Zenko Rig Reel

Zenko Rig Reel

Zenko was my capstone character that I rigged and animated for Zenko: A Fox's Tale.  He is built to have a very reactive spine that is easy to stretch and squash.  Unlike many rigs, Zenko is build with FK Space controllers in all four legs rather than regular FK controllers.  This kind of controller is great for characters that are in the air and creatures that fly.  I also build four visible pivots that the animator can use to show how the feet can lean.   Zenko also has two master controllers, visibility controllers, curvature controller in his neck, and a controller that controls which space the eyes are in.  Overall, Zenko was a very fun character to rig as he is the first character I have rigged for games.  Some of the considerations that went into Zenko's rig was the fact that his spine was not supposed to move like a regular fox.  His spine is inspired by snakes, ferrets, and cats.  We also wanted a lot of movement in his tail so there are a lot of controllers built to give fluid movement.  We also wanted a lot of expression in Zenko's ears as he does not have a facial rig.  Besides creating Zenko's rig, I also created Zenko's animations.  For his animations I looked at many fox videos and I captured over 60 clips of my dog Rivers doing many of the movements we were looking for Zenko to do.  I also created his original Character Sheet that broke down who he is as a character.  The beginning of this reel is clips from the Zenko release trailer and afterwards it shows off his rig.  The music is from Zenko: A Fox's Tale release trailer. 

Lucy Rig Reel

Lucy Rig Reel

Lucy was a rig I did in my undergrad before FIEA.  Unlike the rigs I created in FIEA, she is built for film.  She appears as the secondary and hero character in the University of Central Florida's Character Animation short animated film, Delivery.  Overall, she has been the most difficult rig I've had to work on.  Some parts of Lucy were rigid, while others were flexible, and in some places she was both rigid and flexible.  What made Lucy so difficult was the fact that I was learning how to rig while rigging her and she is the most complicated character in the character animation program's history.  It took me my entire senior year, and a lot of very late nights, to rig her and make her perfect.  Some of the parts on her that really tripped me up was her collar, front paws, the skeleton spine on top of her actual spine, and adding the back toes to her back feet.  Each of these problems needed a lot of research to have it rigged correctly, hours of troubleshooting and testing, or both.  Overall, Lucy is my favorite rig I have created.  Anytime I show Lucy, everyone loves her character.  Because I created the animation for her while at FIEA, I added it to the beginning of her rigging reel.  The music is called Summer Time by MorningLightMusic.

Lucy Walk Cycle Reel

Lucy Walk Cycle Reel

This is an animation I've worked on for a period of time.  Lucy was a character I rigged and animated in undergrad and has continued to be a character I'm constantly learning from.  With this animation I learned more about quadrupeds and how they move.  Quadrupeds are more difficult to animate then you might think.  My biggest learning experience with this animation was the idea of how her upperbody moves in correlation with how her lowerbody moves.  I also learned about adding fidgets to walk cycles and how they bring personality and life to characters.  I was very inspired by how my own dog Rivers moves and acts as both Lucy and Rivers have similar personalities.  Both of them also have similar physical characteristics such as big floppy ears.   One of the signature actions my dog does is to stick her tongue out and close her mouth with an excited and playful facial expression.  She does this when she's very excited to play with her toys.  With Lucy I wanted to have the same signature action but Lucy style with exaggerated movements in her ears and tongue.   I also learned more about facial animation as Lucy's face is a skull and in the moment she looks over, she needs to look happy and smile.  When Animating the head I actually never thought about the curves that the head motion makes.  The big indicator to visualize Lucy's curves was her nose.  I was constantly watching Lucy's nose to see what kind of curves her head motion was creating.  After understanding her head motion I worked on her ears and learned about how they drag behind and the floppy look they can give when being dragged.  Overall it was a super fun experience animating Lucy and learning more about characters that are just like her!  For animating Lucy I worked in Autodesk Maya 2020 and for rendering I used Pixar's Renderman!  The music is called Summer Time by MorningLightMusic. 

