Animating Billy

To begin the animation I wanted to create the atmosphere of the character playing computer games, so my first idea was to move Billys thumbs to push the buttons and move the stick with them.
I keyframed each movement with the "AutoKey" option and select and rotated each of the bones in the fingers to make it look like the character was pushing the buttons.
The next step was to actually select each of the buttons on the controller and the stick and move them at the right times to look like they have been moved by the character.Each of the movements of the hand help to convey the image of the character playing the games, and to make it look like he is enjoying himself I made him smile by changing the shape of his lips and eyes to make him look happier. Using the "Vertex" tool it allowed me to make each expression more realistic.
The next step was to move the arms to show the character was actually moving the controller with the gameplay and getting angry at the game.


To do this I selected Billy's right arm and moved it upwards towards his head, doing this gave the effect that he was angry and moving his arm in a gesture that proved it.
I also changed his facial expression using the "Vertex" tool selecting the area around the eyes and mouth and moving them to areas I wanted to create a closed eye and opened mouth expression of anger & frustration towards the game.
The next step was to start making Billy get really angry with the game and shake the controller in his anger, to do this I first selected the controller and moved it upwards, then follwed this movement with each of his arms to follow the movement of the controller.
I then selected his hands to make them grip the controller more and then repeated this with a downward movement, then forward and back within the movements.Using this technique it allowed for a great shot showing the anger in the character with his frustrated movement giving the effect I wanted to create.
Now that the start of the animation had been completed it was time to begin the difficult part of the animation which was the intense stare of hatred towards the game as he has been killed, followed by his anger by throwing the controller wildly at the television without haste.

The area in which I wanted to start was to create the character movement for throwing the controller at the screen, I first selected the left arm and moved it backwards so that the forearm was level with his head.
Then the next steps were to move the controller by select and rotating it to follow the hand and arm movement making a more realistic transition aswell as making the characters hand grip the controller more nearer the head.
Once I had reached a height that I was happy with I keyframed in the movement down towards the Tv and then opened the characters hand once I had reached a point I was happy for him to release the controller.
When the positioning was right for the movement I selected Billy's hand and made the grip loose and then moved the controller slowly out of his hand making it look like he had released it fully from his grip.

Now that the movement was right I changed Billy's facial expression to express his mood whilst throwing the controller. To do this I selected each vertex on the face and moved the lips to the angle of almost shouting to convey anger.
The final step of this animation was to make the movement look realistic as it flies towards the television by rotating it as I move the controller nearer the television.
This sets up the next area of the animation which is to make the screen and controller fall to the floor.
To animate the television falling I animated the controller going into the television to display it hitting the tv, then using the keyframes moved the television at an angle first to make it seem like it was beginning to fall then tilted it forwards and then using the thought of gravity animated the Tv falling fast down towards the floor tilting forward to a 45 degree angle before bouncing off the floor.
I wanted to add a fear expression to Billy's face to make it look like he realised the consequence of throwing his controller towards his television.
This will be used to switch cameras between the Tv falling and the Tv hitting the ground to show Billy's reaction to the Tv falling.
To create the fearful facial expression I selected the eyes and raised the tops slightly and brought the sides in to give an effect of widing the eyes, and then tightened up the lips by bringing them closer to the center of the face and tilting the lips slightly downward.
To add to the fear of the character I animated the arms going up and the hands going behind the head of the character to show suspense and add to the effect of the Tv falling down.I then finally animated the tv and controller hitting the floor using the idea of gravity and the bounce off for the controller of the tv.
The final steps where to make Billy cry for the fact that he has destroyed his television and cannot play his video games anymore. Firstly I moved my characters hands from behind his head and make a clenched fist so that it looks like he is rubbing his eyes, and then moved the arms so that it looks like he is rubbing his eyes from up to down from side to side.
I then edited his facial expression to tie in with his emotion by closing his eyes and making the lips tip downwards making it look like he is crying.

