This week I polished the body mechanic animation. What I mainly did was fixing some poses and smooth motion curves.
There are two things that I have to notice.
First, the character’s hip and chest account for 50% of the rotation of the character’s body to achieve the correct rotation angle.
Second, IKFK switching is best done in one frame, which makes animation control easier. And the data in IK bones can be copied to the FK control curve to ensure motion consistent.
Here is my final animation:
After watching so many films, when someone said I need to choose 3 movies to talk about, the first choice came in to my mind was the Blood and Ice Cream Trilogy.
Edgar Wright is one of my favorite directors. I also watched the Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Ant man, and Baby Driver. I really like his absurd comedy way to express various themes.
The first work of the Blood and Ice Cream Trilogy is Shaun of the Dead. The protagonist, Shaun, is a guy who can’t accomplish anything. He spends all day in the bar. He has no sense of responsibility. His only friend is Ed, who has also accomplished nothing.
But this day the whole city has undergone serious changes. Zombies have invaded, and anyone who is bitten by them will turn into zombies. After recognizing the situation, Shaun plans to save his mother and girlfriend, and kill the stepfather who he doesn’t like and has been bitten by the zombie. He imagined it very well, and at this time he was still the loser who thought he could easily achieve it by just talking casually.
However, when Shaun and Ed departed, they realized that everything was different from what they had imagined. First, the stepfather did not turn into a zombie, and the girlfriend was still with his hated friend. After experiencing a series of chaos, Shaun ‘s stepfather died, and his last words had a great impact on Sean. This is how he started to be the leader. He would yell his dissatisfaction with Ed, who was confused, and he would direct everyone to imitate the behavior of zombies to protect himself, and even stand up to save people after Ed attracted the zombies.
And when his mother was also infected, Shaun finally grew up, he could tell all his dissatisfaction, sincerely express his love for his girlfriend and his concern for friends.
This is a story about responsibility.
The second work is Hot Fuzz. Nicholas Angel works as a senior police patrol in London. It seems his greatest pleasure is catching thieves and solving crimes. For this reason, he became the most dedicated and capable officer in the police station. But this aroused the jealousy of the sheriff, so he was transferred to a remote and peaceful town as a policeman.
There have been no serious crimes in the town for decades. Nicholas was very depressed there, he felt that his ability to capture thieves had no room for display. What annoyed him even more was that Danny, the son of the chief of the police station in the town also came to join in the fun and became his partner. This new partner was extremely troublesome, asking about police officers in big cities all day long. Nicholas was worrying about the town. When the trivial affairs and the stupid partner around him, a case happened in the town, Nicholas smelled the opportunity to show his fists, and the thrilling battle began.
In this film, Nicholas and Danny influence each other. From the beginning of the stranger to the last good friend, Nicholas also learns how to relax himself, and Danny has also become an excellent policeman.
This is a story about society and justice.
The last work is The World’s End, which is my favorite in this series. It can be called drinking to the end of the world. The story is like the title of the film. In order to make a promise when he was young, Gary King, who is overly indulged in alcohol, finds his friends who now have their own families and careers. They meet to return to their hometown of Newton Haven to try again. Find the happy hour of 5 people, 12 bars, and 60 beers all night.
At first, the protagonist Gary’s paranoia disgusted everyone. Everyone lived their own lives. Happiness and difficulties coexist. Gray didn’t have a family, but he was also very unhappy. The only thing that made him happy just a hangover when they were young. Sometimes I don’t understand gray’s madness. He is just a lunatic. And tt was confirmed later, and it really is. But he didn’t want to be surrounded by a bunch of mental illnesses and lead a boring life. This is a story of nostalgia and friendship. After the unfriendliness and contradictions between the characters are gradually enlarged, the whole movie is full of grievances and trivialities.
At this time, the sudden situation changed the tone and the risky drama was staged. The process of fighting with robots adds a touch of thrill and fantasy to the movie. Everyone has become united because of the robot, and when they are in danger, they naturally forget some trivial things. In the end, the Gray and his friends really defeated the threat.
However, the Gray’s stubbornness and madness angered the aliens, and the aliens launched a large-scale electromagnetic disaster. The earth’s civilization has been extinct and returned to the dark Middle Ages. The ending is good for Gray, but it is a disaster for the earth. But I think the what the director wants to say is that instead of becoming a screw of the mechanical society, even if it is gilded, it is better to fight for the freedom of your heart.
