Walk Cycle Peer Review.

Whats good-

The walk cycle looks like it flows smoothly for the most part and uses the                                bobbing motion to make it seem more realistic. it is also apparent the the                              feet and leg movement uses the arcs and makes the walk cycle look more                              rounded and put together as well as smoother.

Does it look natural?

It does look slightly natural for some aspects , in terms of what i said before about  the bobbing motion and the rounded motion of the walk.  in order to make it more natural and better you could move the feet a bit more in terms of the toe area, and have it bend and straighten when they walk ,like a humans does. you could also move the body when they walk to show more movement as it seems almost still when it doesn’t, even moving it side to side when the legs move to show momentum and that the hips move when the legs do, to make it more realistic.

My reflections on the feedback:

In the lesson I reflected on the feedback I was given. The feedback as you can see above says that “you could move the body when they walk to show more movement”. I feel like I have accomplished this as when the model moves the body moves in a swaying motion which I think has made the animation more realistic.

Another thing which was said in my feedback was to add a toe roll and instead of adding a toe roll I added a sort of toe flick so when the models feet are rising his toe will flick at the end.

I think that I am ready to render however I could add more of a sway.

Walk Cycle

Human walking: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vq9A5FD8G5w

Animated walk cycle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2y6aVz0Acx0

These two videos can help with my work as they show me how a real human walks and how an animated walk cycle walks. I can sample how both walk. Where the hand positions are as they walk if they swing back and forth when they walk. I can take things from both videos, for example the human walking is quite basic however I can use this and add to it when animating.

The animated walk cycle is more creative. When walking the characters fists are always in the air swinging hard backwards and forwards. The animated walk cycle character is quite heavy footed and stomps on the floor. It is more exaggerated and I can take exaggeration into my own work.

Animation walk cycle:

After I done the mini task in Matt’s lesson on researching the animated walk cycles and a human walking, I started to animate a character which Matt provided I chose to do an animation on a character which doesn’t have arms or hips as I don’t feel too comfortable in my ability to animate a character as complex as that so I chose to do a character called “Ultimate_Walker” which is a cylinder head and two legs.

This is what I have so far.

To improve this I could change the direction in which the character would walk as you don’t walk in a perfectly straight line. I could also add a bit of a buckle to his knees to make it look more realistic.

UV Unwrapping!

In today’s lesson with Ben I started to UV Unwrap the models of my sword and shield. I started out by just using UV Automatic just to get the model unwrapped. This isn’t the best tool to use as it kind of messes up things which are meant to be together.

After using UV automatic, I started to move and sew the edges together where they are meant to go. This means the model has a nice clean unwrap so when I am texturing the model will look the best it possibly can.

So far this lesson I managed to unwrap my sword fully. However I did have to start over on the sword because I messed up a UV and couldn’t undo it and the latest maya save was when I messed up.

More Substance Painter!

In today’s lesson with Matt we recapped what we did on substance painter. So far I have learnt about texture maps, masks, layers. Some of these include fill layers, white masks and black masks and more recently in today’s lesson emissive maps. I also learned how to import images and textures into the library. I can also import my own decals into the preset decals.

So far I haven’t really decided on what I actually want to create however I have been messing around with the different things I have learnt. Last weeks model file didn’t load in substance and it just gave me a whole bunch of errors. I did start again with a similar design however I tried to add emissive maps to the eye to make the whole head of the character look really cool. This sort of worked out however I can do this a lot better with a bit more practice and time into substance.

I think the idea behind what I have created is great. However with what I have created I feel like I need more time to think up ideas on how to make the character look really cool. The whole eye glowing thing personally I think is a great idea but I just need a bit more time to learn the software so I can get it to look really good.

Substance could help me in my own work as I can texture things really easily. With the sword and shield project I am currently doing for Ben, I could add a really cool gemstone to the sword or shield and then I can texture it in substance painter.

2D Platformer Game!

The end of this week was the last week of the platformer game and we were given time to just polish up the game overall. I polished things up such as the animation and the levels. I created rough background art to showcase the game for now as the last week I hadn’t created a background art so the one that I created was just a rough mock up of the background.

 

This is what the grass and dirt blocks look like. I wanted to try and use as many shades of the brown as possible to make the block stand out from the background. As you can see, there are 3 different versions of the block. A grass block a dirt block and a dirt block with rocks around it. The grass block was just for the floor, the dirt block goes underneath and it fits in with the grass piece above and the rock dirt piece was for the large cliff that I had.

Overall the game that I created was quite simple. However with the level I changed it quite a bit to fit how the character jumps. I changed the jumping mechanics and made the animations overall smoother. This is a before and after of the game.

