Category: Advanced and Experimental 3D Computer Animation Techniques

After the last few weeks of updates, here is a preview of what I ended up with.

In order to complete this project as my final major work (FMP), I realized that the current animation effects may be a bit too long, so I need to streamline the shots appropriately. In addition, I noticed that most of the existing shots are in a horizontal angle, which makes the animation look a bit bland and boring. In order to solve these problems, I plan to look for some suitable reference materials on the Internet, learn from the lens angles and dynamic effects in excellent works, and make my animation more visually attractive and narratively tense through a variety of lens techniques such as high angles, low angles, and bird’s-eye views, as well as appropriate dynamic shots. At the same time, I will use light and shadow and color changes to enhance the atmosphere and emotional expression of the scene, making the overall effect more vivid and fascinating.

Feedback:

Replace the bird model with a 3D model instead of a simple sphere, and also replace the rope and heart effects with 3D models. The teacher provides two model websites that can be used to replace the bird model and the NPC model.

Replace the Yue Lao hand and pen with character models, avoiding simple geometric shapes so that the audience can more clearly understand what is happening.

As Cupid’s arrow shoots at the two people, if they are too close, the arrow will move slowly. Therefore, the distance between the NPC and the camera needs to be extended so that the arrow does not appear to fly slowly.

When Cupid falls to the ground, add some gravity effects to the character to make his movements look more natural instead of falling to the ground stiffly.

As Cupid retreats, highlight the arrow so that the audience can clearly see what pierced Cupid and understand his reaction. Otherwise, the audience may be confused.

These improvements will increase the visual effect and audience understanding, and improve the quality of the overall work. Remember to carefully review and test each step to ensure that the final work achieves the expected effect.

Feedback of last week’s assignment:

Last week I purchased a model on Taobao that was very similar in size to Cupid, but found out that it was in fact uncopyrighted, and I apologize for that, and I will be replacing it over the course of the week.Since I was working on a collaborative project last week I only completed half of the full length of this week’s assignment. So this week I’m going to try to get the remaining half done as well.

In addition to this, when making the shot of Cupid shooting an arrow I found it difficult and strange to have the camera and the bow moving at the same time, so my teacher suggested that I split it into two shots and remove the rotation of the camera.

After this shot, we need to add a shot of Cupid and Yue Lao confronting each other to express their emotions.

Next week’s assignment is to improve the feedback received this week in Maya. Specifically, the assigned shots need to be modified, including adjusting character movements, optimizing camera movements, improving lighting effects, and adding new elements and special effects. Throughout the process, every detail is carefully reviewed and tested to ensure that the final assignment can meet the high quality requirements.

Feedback Of Last Week’s Assignment:

I got some advice on lens placement and movement. For example, in places where the camera stops and seems abrupt change it to move quickly and then continue to move slowly. There’s also changing some of the telephoto shots to medium shots, which highlights the protagonist’s reactions and expressions better.Finally, my teacher also gave me some advice on the details of the performance, such as how to design Cupid’s expression at the end when he realizes that he has been pierced by an arrow, which would be more interesting.

Since the characters in my story have a large range of motion, I needed to map out the surroundings and the route the characters would take, otherwise it would be confusing for the audience. My teacher provided me with an overhead view of a park as a reference for the environment design.

Other than that, I forget to create a short bio describing who the character is and where they are in the story at this moment, and list characteristics which demonstrate your charactersmotivations why they are who they are why the do what they do etc. Describe what the character did before this story I’m animating and what happens at the end of the story to characterize the character in more depth and make the character more vivid and three-dimensional.So I’ll refine that afterward.

Assignment:

This week’s assignment is to replace Cupid with a bound model to make the character’s movements as well.

https://syncsketch.com/sketch/MzY4MzIwNTU5/?offlineMode=1#/23987285/24866697/f_0

Feedback of last week’s assignment:

I got some feedback on last week’s assignment, such as adding character reactions after the action to make the plot make more sense.

I got some feedback on last week’s assignment, such as adding character reactions after the action to make the plot make more sense. Then changing some shots that left the audience wondering. And in the next week replace the cylinder representing yuelao with a body mechanic model, so that it can represent the character’s movements and refine the whole animation preview.

Creating Your Characters：

In this lesson I learned to create a compelling character from the aspects of Sympathetic Nuanced Flawed Active. And try to utilize body language and character acting instead of dialogue so that the character’s personality is better represented in the animation.

Assignment：

And in the next week replace the cylinder representing yuelao with a body mechanic model, so that it can represent the character’s movements and refine the whole animation preview. And create an initial character design concept。

https://syncsketch.com/sketch/MzY4MzIwNTU5/?offlineMode=1#/23801566/24673005/f_4958

Feed back of last week’s assignment:

1.Pay attention to the position of the character in the camera and do not mislead the audience.

2.Pay attention to the composition,and try to place the character on the golden dividing.

3.In the end, both yuelao and Cupid are hit by arrows, and their reactions should be a little more obvious.

Creating early stages of storyboards

This week’s lesson was about initial storyboarding, with a couple of examples to show me the usefulness of an ESTABLISHING SHOT and how to create my own ESTABLISHING SHOT.Then we learned some camera language and the teacher demonstrated how to briefly and efficiently create our own dynamic storyboards in Maya.

Here are some of my class notes:

assignment :

This week’s assignment is to create a full dynamic storyboard of an IDEA in maya

https://syncsketch.com/sketch/MzY4MzIwNTU5/?offlineMode=1#/23629024/24494914/f_6684

I started by replacing yuelao with a cylinder and cupid with a sphere in maya. Built a simple scene and created a preview animation to show the placement and duration of each shot.

After editing I realized that just replacing the characters with geometric whites doesn’t show the movement and emotions of the characters. So I exported the preview to callipeg and drew a simple sketch to represent the character’s expression and movement.

This week’s program course learned about world building Sets and props and set effects on visual perception. Here are some of the class notes.

Feed back of last week’s assignment:

Rough sketches of the three stories were drawn last week, of which the story about zbrush and the matchmaking company can move forward, the zbrush story needs to change some of the plot points that don’t make sense and add some shots to make the plot coherent. The matchmaking company needs to refine the storyline, and be aware that character acting requires one action and one reaction.

assignments:

This week’s assignments are three compositions and refinement storyboards and a moodboard about the project

This is my story board:

This is my mood board:

This is my composition:

The first session of the program talked about what to look for to start a project, and I took some notes

About the initial idea of the project I drew three doodles, the first is the story of the moon old man and cupid, the second is a social animal fell asleep overtime into the zbrush software that is being used to find that you can carve yourself, to carve yourself after the software did not save the software crashed, so she was scared to wake up and found that the reality of their own project did not save the crash. The third is about the protagonist will always have nightmares at night, the bedside of the panda doll in the guise of a superhero to protect the protagonist’s sleep story.

Here are some doodles of these ideas