Every story in the Blood and Ice Cream Trilogy has something in common, that is, persistence and devotion to a certain feeling. “Shaun of the Dead” insists on responsibility and friends, “Hot Fuzz” insists on justice, ” The World’s End ” insists on youth. Each of the three stories has a sentimental opening, followed by an unbelievable situation, and after a happy battle, there is an ending that still sticks to the heart. No matter what the world becomes, the protagonist walks better on the original path in his heart. This is more directly expressed in the ending of ” The World’s End “.
About my assignment brief, I have no specific ideas yet. I was playing Detroit: Become Human recently, and I have always been interested in interactive movies. (Quantic Dream is the best!!!)
For me, I can do some real-time technology research, but I am also very interested in the narrative strategy of this kind of work. I think I can decide after reading some more articles. The following link is the article I read.
This week’s task is body mechanic. As usual, I first need a good reference, and I also want to make some cool-looking actions this time. In the end I chose an action called macaco in which the character flipped back with one hand.
In order to make the reference clearer and coherent, I edited the two movements together for easy observation.
This is my reference video:
After analysis, I think the difficulty of this action is mainly the switch between IK and FK. When the character moves from standing to supporting the ground with one hand, his feet are in IK state and his hands are in FK state because at this time the feet must be fixed on the ground and the hands have not yet reached a fixed point of support.
In the latter part of the action, the character supports the ground with one hand and both feet are off the ground. At this time, the character’s right hand in contact with the ground must be switched to IK, and the feet must be changed to FK.
In the last part of the action, the hand become FK again and the feet become IK.
Therefore, it should be noted here that during the IKFK switching process, the matching of the character’s action can not show the incorrect movement.
At the beginning, I wanted to find a suitable plug-in to use. I tried the universal IKFK Switch tool. It has a good performance in converting FK actions to IK actions, but when IK actions are converted to FK actions, satisfactory results are often not obtained. .
But I also found out that I can manually copy the bone parameters in IK state to FK. Although this operation is more troublesome, it can be FK action or exactly the same as IK action.
IK FK key frames：
The process of Blocking is the same as before. I chose the basic key frame, which is based on the change of the movement trend. For example, 1-10 frames are hip down, 10-16 frames hip up and so on. The principles to be concerned about in this animation are Timing, Arcs, Slow in&Slow out, Stretch&Squash, Overlapping.
This is the blocking animation I did:
In the spline stage, I found that there are some small actions that need to be added, which should belong to the secondary action in the principal, which can add more details to the entire animation. And the timing of the entire action needs to be adjusted, and the part that needs to be more prominent.
This is my spline animation:
In addition, I also made another action blocking. I tried to connect the two actions, but I found that simple connection of this kind of action is not enough. The overall movement trend and power point need to be designed to make the animation appear coherent. I will continue to try.
This is my blocking animation:
This week I learned how to track object in 3Dequalizer. The task was to match the Ironman helmet to the head of a man looking at his cellphone on the street.I am familiar with the operation of 3DE through the study last week. The first steps are the same as before. First, you need to track the camera trajectory and select some clear points in the foreground, middle ground and background.
The difference is that you need to know the camera is fixed, so you need to change the positional camera constraint in the camera settings, and select the fix camera position constraint. In this way, the correct calculation result can be obtained.
Because the camera is at a fixed position and there is no obvious rotation, I did not need to choose a lot of tracking points to get good results.
The next step is to track the object. The task is to match the model of the ironman helmet to match the movement of the man’s head, so the tracking points should all be on the man’s face. Here we need to create a new point group and choose clear points on the man’s head. The principle of selection here is basically the same as the camera one.
After that, we imported the helmet model into 3DE. Then you need to match the tracked points with the model one by one. The function used here is Extract Vertex. This is the effect after matching.
Adjusting the position and rotation of the model so that the helmet can wrap the man’s head. It should be noted that the scale should not be changed here, because if the size of the model is changed, it will affect the next step. The size of the model should not be changed during the entire process.
Then it can be exported to Maya and nuke. In Maya, the original obj model is replaced with the fbx model to make animation.
Finally, import the rendered sequences into nuke to get this.
Afterwards, some incorrect parts need to be deducted by roto. Here I mainly show the final tracking result.
Joseph Campbell is an American writer who studies comparative mythology. In his book “Heroes with a Thousand Faces”, he proposed the prototype of the “monomyth” narrative model. That is, the core formula that the heroic adventure must follow: separation ⇀ initiation ⇀ return. It is divided into seventeen stages.
For decades, Joseph Campbell’s analysis of mythological stories has attracted writers on literary, television, and film platforms, providing a well-known guide for the characters’ journey to begin-and the many stages of challenges and conflicts they are responsible for overcoming.
Chris Vogler later simplified those seventeen stages into twelve with his book, The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers.
His version compressed Campbell’s seventeen stages to better adapt to the narrative process of novels and scripts.
