Category: Advanced and Experimental

This is the feedback that George gave me…

I felt like I was making progress after receiving his feed back. George had shown me that the waist was stuck and I needed to go in and move it down as a lead to the body. I also need to let the arm linger a bit more after she drops her walking stick.

With this feedback in mind, I went to start the Splining process.

I had to go in and make sure every control had a key for each movement, regardless of whether its moving or not. This stops that weird floaty thing happening in spline. After that I went in to the graph editor to fix the curves and make sure it was smooth and steady curves.

Once I did this I added another element of her getting up then dropping back down then getting up again to add to the sense of struggle.

After doing this. I really struggled with the hand at the end and the graph editor was a mess, but decided to sent it on anyway for feedback

I am quite happy with the first part, with her struggling to get up then the part with the plie I enjoy.

Feedback

George told me that I needed to get rid of the first part with her stepping forward in prep to get up. I was a bit disappointed but I understand it doesn’t really add much.

Then I need to have her drop the stick and at the moment it looks like she flings it.

He also said that she is not leaning forward enough when she gets up. This is hard to see for me as I thought that I had pushed her forward in the rig but I will go back in and have her body leading more and the coming forward more. I also rotated the upper body far too much when she dropped the stick.

I also need to have her hold her pose when she leans forwards and backwards. When I do this I need to keep in mind that it will be moving holds.

Thoughts

This is all the feedback I have received so far and will continue to work on my character animation work. It is not my strong suit and find myself drawn towards the modelling and visual effects side of things, however, I am really want to continue to improve, not only to have some nice pieces in my portfolio but I find that when I learn more about character animation, it improves my skills for other parts. For example, for my artefact, when I was using blend shapes, I referred back to the 12 principles of animation and the work we have been doing with George even for something as simple as a cap of a drinks can opening. I really hope I can continue to work on this over the next few weeks and complete it.

This is the final video!

I am actually super proud. I put so much effort into researching effects, looking at adverts for inspiration and have spend so long trying to do every element of the process to the best of my ability including the animation, audio, the editing, modelling and shading.

There are definitely some elements that I could have done better. After submission, I am going to go back in and change the liquid sim where the can and the peaches fall into the water. I also might change some of the audio. The parts where I did the voice over in the middle, I think I could have made the echo a bit stronger etc.

One thing I didn’t end up doing which I don’t mind but think I should change next time. I need to add a subdivision surface modifier to the can to make it smoother. There are parts where you can see the polygon faces, I wanted to change them, but when I did it messed with the UVs and I couldn’t find how to fix it.

I am looking forward to my skills getting better and able to pull off more complex simulations. I had way more abstract ideas in my head but wasn’t unable to pull it off because of my skill set. I looking forward to learning and getting better so I can create the idea in my head without hesitation.

Doing this ad has solidified me wanting to pursue animations for commercials.

So the thing I needed to learn that I thought would sell the animation the most was simulations, specifically liquid simulations

I had no idea but I found a course on Skillshare that showed the liquid simulations.

This was probably the hardest part of the whole project. I basically created a cube and from there I made it into a domain, which is where the liquid sits. From there, I could experiment with the particles and and animated the can and the peaches dropping into the water.

I this was a really heavy scene. After baking the data, the mesh and the particles it made navigating the scene very difficult. It is not until more recently that I realise that the animation of the peach in the water could have been better. They do eventually move upwards but I was concentrating so much on the look of the liquid sim that I didn’t really check.

Particle Simulation

Floating scene

I added some particle simulations in there too. I first added a cube and added a emitter. I changed the output object to the peach and I did the same for the aubergine. This took a long time to get right and I just tweaked the settings so I could get a slow moving sim. I then animated the cans and added a low depth of field.

Can Pouring

So I really wanted to do an animation of the juice pouring out the can. I felt like the first liquid sim didn’t go so well but I was really determined to try again. After all, the advert is about juice. I really felt like this was an important shot. I experimented with the liquid simulation again. I placed a UV Sphere inside the can and added a fluid sim to this, changing it from domain to Flow.