New Hair & Teeth + Character Expressions

New Hair

When rendering the final videos of the character animation I noticed a large problem with rendering times as each frame was taking 1 and a half minutes because of the hair and fur modifier and with a large amount of frames to render it was going to be a long time in waiting for them. So I decided to create a new hair for the character to lower the render times, the only downside to this is the hair isnt particularly the best but it does the job.To create the hair I first created a cylinder to the size of the characters head, then made it into an editable polygon and selected the polygon tool to delete polygons that needed to be removed.
Once I had a shape for the hair I pulled out vertexs to make a style for the haor sp that it wasnt just a bulk of hair on the characters head.
New Teeth

When looking at the character animation and how the movement in the mouth looked when rendered I decided to change the teeth for Billy. I decided to create a new smile for him, to do this I used the box tool and then edited the top of the box so that it goes inside creating a dip of the crown.
I then cloned the boxes to create a smile then edited the shape so that the teeth where different sizes and curved around the shape of the mouth.
I did the same thing for the top teeth and then changed the size of the front two teeth to make it look more like a set of top teeth.
Now that the character has new hair and teeth it was time to start making the character have different facial expressions to show emotion for the scene that has been created.
Here are the current facial expressions that have been created for Billy.

Smile
Sadness
Shock
Fear
Anger
Angry
Happy

Research

The character will be playing computer games whilst looking at a television, so to see what it looks like from a different perspective I recorded myself playing computer games to see what I did whilst I played.

The footage shows the little things that I do during gameplay which has given me a few ideas of things to add to my character animation such as body language and some of the gestures I have.

I also looked at some videos on YouTube to see if there was anything on anger, laughter & happiness and tried to find a video of different types of human emotions.

Anger Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wJl9ciywAA Anger Video

Laughter & Happiness Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2y8fKw9WBZE

Human Emotions
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrUfxn3eXoQ

These videos show the different types of human emotion I want to include in the animation as the character is going to be happy, angry, and a mixture of the emotions from the 3rd video.

The human emotion video is very useful as it shows you what facial parts move for different types of expression.

When looking for different types of facial expressions I found an image of a man doing lots of different facial expressions.

This shows the ways in which I could make my character more expressive when playing his games such as the look of fear in the bottom left, the sad face 5th picture at the bottom and the last image for happiness.

Figure 1. Image of Facial Expressions[1]

I also researched for more types of expression and I found images for different expressions that I wanted to use, Anger, Happiness and Sadness.

These images are the same images that are used in the YouTube (Human Emotion) video showing what areas of the face move when people make the expressions.

Figure 2. Image showing how people express Anger [2]

Figure 3. Image showing how people express Happiness [2]

Figure 4. Image showing how people express Sadness [2]

The images could be used to help create the expressions of Billy, the topology on the characters face will help me to manipulate the face to express the expressions.
When I created the head for the character I made sure that the topology was correct to the face so that when moving areas of the face the movements would be as close to the real thing as possible.

Images taken from:

[1] http://www.autismspot.com/tags/Spot-Content-Tags/facial-expression

[2] http://empathicperspectives.blogspot.com/2010/02/microexpressions-tool-for-empathy.html

Adding Hair

To create a hairstyle for billy I selected the face that I had created and added a "Hair & Fur" modifier to it.
When you have the Hair and Fur modifier selected you can change the options to select amount of hair, colours, specular and glossiness to make the hair look like you want it to. The next step was to select the areas of the face that I wanted to have hair by using the polygon tool on the dropdown list from the Hair and Fur modifier box.
Once all of the areas were selected I clicked on the update selection button to select the area for the hair. So that the Hair and Fur modifier could place the hair on the face model where I had selected.
The next step was to do some test renders to see if the character looked like I wanted it to.
So now Billy has a cool new look with some stylish blonde hair although when I created the hair modifier I selected the colour to be brown but I think the reason that it has changed the colour is because of the target light and the omni light for the television.

Creating Teeth For Billy

Now that billy has been created he needs to have some teeth so he can smile and get angry.

To create the teeth I first found a picture of some teeth using the internet then edited them on photoshop.The next step was to create a cylinder in 3Ds Max and then deleted half of it so I had the shape of the mouth so it was ready to add the material to it. I then added the teeth image to the material editor using the Bitmap option and then changed the name of the material to "Teeth".
The next step was to click and drag the material onto the cylinder so that the cylinder had the teeth showing on it. The mouth was now on the cylinder but the dimensions werent right so I needed to use the UVW map to edit the shape of the teeth on the cylinder.
Once I had edited the shape and size I cloned the cylinder and changed it so I had top and bottom teeth for Billy.
Next step is to begin animating billy.

Character Information

Name: Billy "The Kid" Jones
Age: 16
From: Essex
Interests: Computer Games, Drinking
Dislikes: Losing, Sprouts and Homework
Hobbies: Computer Games, Football & Drinking
Favourite Food: Pizza
Favourite Drink: Beer

Billy is a usual teenage boy that spends most of his day in his room playing computer games and sneaking drinks into his room without his parents noticing.