Dan Harmon came up with an algorithm of sorts that compacts a story’s narrative into an eight-stage circle theory — similar to what Campbell and Vogler developed in their own writings, but a bit more accessible and broad.
1-A character is in a zone of comfort,
2-But they want something.
3-They enter an unfamiliar situation,
4-Adapt to it,
5-Get what they wanted,
6-Pay a heavy price for it,
7-Then return to their familiar situation,
8-Having changed.
Harmon then goes into detail about what each stage means, and also classifies the words for each stage into a single word to simplify more for the author.
That’s what I wrote while reading an article called How Screenwriters Can Use Dan Harmon’s “Circle Theory of Story.”
For Dan Harmon’s theory, I’d like to dissect his Rick and Morty, which is one of my favorite animations.
When I saw his theory, I immediately thought of Rick&Morty’s season 1 episode 6.
The story of this episode is very clear. Morty wanted to win Jessica’s love, so he asked Rick for help; Rick made a potion that would make anyone like Morty (except his immediate blood relatives), but the flu caused the potion to spread. In order to solve the crazy suitor, Rick twice created the antidote, only to turn all mankind into a monster “Cronenberg”. Rick chose to find another parallel world, where Rick and Morty were already dead, and the two replaced Rick and Morty in this world and continued to live.
Although the story is simple, the structure is fully in line with Dan’s theory.
First of all, the first point, The character is in a zone of comfort. It was a flu party in school, Morty tried to invite Jessica as always, but failed as always.
After that, they Want Something, Morty found Rick and proposed that he wanted a potion that would make others fall in love with him.
3, They Enter an Unfamiliar Situation. Morty came to the party with the potion rick made for him and successfully made Jessica fall in love with him, but an accident happened. Jessica’s flu caused the virus to spread rapidly among the crowd, making the party uncontrollable.
4, Adapt to It. At that moment, rick ran to the school to rescue Morty and explained what happened.
5, Get What They Wanted. What They Wanted here is actually that Morty got Jessica’s love, but the price paid is the madness and mutation of people all over the world.
6, Pay a Heavy Price for It. Rick studied various potions, but in the end, they didn’t work, and people all over the world became the monster “Cronenberg”. In the end, Rick and Morty can only give up this world and go to a parallel world.
7, Then Return to the Familiar Situation. Rick and Morty traveled to a parallel world, where they died unexpectedly, there were no monsters, and the family was just like the world they faced. The protagonist returns to a familiar state here.
8, Having Changed. But something changed forever. Morty gave up his original family and buried the bodies of himself and his grandpa in the yard.
In Rick&Morty, the role is also a very important part. Why do the audience like this work so much, and why do they like Rick so much?
Psychologically speaking, if the protagonist of a story gains strong love or hatred from the viewer, the character likely represents the viewer’s own psychological projection.
Rick is set to be the person with the highest IQ in the universe. His IQ is so high that he can create any technological invention at will in a short time. He is never short of money, anti-system, anti-moral, and kills anyone. Almost the strongest person in the universe, of course, from the perspective of drama, if a character has only advantages and no shortcomings, it will not look good. So Rick’s stubbornness, lack of compassion and empathy, and childishness all add points to this character. Let the audience feel the authenticity of this character even more in such an unbelievable work.
Part 1: 3DEqualizer
This week we learned how to use the 3DEqualizer to track a shot and calculate the trail of the camera. I learned it quickly because I have learned the tracking tool in Adobe After Effects.
Compared to the AE, I need to do more manually in the 3DE, like choosing the track point and fix the result. It needs more time but the results are more accurate.
This is my final result:
In the class, Dom answered some questions that I thouht were very important and useful.
Part 2: Polish stylised walk
First of all, I added some actions to the blocking animation last week. I want to study more about the style of Tom&Jerry.
About Luke’s feedback on my reference, actually, I also thought of the question when I was looking for a reference. When I wanted to make an animation, if my reference is an animation made by someone else, is this plagiarism? In this task, I want to imitate the original animation style of Tom&Jerry, but in my original production, I think I should avoid using other people’s animations as a reference, especially 3D animation.
In the spline pass, I met a serious problem. Tom’s arms cannot rotate in the right direction. In the beginning, I didn’t know what to do so I modified it frame by frame, but the final result was not good. Luke showed me the usage of Euler Filter, which is a very helpful feature.
before modification:
If the rotation value of animation curves are limited to a specific range, these curves may be damaged. The problem can be corrected by filtering these curves.
Euler angle uses three separate vectors (X, Y, and Z axis) to calculate rotation interpolation.
