows the extending of an arm.

Shadows #241

To make Bob look more realistic and involved in his environment I decided to add ray trace shadows. 

To optimize the effect of the shadow I decided that the shadow should similar to the colour of the wall. This gave a much better effect. 

Run cycle #241

Because Bob does a lot of running I decided to use a run cycle. I used the Animators Survival book to help me figure out a beat to run to and the key poses needed. I decided to use a beat of 5 (9 for a full left right left beat). I knew that I needed a contact, pass position, and second contact poses. This meant that:
1. Contact
2.  
3. Pass Position
4.
5. Contact
with beats 2 and 4 being the fillers.

I then looked at two runners on youtube, a sprinter and a casual runner, to figure out when they moved their arms, feet, hips, shoulders and heads. I knew that when running at some point both legs are off the ground and looking at these videos helped me to realize when this was in relations to the other parts of the body and also which step (contact, pass, contact two) it would go on, if any.

This was the runner I used to determine hips (up and down movement) and legs. This frame showed me the first contact position, with the second contact position obviously being the opposite of this.

 This frame showed me what the pass position was. Unlike walking, the pass for running takes place with both feet off the ground.

This frame shows the full span of the arms. In a walk the arms are at their fullest in the down position. This frame showed that it was different for a run and that when the second foot was just about to come off the ground the arms were at their widest.

This frame shows that the contact position has the hips at their lowest point, a point which is not as low as in a walk, its subtle. It also shows that the head is forward with the hips also slightly back to create a forward motion for the torso.

The hips are going into their highest point in this frame. This frame is just before the last foot comes off the ground.

Animators Survival Book #241

As part of my animation Bob has to break free of his sign.  

He does this by pushing on it really hard making it flex until he forces the side down and jumps through it before it springs back into place.

I used the animators survival book to help with the movement. This book has been helping a lot with my movement, showing me that subtle shifts of weight or hips ect help to make the animation a lot better.

It also introduced the concept of using a scale of beats to do the animation too. This has meant thatt instead of animating willy nilly the various components then having them all out of synch or break if I need to move anything, I am animating all components on set key frames to a beat e.g. 2, 10, 15 ect.

I also used the book to help animate Sally's girlfriend. This was because she needed to be busty and she bounces. I read in the book about gravity and squishy things. When the body is down in a bounce the squishy stuff, in this case breasts, go up. This helped to give it a realistic feeling. The book also shows the use of shoulder movement in relation to arm movement. This is because our shoulders are not static when our arms move. I have animated all my models to reflect this.

Bobs Vision #241

Bob has a vision of what life with Sally would be like. In this I wanted him to picture key parts of their lives together. To portray this in my animation I have a series of still shots of these momentous occasions. 

 I have Bob proposing to Sally and her being excited and breathless. There is also a shot of Bob and Sally as an old man and woman. Bob also has grey hair but this angle does not show it.

I also have a shot of Bobs family with sally. In his eyes they're going to have two kids and be a happy family.

Testing #241

I decided to work on the scene where Bob and Sally meet. I am having trouble with my environment as my footage wont be viewed in maya unless the image plane is selected. To still be productive until I can get this issue worked out I have begun to focus on just my scenes which take place on signs. 

This is because these can be super imposed on top of the background at a later date.

I made a frame for Sallys sign and began to fix the scene where she and Bob meet. 

Lamberts and Blinns

I was going to render Bob out with a Blinn material type. However for close up shots Bob was very reflective. I have instead decided to make him a Lambert. Test renders have shown this is not as reflective. 

Test Render #241

I imported my environment for Bob and set him up in it as he would be in the final animation. I then made a test render to test time and aesthetics. 

The render came out well, but I am not sure if I like my environment any more. The lighting is weird and Bob looks very out of place.

Frame and Colour #241

I decided that Bob needed a frame to go with his sign. It better suited his location. I made the frame out of a wooden type texture. It looked good except Bob now didnt fit with his sign. So i made him a slight orangey brown colour (H15, S0.471, V0.745).

Playblast #241

I have edited together the playblast's from my scenes to create an outline of what my final product would be. It is very rudimentary having not had finished matchmoving for them. It shows blocking for my characters.

MatchMoving #241

Because Bob and Sally exist in the real world I filmed in a small boutique store in Upper Hutt called TigerLily. The store has a number of interesting wares and Bob and Sally existing in a place like this would make sense. I used Autodesk Matchmover and a tutorial on the resources drive to match move my image sequences.

Walk Cycle #241

Because Bob does a large amount of running during the animation I decided to give him a walk cycle. I read up on how walks work in my Animators Survival book and also watched youtube tutorials. I wrote notes on how a walk should look so that when I needed to put the walk together I had a better understanding. It also helped me to create a walk that was fitting for Bobs personality.

Shoulders, Knees and Toes #241

To fix Bobs shoulders, arms and legs I had to redo his weight painting. To do this I used screen shots of prior Bob models when the weight paint had worked. I used these as a reference guide as to where I should put the paint and how thick it should be. 