Billys biggest flaw is his short temper when it comes to losing, he has to win everything! Losing isnt an option.

He spends 90% of his time playing his xbox and the rest of the time he is either eating or drinking alcohol with none of his time ever spent doing homework.

This 16 year old hopes to become a professional gamer and uses it as an excuse to get out of doing his homework.

Controller & Television For Environment

To begin with I created an Xbox 360 Controller for the character to hold whilst playing the game on a television.
First of all I created a plane and added a material of a picture of an xbox controller to the plane so that I had a reference image to go by when creating the shape of the controller.
Once I had the shape right for the plane I created the shape around the controller using the line tool.The next step was to convert the shape into an editable polygon, then selecting the polygon tool I selected the top of the shape and extruded it until it was a 3D object, then removed the top and bottom of the shape so it was hollow.The next step was to begin forming the shape of the controller to look more like the shape of the controller. Using the extrude tool and the rotate and scale tool whilst holding the shift key down to create different levels for the controller.
I repeated this technique until the controller had a shape I was happy with so it was ready for the next step of adding a top and bottom to the shape and have the sticks and buttons for the controller.
Now the shape was right I selected the "Border" tool and clicked the top and bottom of the shape and then clicked the "Cap" tool and then Turbo smoothed the outcome.
Now that the shape was finished it was time to start creating the, d-pad, sticks and buttons for the controller. To do this I created a shape using the the cylinder tool and extruded it until it was the right height.
The next step was to remove the top and bottom of the shape using the "polygon" tool then using "border" tool selected the top of the cylinder using the "scale" tool whilst holding the shift key moved the shape inwards to create a open cone shape.
I then cloned the shape and placed them in the places that they needed to be on the controller layout. Changing the sizes for each part of the controller.
The next step was to create the buttons for the controller, to do this I created a cylinder and edited the shapes of the top of them using the editable poly mode and changed the shape using the uniform scale tool and selecting the border of the cylinder and then capped the end so that it had a curved top. The last step to the shape was to use the turbo smooth tool to create a smoothed curve on the button.

Now that the button shape had been created I cloned them to create the buttons for the controller moving them into place and changing the sizes for each button.
To create the analog sticks for the controller I created a cylinder and converted it to an editable polygon. Then by clicking on the "Polygon" tool I clicked the top polygon of the cylinder and removed it from the cylinder creating a hollow top to the cylinder.
I then used the border tool to select the top of the cylinder to make a shape of a stick, to do this I used the uniform scale tool to make the top of the cylinder wider and pulled out of shape.
I then lifted the new side upwards and then repeated the step to make a rounded top to the stick, then once I was happy with the end result I capped the end using the border tool.
Now I had a shape I was happy with I turbo smoothed the shape to create the shape of the analog controller.
The next part of the controller to make was the "D-pad" to do this I created a cylinder that was as high as the lifted edge that I created earlier. Then using the box tool created a shape that had 4 points, then using the extrude tool I lifted the parts to create a raised "+" I then used the uniform and scale tool to make the top of the cross curved inwards to give the effect of buttons.
I then placed all of the buttons, sticks and the D-pad into place ready to add textures and make the right sizes.
The first thing I decided to do was to change all the colours of the raised areas to a darker white so that it influenced the lift from the controller, then created 5 materials for each of the buttons.
Using Photoshop I created the Xbox logo button in the center, and the 4 controller buttons for the X, Y, B, A.
The next step was to place them on the buttons of choice by clicking and dragging the bitmap image from the material editor onto the objects, then using the UVW map modifier to edit the placement on each button. Then using the Turbo Smooth modifier to make the button look smooth.
Now that all of the materials were complete I needed to just edit the size of the controller to make it look more realistic and changed the sizes of the analog sticks and the placement on the controller.
Now that I was happy with how the controller looked I added it to my environment and placed it in the characters hands were I wanted it to be.
The final part of the environment I needed to create was the the Television for the character to be playing games on, to create this I created a box and make it longer in width than in height.
I then converted it to an editable polygon and extruded out the front of the box to create a slight change in size, then using the uniform and scale tool with the front polygon selected I made it come inward so it gave the effect of having a screen.
I then changed the front polygon to be a separate series so that when I created the multi sub object material I could have two different colours for the tv. Black for the outside of the television and gray for where the picture of the game will be.
I then placed the tv in the environment I had created and then moved it so that it was at the characters head height. I added an omni light to give a glow from the television so it looks more realistic.