In the Graph Editor, select the broken animation curve (for example, Rotate X, Rotate Y, and Rotate Z), then Select “Curves> Euler Filter”. The filter is always applied to the entire curve, not to the selected curve segment within a certain period of time.
In actual operation, when you see a part of the curve that obviously has a big change, and it is in the opposite direction, it is very likely that you need to use the Euler filter to correct it.
After modification:
Part 3: Render farm
Finally I used the render farm
Connecting to the M311 computer through VMware, and then sending the project I made on my laptop to the PC through Onedrive, I can use the Deadline to quickly get the rendered picture.
This is my final animation:
Visual culture is the aspect of culture expressed in visual images.
Mise en scene
In the previous blog, I briefly recorded some learning content of mise en scene and some basic concepts. Here I re-summarize the content of mise en scene.
Scene scheduling comes from French, meaning “placed in an appropriate position” or “placed in the scene.” Starting to be used in stage plays, movie scene scheduling includes two levels: actor scheduling and shot scheduling, in addition to the internal elements of the screen such as light and shadow, space, scenery, and clothing.
Actor scheduling The director uses the change of the actor’s movement direction and position, as well as the dynamic and static changes when the actor communicates with the actor, etc., resulting in different shapes and scenes of the screen, revealing the changes in the relationship between the characters and their emotions.
Camera scheduling The director uses the change of camera position and various perspectives to obtain lens images of different angles and viewing distances to show the changes in the relationship between the characters and the atmosphere of the environment.
The combination of actor scheduling and Camera scheduling constitutes the scene scheduling of the movie. Its flexibility can make the actor and the camera in motion at the same time so that the performance and action of the actor can go on without interruption, and the emotions are not interrupted. At the same time, it is conducive to show the relationship between the characters and the environment, and achieve the effect in one go.
Scene scheduling not only refers to the scheduling within a single shot but also includes the scheduling of a complete scene formed by the group of shots.
Scene scheduling and long shots are regarded by the French film theorist Bazin as the historical development tendency of film language realism, and they have become the relative aesthetic spirit of expressionist montage aesthetics.
This theory influenced the French “Movie Notes” critics to establish the relationship between scheduling style and “authorism”. After this group of commentators became the main players of French New Wave films, their films all attached great importance to the function of scene scheduling. The term “scene scheduling” has become a very important topic in film theory and aesthetics after the 1960s. In terms of creation, many directors have paid more and more attention to the expressiveness of the elements of “scene scheduling”.
I refer to some materials, and most of them analyze some classic shots in movies, such as the dialogue shots in “Rashomon”, the “silent film bridge” in “Blood Maze”, and the opening shots of “Playing Time”. But I also saw a saying that the scheduling of each movie is not only for the plot but also for the content that the whole movie wants to express. When we evaluate a song, shouldn’t it start with its interlude?
So I think this blog mainly focuses on the analysis of an animated film “Perfect Blue” that I have been paying attention to recently. The scene scheduling, visual metaphors, and color composition of this movie are all worth discussing.
The heroine Mima is an idol singer, but at the request of the agency, she began to transition to the career of an actor, but in the process of transformation, Mima, the agent of Mima, and the fanatic fans of Mima, three people All of them were mentally split to varying degrees, and a series of events occurred.
Regarding the scene scheduling, one of the more outstanding sections is that Mima just discovered a website about her life record, and her heart is full of anxiety. And the uneasy emotions generated by this plot, Director Satoshi Kon uses the following scene to convey.
We know that in movie scene scheduling, the motion direction of the subject will form an invisible straight line, that is, the “axis”. In the shot scheduling of a scene, the range of camera position changes, and the shooting angle of adjacent shots are restricted by the axis. If you set the camera position randomly across the axis, it will cause confusion in the direction of movement of the characters in the picture and the visual discontinuity of the audience. In this shot, the first three shots used close-ups and extreme close-ups, as well as rapid and repeated cross-axis, to combine the inner chaos of Mima with the visual chaos of the audience, and in order to avoid overstimulating the audience’s viewing habits, these few The motion and background of each lens reduce the sense of movement. Then, a balanced depth lens and a slightly longer and gentle panoramic lens gradually calmed the intense emotions. The nervous piano sound in the background gradually disappeared, and the slowly moving clouds in the sky were also used to calm down. The mood of the audience. Later, in the final shots, in several TV sets for sale, Mima was ingested. This is a metaphor after the previous emotional preparation. The TV set illuminates Mima’s heart like a mirror. Tell the audience that the source of her fear is actually the other-self in her heart.
Visual metaphor
The image modeling language is used to make the image no longer an object in daily life, but a certain meaning in the film’s prescribed situation. The visual image constructed by the modeling language has a metaphorical function.