This is what it looked like in Blender…

I really didn’t like the way it looked so I went looking for more tutorials. I found a video there a guy did this effect and quickly mentioned that he did it with a particle sim rather than a physics sim.

So I placed a plane inside the opening, to use as the emitter object then used Meta balls as the emitter. After scaling the balls and adding UV Spheres as the bubbles, changing the shading to a glass shader, then changed the IOR to 1.33 (which is water) this happened….

I was way happier with the results. To me it looked more dynamic and even though it is exaggerated, to me it looked more appealing that the fluid created by the physics sim.

Splash Sim

I really wanted to try one more time with the fluid sim and have a splash. I liked the other elements in the project but it was really important to me to have a few fluid scenes. So I used the Physics sim again by placing plains behind the cans and by changing the velocity of the emission and the directions, I was able to make the water come out briskly. I changed the speed which changed it to slowmo and then that was it. I was fairly happy with the result.

Thoughts

The physic simulations were a mixed result for me. I think the splash came out okay. I can’t help thinking that to get the result I was thinking in my head, I need to learn Houdini. But for this project it was okay. I also think I need to re do the first fluid sim and correct the animation and re-render. To me, the final render looks dark, even after I placed main lights in the scene. The Particle sims came out the best for me.

This has just made me really want to learn Houdini and get into learning better simulations.

Almost there!!!!!!!!!!!!

Transitions

I needed to do a couple of quick transitions using a mask. All I did was put the layer that I wanted the transition to happen on top of each other then used the pen tool in After effects to draw and animate a mask. The mask reveals the layer underneath. This meant that the aubergine could pass upwards and transition to the next scene.

Gaussian Blur and Channel Blur

I added an adjustment layer in After effects on the top most layer and used the shape tool to draw a ellipse. From there I could create a mask so on the outer most part of the scene, there was a blur. I add a Channel Blur first. The channel blur can be a bit more specific and adjust the colours. I changed the green alpha channel and this made everything appear more pink. I liked this effect as it made it a bit more dream like an softer. In the same adjustment layer, I then added a gaussian blur as well. I added a feather to this to make the mask alot softer.

Text

I found this great tutorial on how to create text animations in After effects. I am not unfamiliar but I wanted some specific text that was interesting enough but didn’t draw attention away from the advert too much.

I like the text having it fill animate on. I was super easy. I just went to the animate tab, chose fill colour, then changed the advanced settings from character to words, and the took the smoothness down so it was no longer a slow fade but the fill appearing all of a sudden.

The the best bit was I could go to Essential Graphic graphic tab and plug the source text into this, then all I needed to do was change the text to make it re-suable.

Audio

I wanted to add the voice over to the beginning and end scene. So I asked a friend to do the opening and ending scene for me. I recorded her on my phone and then took the recording in to Adobe Audition.

I found it quite complicated to get the effect I wanted to. I ended up having to add a delay, as well as an echo and messed around with the channels to get it sounding like I wanted it to. I added a compressor which added made her voice sound louder and more depth.

Glitch effect

I needed a transition from the space scene to the main advert so I used this tutorial to create a glitch effect. I used a noise texture and mainpulated the settings so that it was a blocky texture

I animated the noise but adding a wiggle expression. The added the following effects, a Colorama, which gave it the funky cyberpunk colour, Ball Action effect, which have it the quality of a screen by creating loads of little circles, then I added a Gaussian blur to make the noise effect look smoother and more psychedelic.

Thoughts

At this point it is very close to the end. I just need to add the final sound effects to bring it all together. I am very happy with the way its turning out.

For the animations in Dutty Juice, for the most part, I used empty objects to control the animations of the object. I found it easier to control the different dynamics then. It made it easier to make the Can and the fruit rotate on several axis at once. The video below demonstrates that well. I could move the empty up and rotate as well as rotate the cans.