This is the before level. As you can see the animations aren’t smooth and the big cliff has little beams sticking out of it and the jumping animation is bigger than the running animation and idle animation. Once I added a background and floor art the whole scene looks 10x better. The collectible works and can be collected into the players inventory and the enemy kills the player and sends him back to the beginning.

This is after the changes. As you can see from the right hand side of the screen I have changed the little beams which would stick out of the wall. I changed this because the level was too compact on the right hand side. When I added the boxes, the level makes more sense. I don’t have any GIF’S of the animations working but I will be sure to update this blog post when I am back at college and I can get the GIF’S.

 

Introduction to Substance Painter!

In today’s lesson with Matt he went through the basics of substance painter. After this he set the class off on the “MeetMat” challenge that substance painter set last year.

I learnt about things such as map types. These include PBR map, a metalness map and a roughness map. I learnt about different layers and how I can add a fill layer to fill the whole object. I can then create masks on the fill layer and I can erase or draw on top of the layer this depends on what map I choose. If I chose the white map, I can erase. The black map I can draw. I also was shown how to use smart materials. These are preset materials which I can apply to my model.

After having a little play around going through lots of different colours and layers, I created a design which I like however I have only started on the head. This is what I did and I want to continue it however things may change and I might start again if I think up something better.

As you can see I have went for an eyeball on the front of the head. I think this design is cool and I am hoping to figure out something as cool for the body later on or next lesson.

Animation Updates!

In today’s lesson with Matt, he went over batch rendering. I learnt that batch rendering renders out multiple images which makes the animation high quality as maya is rendering out an image for every single frame. I also learnt about frame padding which is basically just adding an extra number onto the frames to pad it out so it is easier to find. If I have 300 frames in the frame padding I will add the number 4 (4 digits). Therefore the file will have 0300 instead of 300.

This is my animation so far. I have finished it all off and I just need to smooth it out and add in little features to add realism. I came across the problem in my animation when trying to animate the arms. Whenever I would move the arms the pivot was wrong so, when Matt came over he showed me what was wrong. The problem was the arms were all 1 object. In order to fix this they had to be separated and re-done. This worked and I could animate the arms as separate objects. As this was the last lesson on the animation I will work outside of college to get the animation complete with arms moving and making the robot loose and not look as stiff.

I think the animation is working well currently because it works. I feel like this animation was difficult but I feel like I have done it well, I just need to loosen the robot up. I need to improve the way it moves by smoothing the robots animation out as now it looks quite clunky.

Shield Modelling!

In today’s lesson I managed to start and tried to finish my shield.

The image on the left is the drawing of the shield and on the right is the fully modelled shield. The image on the left has a lot more depth. This is because when drawing I didn’t think about the depth as much as just drawing a shield. So, when I started modelling I realised that the shield would just be flat and I need to give it some depth. That is why the design on the front of the drawn one is different to the design on the right. The shield isn’t fully complete but I am going to start adding more depth and the “H” in the middle of the shield isn’t going to stay.

Next lesson I am going to try and get some basic textures on to the shield. Even if it is just basic colours. Right now I am trying to come up with unique ideas for textures to put on the shield. For now though I am going to model my sword and see if I can make them match (textures) and look good.

Animation Progress!

In today’s lesson with Matt, he showed the class how to create an infinite white background and how to use lights in a scene and what each individual light (Directional light, point light, spot light and three point) does. They were all quite straight forward.

After the mini task of researching about the lights I went on to chip away at my animation. As I said before I am starting to animate without exaggeration so the animation looks pretty plain. In this lesson however I started my animation again on a saved file which wasn’t animated. This is because when I was animating; I was animating on an angle so if I wanted the robot to move I would have to move it right then down with the handles. This was too much work and the animation looked clunky and looked like it was jumping around.

In starting again the whole animation is a lot easier because to move the robot in a straight line I can pull to forward handle and it will move forward instead of pulling the right and forward handles.

During the lesson Matt suggested to me I should make the robot stumble in some way like it falls over. I am going to try and do this however the robot has wheels so I don’t know as of yet how I am going to implement the idea. If it is possible I will try to do it however. I will upload a vimeo video soon.

 

Concept Sword and Shield!

In today’s lesson with Ben I finished off my concept art for the sword and shield project which I started last week. I have 2 swords because I really like the second one and only one shield. I will make another shield however I do really like the first shield that I have done.

The first sword I mixed and matched two different swords to make the sword which I have now. For the second I copied parts from one sword and then just improvised and just drew what I though looked really nice.

I will post a blog with the whole progress of the shields and swords because right now I don’t want to post any pictures for now that’s all.