Final Video + Evaluation

Here it is the final animation

Evaluation

Our task was to create a character animation that includes expression and body language to convey the idea and concept of our animation.

The ideas for my character have been conveyed in the animation and include everything I intended to use from the start when I was imagining it.
The skills I have learnt from the module have helped me be able to complete the animation and make it to the way I wanted it to be.

Overall the module has been very interesting and I have learnt a lot of new skills of how to create a character, how to skin a model to a biped and bones and the ways to animate a character successfully.

The module has been a good way being able to stick to a task and develop an idea into a fully working animation, with help from the lecturer I have been able to show a character showing different emotions, body movement and persona.

Throughout the module there have been a few problems with animation and rendering such as the Hair & Fur modifier took so long to render that I had to scrap using it and make hair for the character that didnt look particularly good but did the job.
Some of the movements werent fluid enough so I had to redo a lot of them to make them work properly.

As some of my animation wasnt quite good enough I had to change it at week 11 to make the animation better and more effective, this was difficult to do but with patience and hard work I got the animation finished with sound added aswell.

I enjoyed the module a lot and hope to continue using the techniques in work when I leave university.

A few areas that I would have liked to have changed of the animation would be to make the character move more to show the intensity in which he plays games and smooth out the animation with the characters hair and body movements.

I would have liked the hair to look better and to not look so solid on his head but that is due to not doing enough test renders with the hair and fur modifier at the start. When I had noticed the problem with rendering alot of the animation had already been completed.
If I had kept the hair and fur modifier it would of taken a very long time rendering as there was over 2,000 total frames used for the final animation with each frame taking 40 - 60 seconds to render each with the modifiers on.

Editing The Video

To edit the video and make it move smoothly and effectively I placed all of the rendered videos into Windows Movie Maker.

Some of the renders where a little slow and was expressed by many people when watching the first rendered video back so I changed some of the speeds of the videos so that it moved smoother and looked effective.

After looking for a long time for music that was suitable for the video I decided to use a song called Attack by 30 seconds to mars, the reason that this song was picked was the mix from calmer guitars and drums to a stronger more agressive tempo to give the effect of the anger and pain he feels. There is a very well timed pause in the song that is used well in with the video to give a better effect.

I rendered the video in 1280 x 720 with HD Xbox 360 quality so that I dont lose any quality on the video.

Final Changes To The Animation

When gaining feedback from Jo in last weeks lecture the animation was discussed and Jo recommended that I should change some of the animation so that the character isnt so static, more realistic and more expressive.

So the job was to make my character do all of these things, the first section that I decided to do was the start of the animation where Billy is sitting playing computer games.

The idea was to make his movements look like the video of myself playing games so I decided to move his shoulders around for the first scene, I selected the two shoulder sections of the Biped and moved them with the "AutoKey" setting as on so that I could save the movements to the frames.
To get a realistic effect I dragged the shoulders back, then moved them forward asthough Billy was stretching his shoulders. I then rotated them round to make it look like he was doing a circular motion with his shoulder blades.
The next step was to make his eyes more animated so that it looks like he is actually playing a game staring blankly into the tv wasnt a good look as it was too static so I changed the movement so he looks around the tv more and isnt so focused on one point.
The last part for the starting scene was to make Billy look a bit happier playing the games so the scene looks a bit more realistic.
To make Billy smile I selected the face and changed the option to Editable Poly and Vertex selection and moved each area of the face to make him smile. I then moved his teeth to follow the action I had created.
Starting Smile
Enjoyment Smile
Now that the starting scene was complete, it was time to start animating an area that Jo noticed was missing from the video I had shown her, this was the movement of looking up and tilting the head back with hands going behind the head in horror that the tv was falling.

To create this I selected Billy's biped head and rotated it backwards so that it moved in the right way, I then had to select his hair so that it followed the movement of the head.

The last thing that had to be moved was the arms and hands, I selected the top area of the arms first to get a smooth motion, then I selected the forearms to make the movement more realistic.

Then it was time to move the fingers so that it looks like he is gripping his head.
Once his head was at a suitable angle it was time to move the eyes so that it looked like he was looking up in the sky, to do this I selected the reference points I had created with the iris and moved them so they were above the head making him look skyward.
This is what the character looks like from the side when he looks to the sky.
The final area that I decided to add to the character animation was to make Billy throw himself onto the bed and rub his head to show his sadness at destroying his television.

By moving his arms out to the sides it gives the effect of him throwing himself down and by throwing myself backwards whilst sitting it gave me the right movements for animating my character.
To give the effect of Billy falling I selected the Biped and rotated it from the middle with the keyframe tool making sure that it moved fluid and smoothly.

When making billy fall backwards I had to try and make the hair follow perfectly which was very difficult to do as the angles changed for nearly every frame.
I tried my best to make the hair follow but there are parts that are a bit too quick for the hair movements.
When billy hits the bed I made the character bounce back up a little so that it looks like he has hit the bed with force.

I then thought about what I could add to the movements to make it look like he has realised what he has actually done.
To give the effect of realisation of what he has done I made Billy have a sad face but open his eyes and look straight up to the ceiling.
I then animated the movements so that Billy puts his hands on his head then moves them slowly down to his ears in shock of what he has just done.

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.