 

Re-weight painting Bob #241

 I thought about how I could get the weight paint done on Bob with his brand new legs without having to dedicate the time I have done in the past to re do this. I looked into how to copy skin weights. Oringinally I attempted to export the good weight paint and import it on the new model. For whatever reason this did not work. I looked up on the Autodesk Maya website that I needed to copy the skin weights. I found instructions on how to go about this. First I had to import new Bob into the scene with Old Bob. Once there I positioned new bob next to Old Bob and copied the skin weights. Because Old Bob had his hands in a down position and because they were placed next to each other the skin weights did not copy correctly. But it was progress. I then moved Old Bobs hands to the same position as New Bob and placed them in front and behind each other.

 I copied again. This time it was highly successful. The only problem I could see was that where his legs met his stomach, by this when his legs were moved a giant crease appeared which was an issue.  

 

 New Bobs arm was also a little strange at the shoulder joint issue but it should be easy to fix this.  

Sally is mostly done #241

Having had huge problems trying to get Sally to animate I was pleased with the playblasts that I got. I am going to cut the playblasts together in premier pro to create the film that I want to produce. These two films are from one scene when Bob first meets Sally. They are only of Sally's movements.

Animating #241

So I started animating. Its horrible. Everything keeps breaking. Bobs arms do not bend how they should which has caused me to need to fix them and ultimately led me to now need to redo his weight painting. Sally was working perfectly but she too is now having issues with her arms. I have spent so long trying to fix the issues but to no avail. I am at the point of wanting to give up, to have invested so much time and effort in to something that keeps failing you is horrible.

Despite this, I have a playblast to hand in. I have decided that I will do pose by pose and then fix my issues later. Since Bob is out of action I am concentrating on Sally's poses and will put Bob in later. Her arms are still not perfect and its hard to disguise this in the playblast.

IK Handle issues

When I went to animate Bob running I noticed that when I moved his leg handles his leg moved outwards instead of inwards. This meant he could not run or walk with bent knees which was a huge problem. I asked a tutor for help and learnt how to use both locators and pole vectors. When these were linked in to my ik handles the legs twisted at their hip joints at a ninety degree angle. This was now an even bigger problem. So I spoke to Byron. We looked at the way the bones were sitting and the bones were slightly splayed outwards which was affecting the way that the IK handles moved the legs. We moved the bones to a straight position and then moved the knees slightly forwards and the feet slightly backwards, hinting at the direction we wanted them to move. This was "how nature does it". Then I added new IK handles and the legs began to move in the direction intended. Unfortunately this meant that my weight painting was out and I had to now fix it. 

The middle #241

Neither Bob or Sally had a handle for their middle. I also found that when beginning to animate them it became very difficult to move their whole body. I added a handle for the handles, but unfortunately everytime I touched it it moved the entire model back to its original shape. I decided to get rid of these. Instead I created handles for the middles of the models, their center hips, and then selecting all the handles allows me to move them from position to position.

Fixing Bob #241

As I continued to weight paint Bob I realised that he kept deforming in specific places that were incorrect. I repeatedly tried to remove these before finally deciding that the incorrect deformations were being caused by not enough bones when the body bent and a reason I still couldn't figure out which was deforming the leg.

I then had to make a new skeleton which I did which had more bones in it. The new skeleton deformed a lot better than previously and required minimal weight painting which didn't take too long as I now knew which joints were connected to what skin ect making it very easy.

 After I did this, I finished Sally who I had been working on steadily the same as Bob. I added Curves which I parented to IK handles and their heads to add handles for me to operate when they were animating.

 I tested these and they worked fine.

Leg Weight Painting #241

The following images are a timeline of how I weight painted the right leg of my model. These images are show the process I used for all my weight painting. 

 1. Before weight painting, looking at where the skin is deforming most and at what angles.

 2. After weight painting the right hip/thigh, right knee and right foot I tested the leg again to see if it was deforming correctly. It showed lots of sections of the left leg deforming also, I believed this to be accidental weight painting on that surface while I was doing the right leg. I noticed the stomach, knee and ankle of the model was deforming a lot better than previously.

3. I went and weight painted the same sections of the right leg, including erasing paint marks on the left leg. I noticed that the left leg was a lot better but I had missed some sections of the leg. I also noticed that the knee was very linear and not smooth, i think this might have something to do with the geometry of the mesh. The stomach of the model seems to be bending awkwardly, I used my own body and attempted to put my body in the same position and I could not. I will try to smooth the stomach down but since the position of the leg is not natural and will not be in this position I am not too worried. I will check what it looks like from the side. 

4. I changed the weight of the skin on the hip and also how it went up the body. This changed the deformation of the stomach. I still noticed parts of the left left deforming funny. I think that when I mirror the skin weights from the left to right sides this will be taken care of.

Weight Paint Progress #241

As I weight painted I made sure to track my progress. I found that these images also helped a lot later, especially of the ones where I used the IK handles to deform the model. This was because they meant that when the skin didnt deform as it was supposed to I could use the image as a reference when I was weight painting to fix it.