Persy Walk Cycle Reel

Persy Walk Cycle Reel

I've updated this reel from the previous reel that I created for Persy.  Since I created a walk cycle for Lucy, I decided to also create a walk cycle for the main character from Delivery, Persy.  Because I also typically work with animals, mostly canine like animals, I thought it would be a fun challenge to animate a biped too.  Persy's model and rig are from the University of Central Florida's Character Animation program "Delivery" film.  

My biggest learning curve from working with Persy was the fact that she has hair and it needed to move and react to how her head and body are moving.  I also learned that hair reacts and moves differently as you get further into animating the ends of the hair.  It's essentially long chain with each reacting to what the chain before it is reacting to.

Another big lesson was the animation curve Persy's arms created when moving forward and back.  I never thought about how arms gain and lose momentum and how the wrist and hands react to that movement.  As the arms lose momentum the wrists have follow through and catch up as the arms are beginning to gain momentum. The hands then also react as the fingers get closer and further apart. 

The last big lesson I learned was about facial animation.  Persy has her limits on her facial rig, she can be very expressive or very subtle.  If you combine  too many controller's Persy's face will start to cave inwards in some areas.  I have never been comfortable pushing Persy's face to it's limit but with this animation I really played around with what her expressions are and how I can creatively make her look happy without breaking her rig. 

Overall, this animation has taught me a lot about how the body moves on a biped and how it effects other parts for follow through animation.  This animation is definitely not quite completed yet as I need to work on Persy's fidget sometime in the near future!  The music in the reel is called Typography by MorningLightMusic.

Trimming Mocap Data and more Cleaned/Characterized Animation

Gif of Cleaned and Characterized Single Lady's Dancing Storm Trooper 

This week I learned about trimming in motion builder and I cleaned and characterized three mocap animations.  For trimming I worked on the basic walk animation and the idle.  To start off my trimming process I selected the skeleton in the scene and in the FCurves and selected the translations and rotations.  Selecting the skeleton was a little finnicky as the FCurves didn't always appear when I selected it.  

Skeleton Selection and FCurves in Motion Builder

From here I went into the filter's tab in the resources section.  I would place my marker on the time line and hit Set Start and then place the marker where I wanted to cut animation and push Set Stop.  After selecting cut I pushed Preview and Accept. I also did this towards the end of the animation where I wanted to trim off the ending.  

Filters Tab in Motion Builder

To adjust my timeline, I moved the ending to the last frame in my animation.  When you trim the beginning of animation, the first frame of the trim starts at 0 automatically so you do not need to adjust the beginning of the timeline. 

Trimmed Timeline in Motion Builder

Gif of Trimmed Walk Cycle in Motion Builder

Following the same process I trimmed the idle animation.

Gif of Trimmed Idle Animation in Motion Builder

After trimming the idle and the walk cycle I worked on three new mocap animations.  Because I used a women for the idle and the walk I decided to go with mocap data from a man.  These animations are currently cleaned and characterized.  

Gif of Storm Trooper Dying(Electrocuted) in Motion Builder

For one of the animations I decided to try an animal and found this cat animation.  This animation needs more work done to it as the hands are not touching the ground and the armor would clip through the ground.  Overall I thought seeing what happens when you work with an actor acting as an animal and then working with this animation in motion builder was really interesting.  

Gif of Storm Trooper Acting like a Cat in Motion Builder

Gif of Cleaned and Characterized Single Lady's Dancing Storm Trooper

Cleaning and Characterizing MoCap Data in Motionbuilder

 

Gif of Clean and Characterized Motion Capture Data with Character Attached

Cleaning and characterizing motion cap data is simpler than I imagined especially since this is my first experience with Autodesk Motion Builder.  When opening motion builder for the first time, I first set up my settings so that to navigating the perspective view is exactly like Maya. 

Setting Up Settings for Interaction

I also learned about the hot keys ctrl + W which toggles between schematic view and producer perspective view.  The other hotkey I learned about was ctrl + A  which can show the model only, x-ray of the skeleton (rig), or no skeleton.  

Schematic View

Opening the motion capture data is as simple as navigating to your motion capture FBX and simply opening it.  For my project I created a dedicated folder to hold multiple folders to organize my files as I am cleaning two motion capture FBX's and using a character rig.