In “Perfect Blue”, in addition to the above-mentioned TV screens, there are many other visual metaphors, such as mirrors. Director Satoshi Kon likes to use mirrors very much. He frequently borrows “image in the mirror” to show the protagonist’s personality imbalance and split between Mima and the murderer Rumi staying in the United States. Among them, in order to show Mima’s struggle and reconstruction in the process of transforming into an actor, Mima and the mirror image of himself appeared 21 times.
At the end of the film, The murderer Rumi in the hospital and the idol singer in the mirror looked at each other affectionately. Unlike other animals who are dismissive of their own mirror images, humans are a kind of mirror-loving animals. Lacan’s psychoanalysis of people and mirror images provides us with help in interpreting the deep connotation of images in mirrors in movies. He pointed out in his discussion of the “mirror” theory: “The process by which the child in front of the mirror refers to his image in the mirror as another child to recognize that it is himself includes a double misunderstanding: when he When he refers to his mirror image as another child, he refers to the “self” as the “other”; but when he refers to himself in the mirror image as himself, he regards the illusion of light and shadow as reality—confusing the reality And fiction, and from this, I began a lifelong fascination with my own mirror image.”
Aesthetics
I think, to put it simply, what aesthetics is discussing is the question of “what is beauty”.
There are different aesthetic styles in different films, and this almost establishes the atmosphere of the entire film.
In “Perfect Blue”, some people call it “horror aesthetics”, that is, the coexistence of horror and beauty. Generally speaking, horror is a kind of negative emotion of people, and it is completely opposite to comfortable beauty. But the ingenuity of this film is that the alternate between virtual and reality is seamlessly connected under montage editing, which allows the film to carry a considerable amount of interpretation and provides the audience with a rich imagination. It makes people look forward to the development of the story while they are nervous, and they still have an aftertaste after watching it.
There are a lot of sexual and violent scenes in the film, and the audience is not disgusted, but attracted. I think this is the unique horror aesthetic of this film.
Color composition
Color Theory is also pretty unique in “Perfect Blue”, and it’s worth analyzing. Instead of using traditional theories, such as red for danger and green for jealousy, Satoshi Kon used them in a more nuanced way to show the progress of a story.
What is obvious in the film is the large area of red. This is especially true for the first shot of Mima’s room with many red areas. And when she first found another self on the network, the red color of the whole room was more intense, while her whole face was in front of the red background, which indicated that the Mima involved in the madness and red start to as the dominant.
Since then, whenever a large area of red appears in the film, it indicates the gradual madness that Mima experienced, and Mima’s mind is gradually collapsing. Until Mima faced her fantasy for the first time, the tone of the picture gradually shifted to red.
And this makes sense throughout the film, not only on Mima but also on murderer Rumi. When the film is nearing the end and the identity of the murderer who stayed in the United States is about to be revealed, there is a scene where both Mima and Rumi are in front of the red background, indicating the next thing.
This film uses red to the extreme, and each picture has an intention to convey. I think this is also the difference between animation and live-action movies. In live-action movies, the camera shots are not as fully controllable as animations. There may be some stuff in the shots that the director did not expect. However, the appearance of the objects in the animation screen is all moral and all have their own functions.
Rhythm
In movies, the rhythm not only refers to music but also related to pictures, stories, performances, etc. In my opinion, the simplest understanding of rhythm is the speed change. The film itself is also an art form that attracts attention. Therefore, the rhythm cannot be fixed. It will make people feel bored, and it will not change all the time, making people feel confusing. Excellent works can affect the audience’s attention and allow them to focus on the work. Give the audience a new rhythm in the familiar rhythm, which will always remain attractive.
In “Perfect Blue”, there is a plot where the writer is killed, and the rhythm is used very well.
Part1: Stylised Walk
How are they different to a normal walk cycle?
In my opinion, the biggest difference between stylized walk and normal walk is that the former has emotions, and the audience can clearly understand the current character’s mental state from this animation. The animation is not like a novel. The information that the audience gets is from the source and the picture. We can’t directly tell them that the protagonist is happy or sad now, but to convey the message through performance.
What sort of things should we be trying to put in to a stylised walk?
As for the principles of animation, the timing, arcs and pose to pose that is considered when making a normal walk should also be considered in the stylised walk. In my opinion, in the basic walking exercise, you can get a basic stylised walk by changing the amplitude of the pose, adding slow in&slow out, and adjusting the timing.
For example, in this week’s production, I chose Tomas cat to make animation. His action style would be more exaggerated and the movement range would be larger. When making, you should consider adding body bending. Note that Arcs and Squash&Streach should be more obvious in cartoon characters. At the same time, pay attention to the movement and overlap of the tail and ears. The movement poses of the legs and hips have not changed much. What needs to be noted is its timing. The frame number of the key pose should be determined according to the reference.