The graph editor was my best friend!

I turned the interpolation mode to Bezier and then played with the easing to make it a lot snappier.

For example in the first shot, I just used the scale tool to move the handles and make the curve a lot steeper this made the camera move a lot snappier.

Shape Keys

The other kind of animation I did was with shape keys. I thought a really cool scene would be to have the can opening. I used the model I had but I needed to cut it to open it. I did this back in Maya and then exported the can as an FBX into Blender.

I then went into object data properties and added a new shape key to the cap and to the opening part.

It was quite tricky to make it look right. I had to try several times and took a few attempts with different models, by going back into Maya and adjusting where the cut should go. Finally I just used the proportional editing to move the can opening down and the cap up.

It was just a case of timing then. It really helped that I had already found a sound effect that I liked and imported it into Blender and used that for timing.

I tried to have the principles of animation in mind when I was setting the key frames. I tried to add some anticipation and have a bit of exaggeration with it.

Thoughts

It was so much fun to animate and breathe life into these inanimate objects. I’m not sure if Maya has this option, but in Blender I could chose a pre-set easing in and out I wanted which was really cool. But most of the time it was just experimenting with moving the handles to make the movements snappier like shot one, or a slower, smoother ease out like the space scene, that way there was a nice juxtaposition from those scenes as well.

https://pin.it/3gVptQd

I found this advert on Pinterest and loved how the renders were spinning around each other in a circle. I looked up how to to achieve this and found that it was called a repeater effect.

I looked up some tutorials on this and found several. I liked this one on how to do a Phenakistiscope. This is one of the oldest forms of animation. It is kind of like a flip book in that there is one frame and the rotation of the drawing at a certain speed creates an illusion that the images are moving. It can be achieved using a record player moving at 45rpm. I first rendered 360 rotations of the cans and the aubergine and peach.

I then imported that in to the scene in aftereffects and made a separate composition that was long and skinny because that was going to be duplicated around the anchor point in the centre.

Inside another composition, that scene called aubergine is altered by putting on a freeze frame and then adding a expression on the Time and the Rotation. This would take the time from the aubergine comp, which was 40 frames and take a freeze frame of the aubergine on each frame and rotate it in a circle by 9 degrees (360/40). This created the image above, 40 images of the aubergine, each image is the individual frame. I then took that image and rotated 45 times in one minute. This then achieved the illusion that each still was a rotating aubergine.

I then put the original rotating aubergine in the middle.

I also did a spiral one

I started off creating an animation of the aubergine, keying its position and scale so it looked like it was falling and growing at the same time.

The I took that duplicated that composition so there were serval in a loop. Then took that loop into another comp and used the time and rotation expression and duplicated it around in a circle which created a spiral.

Thoughts

I still fine expressions in After Effects quite daunting, but, I’m glad I gave it a go. The original tutorial was actually intended for someone to print out the stills and then put it on a vinyl, however, I’m glad I stuck with it and saw that the illusion works digitally as well.

I wanted the advert to be as elaborate as I could do it. I wanted it to begin with a space scene and a planet that was the shape of a peach. I originally wanted to have a can also racing towards the planet like an asteroid that blows up the planet and it reveals a juice explosion. However I thought this was a too many simulations and effects to learn before the deadline. I still want to create the planet but instead there will be a can floating past.

I had already modeled the peach so it was a case of adding that to a new scene and texturing it to look like a planet.

I found a different tutorials showing how to create planets using texture packs. I first went to a website that had free textures. They only provided PNGs so I used adobe Substance sampler to create Normal, displacements maps etc.

After that, It was a case of using nodes to create the texture using the maps. I also used that same website to download a cloud texture and then a volume shader to create an atmosphere. This was the finished result.

I needed some close up scenes and then a slower zoom out but once I rendered it out I really wasnt happy with the result.

