Character Animation for Film and Games - Blog
- Manan Sarkhedi
- May 11, 2023
- 6 min read
Introduction
This module was focused on helping us learn the fundamentals of animation and the workflow for making an animation. An animation usually runs at 24 frames per second, however not every single frame needs to be animated. An animation needs to give the illusion of motion. In this module we were taught how to animate characters using Maya and plugins like tween machine and Animbot. We had to get our references and use that to make a few animated videos.
Assignment 1 - Walk/Run Cycle
Research:
I started my walk cycle for the assignment after doing a few practice walk cycles, learning from canvas. It basically taught me the concepts of timing and spacing and how they can drastically change the personality of a character. It also taught other fundamental concepts like anticipation, follow through, animating pose to pose and how and where to add in-betweens.
For my walk cycle I chose to show a scared man running away.
I shot this video with my friends and shooting this reference really helped me understand what to animate. It helped me feel the weight shift and the timing of the movements. For this animation I chose a more simple body mechanic rig, since I was not feeling too confident with the more complicated rigs after trying several of them.
Workflow:
After deciding the run I wanted and the rig to use, I used syncsketch for a draw over and established the key poses, but I didn’t export image sequence to maya and instead just used the site to reference the animation. After the initial blocking, the animation still looked a bit stiff and I needed to push the poses further and exaggerate them. I also asked for feedback from our module leader, Richard. His feedback was to reanimate the hands and also not to animate the toe roll just yet which helped me realize where the leg was going below ground which led the Maya interpolation to produce pretty rough animation. He also suggested animating the weight shift as my animation didn’t have any. So, I ended up reanimating the entire walk cycle with the feedback in mind. Animating the toe roll later really helped with the leg animation. I also used the motion trail to check the arcs for the animation. After animating it a second time, I felt it was good enough to begin the polish. Using animbot to add keys really helped give smoother graphs as it doesn't change the curve when inserting a keyframe in between two poses. After I was satisfied I created a floor plane, enabled anti aliasing and ambient occlusion, added a few lights and disabled the grid and the HUD. I also used the hardware fog to make the playblast look better. I found a few of these techniques from Sir Wade Neistadt’s video.
Self critique:
I should have tried to create more of an offset in the arms so that it looks more like the character is randomly waving his arms around. I could have also animated the wrists with that offset to get a similar effect.
Assignment 2 - Attack Combo
Research:
For my second assignment I chose the attack combo instead of facial animation and I used the YouTube channel, Motion Actor Inc to find references for that. Initially what I wanted was for one character to uppercut punch another character and after the fall, the main character starts punching the fallen one continuously and ending with one final killing blow. However, after starting to block out the animation, this entire animation felt too ambitious and time consuming, and after suggestion from Richard, I ended up changing the second half of the animation to something more simple. After the fall of the secondary character the main character comes up and stomps on the fallen one.
For this animation I used the deadpool rig as the primary character and the body mechanic rig v2 as the secondary character.
Workflow:
After the draw-over to find the key poses, I started with exporting the reference footage as image sequence using nuke as the image sequence in premiere pro and after effects were not imported properly in Maya. I had imported two different image sequences for the different attacks, and I just eyeballed the secondary character’s animation. But I did rehearse his animation to get the feel and the weight of the character. Before starting the animation, I spent a few minutes just experimenting with the rig and trying to get to know it. The deadpool rig is a really complex rig with multiple controllers. When I opened the rig for the first time it was really daunting, but not all of the controllers are necessary and it also has options to disable the weapon visibility. So before animating I had to clean up the controllers and make sure I was comfortable with the rig. This was the first time I was doing a complex action, and I had already started to mess up because I had put the entire rig in IK which made animating the arms and legs a bit difficult and the interpolation for arms was not giving the motion it was supposed to. It was after my support session with Richard, that I found out the problem and decided to reanimate the entire first uppercut animation. After blocking out, I also added small details like the eye closing in the beginning and a step during the anticipation. I also had to animate a second character to show the reaction to the punch. I used a basic body mechanic rig for that. For the fall, the main objective was to show the impact, for that I had to figure out the arc of the body and the order at which it fell. For the second part of the animation, I had to rework the entire second half as where the deadpool was punching and replace it with a single stomp and the reaction to the stomp. I also animated the camera for this animation. I added a camera shake at the points I wanted to show impact.
Self critique:
The punch should have sent the guy a bit higher up to show some exaggeration and would really show the impact of the punch. I should not have used IK for the torso animation.
Assignment 3 - Gameplay Pack
Research:
In the gameplay pack we had to make 4 animation cycles - run, jump, walk and idle. For the run cycle I decided to do a ninja style run. I had made enough walk and run cycles at this point and I had an idea of what I wanted so I didn't shoot reference for this one and for the jump cycle I just rehearsed it a few times in front of the mirror to get an idea. But for the walk cycle I wanted to experiment a bit with my friends.
For the idle animation I wanted to do an idle fight stance.
Workflow:
By the time I started the gameplay pack, I had gotten a good handle on the deadpool rig. I also felt more comfortable with the animation tools, especially animbot. I started with the idle animation as it was a really simple animation. The only challenge in this animation was the legs as they helped add a bit of bounce to the character. The animation also didn’t need much polish or too many in-betweens. The run cycle was a challenge because the poses really needed a lot of work to give the speed. The cycle was also just 12 frames to make the character run faster. This was also the first time I had to learn to add constraints as I was using the swords. After talking to Richard and getting some of his suggestions, I ended up rotating the hips as they were not being animated and I also added camera shake to enhance the sense of motion. For the jump cycle, I had to go through several iterations, since I had not shot a reference it took me a lot of time to get it right. I had to get the animation for the anticipation pose right which took me a lot of time. The walk cycle was a 25 frame cycle with 8 poses. This cycle had a line of action that bent from left to right from the front view and the character’s weight had to be shifted every time he picked up one of his legs. I also added a few in-betweens and animation for the toe roll to get a smoother animation. After that I cleaned up and polished the cycle with the graph editor. I then put all the cycles to infinity to get them to loop for 10 seconds.
Self critique:
The walk cycle needed some more polish and in-betweens. The timing and spacing also could have improved and the camera could have been animated for that. In the idle animation the left hand feels a bit stiff and might be improved by better posing.
Conclusion:
Previously I had experience in 2D animation and had learnt the principles of animation according to that. This module really helped give valuable insights to applying those principles to 3D animation. I would also like to thank our module leader Richard Cunningham for his feedback and support sessions which helped me with my final animation.
References:
Rigs:
Ultimate Boney rig
Deadpool Rig
Body Mechanic Rig V2
Footage:
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