Third shot

The third shot is about the relief falling.

I use The Last Supper as the falling thing simply because it fits my topic which is theology. And falling kind of means the end. So, I pick this relief as my falling thing.

To make the scene looks horrible, I added the light turning off and on to create the feeling of current instability.

To make the scene not too dark after I turn off the left side light, I added a fill light to light the relief up.

But for the first time, I set the frame of turning off and turning on the light to 4 frames each. The result seems bad after I rendered it. Therefore, I reduce the length to only 1 frame. Also, the rotation of relief falling is too slight. So, I add the volume up. What’s more, I accelerated the drop process according to the weight of the relief.

For the camera, I made an effect from blur to focus to imitate the feeling of staring at the relief.

Here is the animation from playblast

Some final rendered shot

Fourth shot

This part takes an important part in the whole animation because it somehow shows the character’s characteristic and where the fear comes from.

I gave a close-up to the character’s face to show she was surprised by the falling and lighting. For this part, I referenced how people will behave when they were surprised. Such as raising eyebrows when surprised. I also lift her eyelid with the movement of her eyebrows. The fingers slowly stretched as her head leaned forward. But I think I may need to extend the length of it because 24 frame may not see the whole movement clearly.

The camera then cuts to the upper body, where she covers her mouth with one hand and is pressed against the glass door with the other. She blinked twice, action changed from surprise to thought. She suddenly felt there might be something behind her. So, she looked back but found nothing. I made her lean forward because of her concentration. And turned her head to one side a little bit to show she was thinking. Also, lean back slightly, raise your eyebrows and look up a little. When the fingers are naturally contracted, the index finger contracts the least, and the little finger contracts the most.

Then she opened the door and entered the hotel. Here, for her to walk instead of floating, I did the ups and downs of the center of gravity, and keyed the shoulder lifts when the door was pushed hard. After opening the door, the center of gravity can see a clear arc. And then she took a step to the side to show she entered the hotel.

Here is the playblast for this part.

When I’m rendering the scene, my Maya started crushing because my computer’s temperature went too high. So, I have to lower the quality of the render instead.

Some final rendered shot

Ninth shot

This is the ninja part which symbolize the other side of the character. I think this part is the most important part because that is what I want to show to the audience.

I want to cut this shot into pieces and add them into the process of running. In terms of how to present the concept of self-restraint and liberation, I think of the glass room. People outside can clearly see the one inside like watching an animal, but the one inside can’t get out.

So, I design the scene as the character was inside a glass box in a room. For the lights, I used a light blue color to pursue the feeling of isolation. The character slowly stands up, and the glass in front of the character disappears so that he can come out. But why does the glass disappear? This is because the entire stadium from the beginning is actually unreal. It is the inner struggle inside the character’s mind. There were no spectators in the stadium, no competitions, no cheers, he was just struggling to face himself.

The glass disappeared and the ninja stood up because he had finally decided to deal with his past (sadness, regret, failure…). And when he prepared and started running, he had already succeeded in breaking free from the past.

So, if you had already seen my animation. You can see the ninja had his first shot after the character had warmed up. But the ninja in that shot didn’t even move because it’s not that easy to break free from the past. Finally, he did all the preparation and head up for the run. The firm conviction helped the ninja in his heart stand up and caused the glass to disappear.

In fact, no one can get rid of their past, the main idea I want to convey is to accept the past and break free from it. To better explain the animation, I’m going to give an example. For example, my best friend and I went our separate ways because of an argument and we never spoke to each other again. This thing stuck in my mind, making me fearful and less like myself. That day I decided I was ready. I wanted to get back together with him. So, I stood in this imaginary stadium, and I began to look at my old self.

Some rendered shots

Seventh shot & Eighth shot

These two shots shared the same running animation. 30 frames each. But the distance is actually moving forward. There is an interesting thing is that I originally rendered 0.1/frame because I want to slow the speed down. But Maya will automatically key the feet underground. Also, I showed that one to Alan. So, I decided not to slow this part of the scene.

Some rendered shot

Second shot

The second shot is still the walking, but the view is from in to out.

The basic walking animation I just simply copy from the first shot. On top of that, I added a gentle stop before the door.

Also, for more vivid and more contrast. I gave her a smiley face at the first shot. Looking at the upper left, feeling like she is satisfied with the hotel exterior.

Then her eyes were drawn to the things in the hotel, so she wanted to see inside. Her left hand hit the metal door to lean on, and her right hand moved above her eyes to better see the interior of the hotel.

I animated her hair based on how far her body bent.

Also, I want the body is kept on moving in every frame. So, I animated her left fingers even though the hand is placed on the door.

Finally, I set the camera’s focus and aperture size. Pan it smoothly from right to left a little bit because the character is walking on this trend. Also, the direction matches the line of sight.

After polished the graph editor, here is the result from playblast.

But when I entered the rendering step. Everything looks very dark. So, I add the density of aiAtmosphereVolume to 1. But the time for rendering 1 frame seems to take forever. Also I tried to set the density to a low number but it still takes a long time to render one frame. So, finally, I have to turn off it and reuse the skylight to light the outside scene.

I tried the street with the original color but the result seems not horrible. So, I use the reflective coat material that showed before.

Some final rendered shot

Fifth shot

This shot is a follow-up to the previous shot, and I did as continuity editing as possible. The extent to which the character kicks outwards is different when he stretches his legs twice, and the hips also rotate and rise to different extents. Also, I polished the graph in order to avoid the popping of elbow and knee.

For rendering, I applied motion blur to the animation.