What principles have we been focusing on so far?
In the previous animation, we mainly focused on the squash&stretch, timing, arcs.
What principles should we now be focusing on?
Now we should also foucs on the pose to pose，overlaping，slow in& slow out
What is the correct workflow for reference?
I think when looking for a reference first, we should know what a good reference is. For me, a good reference should be clear, preferably with both front and side images. At the same time, its playback speed should be normal, and it will not accelerate or decelerate, which helps me grasp the rhythm of the animation during analysis.
After finding a good reference, I will analyze this movement first and select the keyframe. I generally choose the previous frame of the movement trend change as the keyframe. I will take a screenshot and mark the number of frames, and then export a sequence of frames or gif for subsequent reference.
I chose Tomas cat in Tom & Jerry, because I watched this animation since I was a child and have a deep impression of Tomas’s confident walking posture, so I first looked for the video clips in the original. But I found that there was only one angle, and I couldn’t see the position of some mountains and legs. So I looked for other similar action references, including real-life and animated ones.
These are my reference footages：
In terms of timing, I mainly refer to the original animation. I disassembled it into a storyboard and marked the keyframes, stepping on me to determine the timing of the animation.
Here is my storyoard:
I first made a video of 24 frames per second and marked each frame.
Then I try to reduce the number of frames, I finally reduced to 11 frames, including the first frame and the last frame. I chose frame 1, 4, 6, 7, 11, 13, 16, 18, 19, 23, 25.
They are almost indistinguishable visually, and the persistence of the human eye is enough to make the 11-frame picture look coherent.
Then I drew an animation referring to all my materials to determine what I wanted to look like.
So I got a clear reference, which is basically the same as the walking animation before.
Here is my blocking pass of aniamtion：
Part2：Breakdown of rigs
What is a good rig?
For me, a good rig is when I open the project, I see neat Control Curves, and the position of the control curve should be clear; the animator should be able to know exactly what effect the curve will have on a specific part of the character , Without having to select it first. The control curves should also be large enough to be seen so that the animator can easily select them.
Of course, there are some excellent bindings with GUI Picker, which is more convenient for animators to choose a controller, especially facial animation. Because the face usually has the densest controllers, in order to make more subtle expressions.
When it comes to expression animation, a good rig usually has more freedom of facial animation control, especially the eyes and mouth. They can achieve more changes than simply blinking or opening and closing the mouth. Some bindings can even achieve pupil scaling.
A good rig should also have the function of switching between IK and FK. Although most of my animations currently use IK, especially leg movements, sometimes I want to use FK to achieve specific postures for some hand animations. . So it is best that each finger joint can be controlled individually.
When starting an animation, a good Rig should have clean deformation, which is the most important aspect in my opinion. When the character raises his hand or bends over, his shoulders and stomach should deform correctly. This requires very precise weight rendering and grid structure.
Finally, I would like to say that it is best to have an overall zoom function so that the character can adapt to various scenes or make scale animation.
What is a bad rig?
I think in simple terms, bad rig is the opposite of good rig, bad deformation, unclear controller, etc. I haven’t used bad rig too much, generally I just give up when I see bad binding haha.
However, I have had a problem. In fact, the rig includes the foot controller but there is no clear control curve. Therefore, I did not find that the tiptoe can be made directly but by rotation, which caused the final animation effect to be bad.
So, in order to get a better understand of the rigging, I tried to use Advanced skeleton5 to rig a model I once made.
I mainly tried facial rigging. At first, I was quite satisfied with the results, but when I used his own expression parameters to test, I found some problems, such as strange deformation and wrong mouth squash.
If you want to achieve natural deformation, you need to further modify the weight. I tried to control the expression manually and got a slightly better expression, but it really cannot be said to be a good rig because it is not convenient to use. Hope I can further learn how to optimize the binding to improve this problem.
Part3: Constrains in animation
What are constraints?
In last week’s blog, I briefly wrote about the use of parent constrain. And there are other forms of constraints. Constrain is a very convenient feature that allows us to constrain the position, direction or scale of an object to other objects. In addition, with constraints, you can impose specific restrictions on objects and automatically perform animation processing.
Parent
With parent constraints, you can associate the translation and rotation of one object with another object so that they behave as part of a parent-child relationship with multiple target parent objects. It should be noted that the rotation of the child object is around the parent object.
When a parent constraint is applied to an object, the constrained object does not become part of the constrained object’s hierarchy or group, but remains independent and behaves like a child of its target.
