MA 3D Computer Animation

My job this week was to complete the editing of the animation as well as the soundtrack. Here is my final work and work showreel.

My main job this week was lighting. To get them to render successfully I adjusted the material parameters of each object. Below are screenshots of the working screen. To get an even light on the figure I created three flat lights. Also you can observe that the default parameters of the model are very much like a glass ball when the material parameters are not adjusted. This is obviously not good.

I’ve finished most of the shots this week. I’ve tried to edit them together to give me a preview of the general effect.

This week I had some difficulties with the animation process. I found it hard to imagine out of thin air how some of the movements were done. So I shot some videos to help me complete the performances myself. This discovery process was very interesting and I realised how important reference is. It took me a lot of attempts in front of the camera to find the right way to perform. So it would have been terrible if I had just started animating without shooting the videos.

This week I put all the models into the scene with the plan to start animating them. Here’s what it looks like now. It looks good. I don’t think this current scene will cause me any difficulties with the animation part afterwards.

As I could not find a model on the internet that met my requirements. I decided to make my own models and rig it. First of all, follow the tutorials in the following pages.

https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1zt411o77F?spm_id_from=333.999.0.0&vd_source=17868a622c9bc4708c00b6b08f7b0161

I created a spiral-shaped cream. Then I gave it different materials to make it look like a strawberry cake with delicious cream and chocolate.

The video below shows my completed cake rigging based on Toby’s workshop.

I found it very difficult to finish modeling by myself in a short time while doing excellent rigging. Therefore, I decided to look for good models on the internet to help me with the animation part. Here are the models shown and tested. There are two main characters here, a boy and a sprite. I did not find a very suitable sprite model. So I chose a small penguin model instead. There is another important character in the scene – the cake. I will finish modeling it and rigging it next week.

I completed the first draft of the storyboard in class under Herman’s guidance.Herman gave me a lot of useful advice, such as whether I could do expression rigging as I had a lot of emoticons in my storyboard. I told him I hadn’t tried that yet and Herman shared with me Linkedin’s tutorial on expression rigging. It was very useful. Also, he suggested that I consider the form of the cake. Because, according to my version of the story. The cake was moving from side to side. Considering its texture, the jelly and the toast must have animated differently. When I got home, I perfected my storyboard (shown below).