So I tried again but instead I used the nodes to do it procedurally. So this time I used a found a different tutorial.

After this I was able to texture, light, and scale the planet. All of these elements helped sell the appearance that it was in space.

These are screen shot of the shader node lay out for the planet and the cloud surface. It was about utilising the musgrave texture in blender and plugging this into the texture and roughness.

I also played around with the scale and used the compositor in Blender to add glare nodes to create an atmospheric effect and I was much much happier with how this turned out.

So I animated the camera, the sun and the can floating past. It actually took me a while to get it all to the speed and smoothness I wanted. I went into the graph editor and had to play around with the easing out to make the camera and the sun stop very smoothly.

Thoughts

I really liked the way this turned out. I thankfully utilised the university render farm otherwise I think it would have crashed my computer. I think playing with the compositor to get that atmospheric effect was a great touch and something I think ill consider in the future to up the look of my renders.

In Blender I am now preparing the more of the scene and have imported assets that I created in Maya in to blender. I want to texture the aubergine but I did not produce UVs in Maya. This means then I was shading in Blender, I was not getting the desired affect. The actual vegetable part was working but the leaves were looking bizarre. I am still unclear on how to successfully UV so found this tutorial.

Shading

I found this tutorial helpful and taught me how to use the node shader in blender. I was quite intimidated by nodes in 3D software but found this to improve my understanding, although I could not follow it all as it required buying a plugin so I just followed the parts that were relevant to me.

After attempting the tutorial several times I got to a point where I was kind of happy with the shading. But it wasn’t optimal. I decided that there were loads of other things I wanted to do so I made the decision to stop there and seek help another time.

This is the shader in Blender, I used the texture node and plugged it in to the colour ramp.

I then added a textures to the can to make it looked smudged and cold. I did a very similar thing to what I did with the peach and the aubergine by adding in a texture node, then plugging that into a colour ramp along with a fingerprint texture. After plugging in the label and then adding the condensation. I was super happy with the outcome.

Thoughts

I was very happy with how the shading turned out. However, still am not proficient with UV mapping which shows if you look carefully at the peach and aubergine. Nevertheless, I am pretty happy with the outcome.

For the advert I attempted to recreate water and and splash simulations. I first tried in Maya to manually create the condensation using the FX tools.

I used a particle system and moved the settings around so it was a very slow drip, like condensation on a can. I got it to a place where I was quite happy with it, However, I still don’t know why, but this particle system kept making Maya crash. I tried several times using several different tutorials and it didn’t work for me.

At this point I decided it would be easier to use Blender to create the ad. There were far more tutorials and I found a plug in that could create condensation and you can control the drip.

This is me experimenting with the droplet generator.

I was really happy with how it turned out and decided that I will use it on the peach and the aubergine.

For the project, because I enjoy modelling, I wanted to see if I could model the fruit myself. Mike had taught us how to utilise Nurbs in Maya. It was easier to manipulate the objects as Nurbs and then later convert them into Polygon Primitives. For the Aubergine it was quite simple. It was a stretch sphere then I used the bend tool to give it the aubergine shape. The leaves part was the top of the aubergine, duplicated, then I extruded some of the faces and at the top for the stork. There is a texture element that I added to make it look a bit more organic.

Aubergine

Peach

For the peach it was another sphere, that I manipulated it whilst it was a Nurbs shape. I pulled the vertices into give it the outer shape. Then I converted it to a polygon primitive and manipulated the edges to give it the crack in the middle. Then I used a cylinder and utilised the textured feature in maya.

Here, I was experimenting with procedural texturing in maya. I actually quite liked how the peach turned out. It was difficult to get the same effect with the peach segment. I think I needed to take it into substance painter maybe.

Thoughts

It was great to learn more techniques for modelling and and texturing. I am looking forward to getting to know substance painter more. I think I dont have enough time right now to use it for the models.