Point
The constrained object only restricts the displacement of the constrained object but has no effect on the direction.
Orient
The constrained object only restricts the rotation of the constrained object but has no effect on the displacement. The rotation here is the respective rotation.
Scale
The constrained object only has a constraining effect on the size of the constrained object and has no effect on others.
Aim
Aiming constraints limit the direction of an object so that it can aim at other objects. Typical uses of aiming constraints include aiming lights or cameras at an object or group of objects. In character settings, the typical use of aiming constraints is to set a locator to control eye movement.
Pole vector
The pole vector constraint causes the end of the pole vector to move and follow the position of the object or the average position of several objects. In the character setup, the pole vector of the IK rotation plane handle used for the arm joint chain is usually constrained to the locator placed behind the character.
Parenting vs parent constraint?
“Parenting” neutron objects can still move freely,
The child object in “parent constraint” cannot be moved, even if it is moved, if the parent object is moved again, it will be restored to the position at the time of constraint, unless the offset value of the child object is adjusted separately;
“Parenting” has an effect on the “position”, “rotation” and “scale” of the sub-object
The “parent constraint” only affects the “position” and “rotation” of the child object.
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Finally, I want to mark something, I think these are indeed easy to overlook but have a very important impact on animation production.
Common areas people skip:
Breaking down reference footage in to storyboard key poses and inbetweens with frame numbers.
Inbetweens in blocking
Controlling the curves when moving to spine
Fingers in blocking and adding overlap in spline
Facial animation in blocking
Ensuring there are no penetrations in spline
Weight in spline is still reading
Considering that I tried to polish the walking ball last week, so I plan to add a prop to the final walking animation, and I’ll do a new walking animation to practice polishing.
Last week I made an animation of the walking ball, considering that the ball has no hands, I wanted to add something to his bald head, like a hat.
I found a suitable asset on Sketchfab. After resizing and positioning, the ball had a Magic hat.
For the hat to move with the ball, I need to make a parent constrain here. The head of the ball is the parent object and the hat is the child object. Before doing this, I create a control curve for the hat to follow, which is very helpful for me to do the next step.
Next, I just need to choose rigging->Constrain->parent, and the hat can follow the ball.
But the effect is a little stiff, the hat itself is too rigidly attached to the ball, and the tail-like part of the hat doesn’t move. To achieve these effects, I think I should create some bones to the tail-like part of the hat firstly.
Actually, I think that not only does it look like a tail, it moves in the same way. In other words, the principles of animation to be considered here are also Timing, Arcs and Pose to Pose.But because this part is smaller, it doesn’t have to be as exaggerated as the pose of the tail.
In addition, the hat should not touch the head all the time, it should be a little wobbly, especially when the ball is moving up and down, the hat can leave the ball in the air for a short time. So I need to keyframe the hat on the Y-axis. But I can’t use the control curve that I made for the hat before, because it’s a child of the ball, which cannot be changed. Therefore, I made a group of the mesh of the hat, so that I can control the up and down movement of group1 to indirectly control the movement of the hat.
This is my final animation:
About polishing, I first made a loop animation of walking in place this week. I think this kind of loop animation should be more common in game production. On the other hand, polish the loop animation first, which is also helpful for making other animations later. In the production of full-body walking animation, in addition to the legs and hip that have been practiced before, the rotation of the shoulders and the swing of the arms are also important, which is also explained in more detail in the The Animator’s Survival Kit. Here,I think that the key principles are to Pose to Pose, Overlapping, Timing and Arcs, and of course some Stretch&Squash. I mainly refer to this video:
Here’s the walking loop animation I making:
But it’s still a little boring to animate in palce, so I wanted to animate the whole body with some props, and try to animate something with some contents, like plots or just some atmospheres. So I chose a Robot from the Assets Library, and I wanted him to take a hand gun. I did this by making the Robot holding the gun with its right hand at frame 0, then using the parent constrain to keep the gun in the robot’s hand.
The whole process is similar to the previous animation of the walking ball, and it is also the previs->blocking->spline->polish. Moreover, because the gun is held on the robot’s hand all the time, there is no need to wave the arm, and only need to pay attention to the rotation of the shoulder.
Then I added some details, such as the rotation of the toes and the twist of the waist. I also made a simple scene. But I think the final animation is not good, the Robot should be some mechanical, but it’s a little difficult for me right now. I hope I can refine this in the future..
This is my final animation:
I also tried the lighting and rendering flow, and this is a rendering image.
Politics and media relationship
Politics influences all kinds of media, the values expressed by the media, the level of violence in games, the characters in movies and so on. And the wide spread of media will affect politics in turn. For example, the South Korean film Hope has made the South Korean Parliament raise the sentencing standard for child sexual assault crimes through its realistic content. So politics and the media are close, and today, they are more closely related.
