Week 2 - Exercise 1a, 1b, 2 (Blocking)

Exercise 1a

For this exercise, we are tasked to film a short scene to capture our main actions and emotions from one of the four options of the scenario. After consideration, I have chosen the scene "The Godfather, by Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppolla". This is the short video clip that I have acted out for "The Godfather" scene.

"The Godfather"

"Without any warning, McCLUSKEY leans back and hits MICHAEL squarely on the jaw with all his weight and strength.

MICHAEL groans, and lifts his hand to his jaw.

He looks at McCLUSKEY; everything goes spinning, and he falls to the ground."

Key Poses:

Firstly, with me on the left and my friend hussain on the right. In this screenshot, it shows anticipation as my friend hussain is going to swing his arm and punch on me at the left side.

Next, my friend hussain gather all his force and swing his punch on my face after the anticipation has occur previously.

After I was hit in the face by hussain punch, I turn to the other side as the force of his punch push me away, as well as my hand on the jaw showing the pain that was dealt with by hussain punch.

Next, I immediately falls backwards in a clockwise direction due to the powerful force of hussain punch and grabbing the wall as a support while my hand is still place at my jaw.

Immerse in pain, I lean on the wall as a support for a second, before I could not take the pain anymore.

Finally I lost the strength and balance due to the immerse pain, thus my hands let go off the wall failing on the ground and curling myself up looking in pain.

Exercise 1b

In this individual exercise, I am suppose to choose one of the soundfile given and act out corresponding to the chosen soundfile by focusing more on the movements. After consideration, I have decided to choose the soundfile "Harry Potter - How dare you". Below is the short clip that I have acted out with the help of my friend to record the scene for me.

"How dare you defy your masters!"

Key Poses:

This is the starting pose, before saying the dialouge.

Next, my chest leans backwards and my left leg move forward, where anticipation occur as my hand in ready to move forward. Angriness starts to show up at this time while tension is building up at this stage. At this time, I was saying "How dare..." before pointing out of finger.

At this stage, my body move foward with my right hand all the way out and my finger is pointing out, as well as my body slanting a little to the left side. At this timing, you can all the angriness is enrage out as in scolding someone, saying "How dare you...".

After that, my hands start to go down, and my right leg advance foward to take a step, while my body starts to move back to the original position. At this point, my chest and whole body ready to move forward, once again a little bit of tension is building up before saying the last part, I am saying "How dare you defy your..." in an angry manner at this time.

Lastly, my whole body moves forward, both hands at the back, saying one last word before ending off. At the last stage all the angriness is again shown out, as in showing me myself as the master, yet very angry as in someone has defy me. The last part says "How dare you defy your masters!"

Exercise 2

For the last exercise, we are going to apply what we have done previously on the exercise in Maya. I have selected the same soundfile and scene from the previous Exercise 1b and will be doing on the key poses and focus more on the movements using the references that I have done in Exercise 1b. Below is a playblast of what I have done in Maya using Exercise 1b as reference.

Reflection:

For this whole exercise, I have take a step into more than just animation, but also short filming and camera angle and different key poses. We finally get to go out and film instead of staying in the lab everytime. I feel that this exercise is very helpful for our final project, as it is largely related to it the camera angle, key poses and etc. However, in the end we still need to put them all back into animation. The key poses helps us a lot to analyse all the different key movements and postures that is done in the filming. I certainly hope that I can apply all these knowledges that I have learnt from this previous and current exercises into my final project and score good grades for it!

Week 1 - Exercise 2a, 2b, 3 (Cluster and blend shape deformers)

Exercise 2a

For this exercise, I will be doing on the cluster and blend shape deformers on a face using the given maya file in Olive. I have learnt to do moving the mouth and cheek to form a smiling face, as well as moving the eyebrows up and down to form different facial expression. Lastly, I have done out my own facial expression using the knowledge and skills that I have acquired through this exercise. Enjoy!

Following the tutorial, I have learnt how to move the different parts of the face. I am able to finish the 1st part of the exercise by successfully move the mouth. Below is the example that I have done!

Cluster(Smile)

Next part will be making the eyebrows move. Using the same method previously as the mouth, I have successfully make the eyebrow move as well. By adding both on the same face, I am able to cordinate both the mouth and eyebrows move together. Below is the playblast video of the eyebrows and mouth moving together that I have done for this exercise!

Cluster(Eyebrow)

Exercise 2b

For the last part of this exercise, using what I learnt from the cluster and blend shape deformers exercise, we need to create an expression ourselves. Below is the video that I have done using what I have learnt to create a facial expression of my own. I have made the mouth slanted, along with the moving of eyebrow to make the facial expression look confidence and smart looking!

Cluster(Final)

 

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, a blendshape require the base mesh and target mesh to have the same number of vertices, if not, during the animation deformation may occurs to the selected model.

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

No, blendshapes can be use for a lot of differenct objects, not only for facial animation. Blendshapes can be use for moving of different parts of body for actions, or moving of objects. This is an animation that I made to prove that blendshape can not only be use on facial animation but on other things as well.

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 you create a target mesh and modify it to have an angry expression, it is extremely tedious and difficult for the user to get the facial expression back to other expression when the user is doing on other facial expression, thus this is only an one-way approach which is not quite how it should be done. A way better idea will be blendshape the different parts of the face, and make each of the facial part move to form an angry expression, by doing so it is easier for the user to change to a different expression if the user decide to change the expression.

Reflection:

For this exercise, I have learnt quite a lot about how to move different facial features which I don't really know previously. This explains how the facial features can be moved so that we can make the short lips-synch expression during the 1st exercise. Although this exercise is tedious, however it is quite straight forward thus it is easy to learn and follow. i find it rather interesting as we can play around with different facial features. And lastly the last part we need to answer the 3 questions, which I feel the questions are quite important which gives us a over-view of what we have learnt so far for this exercise. I hope the rest of the exercise will be fun and interesting, but most importantly is we can learnt something useful and be able to make a good use of it in the future.

Week 1 - Exercise 1a (Boris Facial Animation)

This is my 1st 3DPF exercise that I have done using boris to animate it out saying the dialouge in the given sound file called the darkside,as well as referring to the short demo below to have a reference of how it should be done. Enjoy!

Reference:

Boris done by me:

Reflection:

This is one of the 1st exercise for the subject 3DPF. I find it quite interesting and fun about this excercise. The part where we need to synchronise lips movement to the sound is not too hard, as the timeline in the frame as shown the beat of the sound where the word is spoken, so it would'nt be quite hard to follow the beat of the sound, while the harder part will be making the boris expression looks more natural and realistic when talking with a proud looking yet majestic facial expression. I enjoyed doing this exercise, as I find it very cool and interesting, after doing finish, it looks quite nicely done. Overall, I feel that I have done a good job for this exercise, however there's of course improvements to be made as well. I hope that I can do better for this subject, as I know that my 3DVA last term did not do very well, thus I will thrive harder and get better result for 3DPF!