Some rendered shots

Sixth shot

The character puts his hands back, to do the last preparation before running. The shot moves quickly to the head within six frames, and the shaky camera has been refocused to show the instability after the fast-moving footage.

When I did the hand animation, I didn’t start with a little bit of a straight up and down like this. But I’m not satisfied with the curve one. Also, I keyed the finger rotate before the raising and after the laying as a follow-through movement.

For the pose of the hand, I made sure it looked like was supported by the ground.

Some rendered shots

This week I do the Progress presentation to the class. I showed the storyboard animation to the class. Herman said the timing looks good. And it’s good for keep on animating.

Also, Yuanhang give me the advise that the horror occurs because the information of the viewer and the producer is not equal. I believe it does make sense and that is the thing I also want to try in my scene.

For my project, I plan to rendered into eight separate shot so that the curve in graph editor won’t interference other part of the animation.

First shot

For the first shot, it’s the walking to the hotel door. I keyed the focus distance on the character to get the vagueness feeling of other space. Also, I applied a shaking effect with zoom in to the camera to build the sense of walking.

For the character, I polished the graph editor to smooth the bumping.

So, I have my first 34 frame so far. But when I goes to render, I found my GTX1060 need 5 minute to render a 1080p with 9 samples in Arnold. And the cpu temperature is above 100 degrees Celsius. So, I want to copy it to the school to use school computer. But I found I didn’t set the project file. That means all the material will lost their path to find the model. Therefore, the only way for me is to render the animation on my computer. So, I rendered the whole shot under 4 to 9 samples which feels not so good.

Some final rendered shot

Third shot

Not too much to say for this shot. The camera circled around the character for half a circle, and finally, the camera followed the character’s line of sight to the end of the runway.

Some rendered shot

Fourth shot

This is a warm-up exercise before the start running. The interesting part is I used FK for the arm at first. And then I found the hand shook at every frame. So, instead of change to IK, I use the locator to locate the position of hand and fingers. And then put them into position on by on.

But finally, I changed FK to IK because I need to lift the hip. In FK the hand will definitely shake. This really wastes my plenty of time.

Reference

Some rendered shot

I plan to finish the lighting and model setting in my scene 1 for this week. In this way, I can reuse this set of lights and models for the same scene in my other shots.

Indoor

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For Indoor scene design. I set a table and chair face to the door. And one relief on the wall which painted as Last Supper. There is a photo on the desk which the character will see the front later in her room. There also has a statue of an angle on the right side.

For the ground I wanted to give it a carpet feeling so I set the roughness to max.

Also I set 6 light resource in my indoor scene to light it up.

Outdoor

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But I found that Arnold rendering doesn’t give correct texture for most of the time if I directly import the Fbx file into Maya.

Also even link all the maps into position, somehow the render still seems weird. So, I decide to create the glass and metal material by myself.

What’s more, I’m facing with some lighting problem. Arnold always give dark result if I doesn’t apply a aiSkyDomeLight. But if I apply it, the scene will seems much brighter than I want. So, I applied the aiAtomosphereVolume to control the whole scene light exposure for now.

For the neon light “Hotel” I used Arnold mesh light with exposure to pursue the effect of emission.

For the street ground I downloaded from Sketchfab. But it’s interesting that I found if I applied a metal coat on the texture, the scene become a fantasy because of the reflection. The feeling is so good to me. It feels like the character is in her dream walking towards a hotel. The ground reflect the sky and everything looks strange but cool. But it not fit in my scene anyway.

So, I have the whole scene design for now. My next part is to finial all the animation work!

This week I mainly working on the walk cycle of my character animation for the first scene.

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Reference

I refer to some female walk cycles to learn more about how women walk.

https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV12a411c7DL?p=2&vd_source=4f062d76c05fe11839d1619dbc53c151

I found out that when walking with high heels, the heel hits the ground first. As for why I went to observe this, it was mainly because I really had no idea how to walk in high heels. So at this time, the importance of finding reference videos occurs.

Also, I’m really confused about hip and shoulder movement. I don’t know if the shoulders on the same side should also reach the highest point after the top of the hip. So, I found some references for solving the problem.

My conclusion is to not adjust the shoulders and arms first. I’m going to adjust the body relationship first because the shoulders and arms are driven by the body. The hip rotates to climax when the passing pose occurs. The change is a C curve to a negative C curve.

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So, I adjust Z and Y on the hip to imitate the shaking.

And then I begin to key the pose of walking.

It feels like the rotation of the chest is a bit too much, but the slight rotation is not visible. But I’m going to decrease the level of rotation anyway.

The arm with IK performance is bad on swinging. So, I spent plenty of time on adjusting the graph editor of my arm and hand rotation.

Also, the rhythm of walking is strange. Ziyin suggested me key the center of gravity and left and right movements more obvious. I’m going to put the animation process in the showreel.

Also, I noticed that in the process of lifting the foot up, the hip must have a relatively obvious displacement.

Here is the outcome animation. It seems the continuity paste has some problems. But I don’t need the loop. I’ll cut the camera to the next shot. So, it’s unnecessary to fix it. Also, actually, I won’t shoot the leg and feet. But I key them anyway.

Second shot

In order to facilitate the animation of the character, I first set a full selection button for the whole body control through script editor.

This shot is initially slowly moving to right and changing focus from far to close. Then show the character walks into the camera and start to prepare for running.

After blocking staging, I polished the curve to make sure it is going to be an arc. In this way, the feet don’t look like stepping vertically.

In addition, in order to imitate real physics, the toes rotate upward when falling, and return to their original position after touching the ground.

The camera also has a soft stop with a decrease of focus distance.

Some rendered shots