Navigating and Opening Motion Capture

I really didn't know what to expect when I opened the motion capture data, but it was messier than I thought as you find unmarked markers, camera systems, and markers on the skeleton.  

Not Cleaned and Characterized Motion Builder Scene

After opening the scene I learned about the timeline.  I found it really interesting to hear about how the unmarked markers appear in the motion capture data.  When the character walks in the scene the unmarked markers don't move with the animation like the markers on the skeleton.  They stay in place.

Timeline Gif

At this point I opened up my schematic view and began to clean the file.  I took out the camera system, marked markers, unmarked markers, and the stick markers that were in my scene.  I left the skeleton data, position data, and the actor data in the scene.

Original Schematic View

Cleaned Schematic View

With my schematic view cleaned, my perspective view changed to show just the skeleton.

Clean Perspective View

From here, I needed to clean my rotations on the skeleton.  To do this I grabbed the entire skeleton and in the properties I changed all the rotation values to 0.  This made the skeleton lay on it's back looking straight up.  

Rotations on Entire Skeleton at 0

I then grabbed the skeleton's hip joint and in the properties changed the rotation x value to 90.

Rotate Hip to 90

I once again grabbed the entire skeleton, not the position or the uppermost node, and changed my timeline to start at 0.  I then keyed the skeleton at 0. 

Keyed Skeleton at 0

At this point the skeleton is ready to be characterized! In the asset browser under resources you will find characters under templates.  Under characters drag character onto the hip joint of the skeleton and push characterize and then biped.  I got very lost the first time I did this so I'm writing it down so that it's easy to understand and remember.  

Characterized Skeleton

I then took a step further to make sure my scene was very organized.  I went to my navigation tab and under characters I renamed character to MoCap so that it is easy to know what my mocap data is.

Organized Mocap Data

My scene is now cleaned and characterized!

Gif of Cleaned and Characterized MoCap Walk

Since I did two mocap animations I followed the same steps above for my idle animation.  

Gif of Original Idle Animation MoCap Data

Gif of Cleaned and Characterized Idle Animation MoCap Data

To really bring these animations to life I grabbed a rig from the FIEA mocap rig library.  I personally don't know anything about Fire Emblem however I thought it would be fun to use one of the Fire Emblem characters in the library.  Bringing in a character is the same as navigating to your mocap FBX file and just pushing open. 

Azura in Motion Builder

To get your motion capture FBX in your character file is very simple as you just open your cleaned and characterized folder holding your animation FBX and drag it into motion builder.  You then merge the FBX into the scene.  You should then see MoCap appear in your characters along with the character rig in navigation.  

Character and Mocap in Navigation

From here I selected the Azura Character and in the Character Settings I changed Input Type to Character and then Azura was connected to my mocap animation!

Changing Character Input Type

Gif of Azura Walking

Gif of Azura Idling 

Simple Ball Bounce with Maya and Renderman

Simple Ball Bounce Reel

This is a simple ball bounce created in Autodesk Maya and rendered in Pixar's Renderman.  For this animation I had a total of 5 passes.  The ball rig is from UCF's FIEA program.

For my first pass of creating my ball bounce it was all about reference.  Finding reference that had an easy angle to work with an gave a good view of timing and how the ball was moving.   My first pass really was all about getting the timing of the ball, weight, and rotation. 

During my second pass I tweaked my rotation and used the graph editor to show more weight in my ball. I also brought in more squash and stretch when the ball hit the ground. At this point I set up my rendering scene for renderman and created my lights, material, and camera.

In my third pass I adjusted my rendering angle and gave the ball some jiggle as it is rolling and coming to a stop.  

For the fourth pass I focused on getting the ball to have a little more jiggle while it is in the air.

For my final pass I added more frames to the end of my animation and adjusted a few keyframes so that my ball comes to a softer and slower stop. 

Animation: Moving Objects

Simple Moving Object Animation

Simple animation on moving projects in Maya.  Using translations, rotations, and touch ups from the graph editor!