Week 2: Exercise 2

I decided to use the Joe rig. Due to how the rig is modeled, no modifications will be made to the expression. This is the blocking:

And this is with transition. Note that the keyframes are the same, hence clipping is expected:

 

Doing the blocking of the animation is rather hard as I only got a one-sided view of myself rather than the typical top-front-side view. Hence, I had to rely heavily on my own imagination and my understanding of weight shifting, along with knowing how I might stand during the scene. Several limitations on the rig, such as his very short arms, hindered my attempts slightly but alas, I was able to finish it. The following are screenshots of the keyposes the animation is based on:

Week 2: Exercise 1b

I chose to do the sole sound file taken from Get Smart. Due to the sarcasm and calmness behind the voice, I tried to appear rather sleazy and a bit restless.

Extra Works

These are some extra works that I do in my spare time. This post will be continuously updated as I do more extra works.

 

The above video is me adding in phonemes to the Morpheus rig (since it lacks phonemes to begin with).

Week 2: Exercise 1a

My group chose the Godfather scene where McCluskey assaults Michael hard enough to cause him to fall to the ground. I play as Michael, who the camera mostly focuses on.

 

This was right at the beginning of the scene. Jing Hong, who acted as McCluskey, was standing a rather threatening pose. This can seen as his chest was forward and his fists clenched and backwards. This implies hostility and possibly anger. I was standing in a neutral pose, showing that I may not notice what was coming and was not angry in any way.

This is moments before I got hit by Jing Hong. Despite the smile on Jing Hong's face, the movement of the punch was fast as can be seen in the motion blur on his fist. This implies anger. His pose also shows him throwing himself forward to put as much force in his fist as possible, once again showing anger or his willingness to punch. My hands rose in a shocked attempt to block or dodge the punch, although I was ultimately too slow as the scene requires that I get hit.

This was right after I got hit. Jing Hong's fist does not stop moving as it overshoots and was decelerating. His shoulder was pushed forward by the force he used on the punch. His body relaxed slightly from the punch as it appeared less threatening. I was forced into the direction that his fist moved and held on to my jaw, which was hit. Holding on to my jaw after such a punch shows pain.

This was moments after the previous keypose. Jing Hong's stature starts to relax while I was beginning to tense up. This can be seen as my pose in this screenshot (in which I was bending) differs greatly from the previous one (in which I was mostly standing almost straight). My bent down position, with my hands still on my jaw, shows that the pain was probably unbearable and my free hand was clenched, showing that I may be trying to resist the pain.

In this scene, I attempted to stand despite the pain, as can be seen with my free hand still clenched, my hunched body and my hand still on my jaw. I was also looking up to Jing Hong and staring at him, apparently not happy with what he did. Though hard to see, I was showing an angry expression to show hostility. My body was angling backwards as I began to lose balance, showing that I may be losing consciousness. Jing Hong appears much less threatening and more relaxed than the previous screenshots as he was done punching me. This can be see with his body straightening up and his arms not longer clenched.

In this final screenshot, I have fallen from my previous position as I was lying on the ground rather than standing. I haven't lost consciousness fully however, as my hand was still holding on to my jaw. The rest of my limbs were limp, implying my lack of strength to stand up. I was not looking at Jing Hong anymore, probably showing that I was too exhausted or angry to look up to him.

Here's the original video where these screenshots were taken from:

Week 1: Exercise 3

1.       Does a blendshape require the base mesh and the target mesh to have the same number of vertices? Explain your answer, with reference to how blendshapes actually work.

      Yes. Blandshapes involve a polygon morphing into the same shape as the target polygon and hence, any difference in the number of vertices could cause unwanted distortion as the base polygon attempts to form into the target polygon's shape. More often than not, blendshapes normally involve a modified target polygon duplicated from the base.

2.       Can blendshapes only be used for facial animation? If not, prove it! Animate something and post it on your  blog.

    No. It can also be used for making squash and stretches and actual animation  otherwise accomplished through the more thorough but more tedious rigging. Here's a prove:

3.       If you want a character to look angry, you might decide to create a target mesh of the character's head and then modify it to have an angry expression. This is NOT how it should be done. Why not? And what would be a better approach? (Hint: you want to give the animator as much freedom as possible.)

     If the target mesh is set to appear angry, it limits the expression of the character to just neutral and angry. Also, there are many different levels of anger and when set to one level, the other levels won't be possible, such as a mesh set to appear annoyed but unable to appear mad. A much better approach would be to blendshape the different movable parts of the face to move in different directions. For example, an eyebrow can be made to move up for one target mesh while another sets the same eyebrow to be able to slant downwards to appear angry. With each parts moving individually, all kinds of expression can be made, not just anger.

Week 1: Exercise 2a and 2b

This is the results after going through the tutorial:

Learning about blend shape deformers is a bit confusing for a while but after re-reading the tutorial a few times, I begin to understand it and I even managed to somewhat remember the steps required to do blend shapes. In the end, I thought it was straightforward and potentially less tedious than rigging, though limited. The animating confuses me for a while as I can't see the keyframe on the time slider, only for me to find out that the keyframe is on the blend shape node.

After that, I made another expression as we were tasked to. I made the model wink through blend shape so here's the result:

Making a wink is actually easier and faster than a smile or raising the brow because the entire eyelid, which was easy to select, moves and very little editing on the cluster weight was needed. In the end, it turned out the way I want it to.

Week 1: Exercise 1b

Week 1: Exercise 1a

This is my animation of Boris saying the line, "You don't know the power of the dark side.".

Making this animation was surprisingly fun and fairly straightforward for me as I spend a lot of my video gaming time looking at the mouth movements of characters during cutscenes. I've always been fascinated by mouth movements in 3D models for some reason and I guess all that staring may have paid off. The only difficulty I face was making the animation appear realistic and not robot-like, which I overcome by creating arcs through the graph editor or by making the model twitch slightly and slowly in "idle" parts.