What politics affect media?
I think basically, it often influenced the values, like most movies are good over evil, or they have a happy ending. Of course, there are also some influences of social concepts, such as violence or cigarettes, etc. Most films or online streaming and TV will express views that are more in line with public concepts, and generally will not encourage violent behaviors or smoking.
How do politics shape what is being made in media?
In class, Luke mentioned a scene in The Avengers 4: The End Game where all the female superheroes fight together. Nowadays, the society pays more and more attention to the rights and interests of women. The addition of this plot in the movie also echoes the reality.
For films, games, online streaming and so on, the influence of politics on them is mainly reflected in plot design, lens language, and in deeper aspects, which may affect the content they want to express.
When it comes to politics affect games, it’s often associated with violence, such as how bloody the game is. In Call of Duty 6: Modern Warfare 2, there’s a level called “No Rassian”, which has a bloody reminder that might be uncomfortable for the player to jump through.
And I also noticed another thing, some of the early games will try to make the female characters more sexy to attract the players, but now there is a view that this is materialized women, it ‘s disrespectful. On the other hand, it also ignores a lot of female players. So now some game makers will avoid too sexy female character design, Laura of Tomb Raider is a good example.
In class, we mainly discussed the placement of advertisements in some movies, and how these affect people’s consumption concepts.
What impressed me most was the Transformers series, which was made to show cars, and I still remember my excitement when I first saw bumblebee become Comero on the screen. A nd Comero is so cool!
In fact, product placement has existed since the birth of movies. In the spring of 1896, when the Lumiere brothers, the fathers of motion pictures, were still practising in various “micro-films”, a Swiss businessman named Henri Lavange saw a business opportunity and asked for a bar of soap to be implanted in the short film, promising to help them release it. So here’s the shining sun brand soap in the Parade of the 8th Battalion.
But not all ads fit into the movie so naturally. I want to focus on Transformers: Age of Extinction. There are too many ads for this movie. And I don’t know if it’s because the story takes place in China, there are too many Chinese products in the movie, and the story doesn’t fit that well, especially for a Chinese milk brand, which appears repeatedly.
“Can I finish my Shuhua milk first?” It’s embarrassing to say. It’s like saying that we’ve received an investment from Shuhua Milk. We can see a lot of other product placements in this movie. Like the Beats speakers and Oreo crackers. Of course, it’s easy to understand when you consider the huge amount of money needed to make a sci-fi blockbuster. But I have to say these ads are so embarrassing, and it’s hard to get into the story.
In TV media, whether news or TV programs, the topics and opinions discussed are closely related to politics or public opinion.For example, the attitude towards cigarettes, which are harmful to human health, has basically become a common sense. Therefore, international restrictions are usually imposed on cigarette advertising. Before the public realizes the harm of cigarettes, cigarette advertising is quite common.
(Advertisements for Winston, a cigarette, appear in the American animated series The Flintstones)
The lack of cigarette advertising on television is also justified by the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), the first global treaty to come into force under the auspices of the World Health Organization (WHO), which came into force on 27 February 2005.Under the Convention, all cigarette packages are required to carry health warnings that “smoking is harmful to health” on at least 30 percent of the surface area, and all tobacco advertising, including all forms of image advertising, promotion and sponsorship, must be banned for a certain period of time.Widespread prohibition of tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship in radio, television, print and, where appropriate, other media, such as the Internet.
In my opinion, this is the positive influence of Politics on media, which has a positive effect on people’s physical health and concept.
I think online streaming is similar to film, game, TV and so on in many aspects, and they are also influenced by politics.And some plot design, to some extent, is more influenced by culture.There is a point here that, regarding the protection of children, in the American film rating system, there are corresponding regulations for every level, while works rated below PG are prohibited from the death or serious injury of children.And this is in some eastern works, sometimes the death of a child is used to reflect on the war or to warn people.
For example, Japanese director Isao Takahata’s “Grave of the Fireflies” features the death of a child.
I think there is no right or wrong, but in different cultures, people’s different ideas and policies have different influences on media.
In my opinion, the influence of politics on the media reflects the development of society, the change of people’s ideas and the diversification of their thinking.A lot of influences that didn’t exist before, not only are people not paying attention to such problems, but also new solutions are emerging.The media is always a reflection of The Times.
As for the political issues of the current era, I think maybe two topics can be mentioned for discussion of future politically related animations.One is the current cultural integration and conflict, or cultural invasion.Another thing I would like to explore is the influence of political opinions carried by various media on individuals.