Category: MayaUE5

At the beginning I learnt that this big assignment is related to the environment, we need to explore the elements of space time and material in the environment, I wanted to make the whole project like a game with some kind of purpose.
In the beginning I wanted to make a picture of people living in harmony with nature, but I felt that the subject was too common, then I wanted to make the people small and everything big, but then I realised that I could focus on the environment and rendering through the software UE5 whereas the previous idea made the picture look like an action film and I wanted to highlight the ambience of the environment more.

After that I started to have another idea the protagonist to deliver a letter for a certain beast in the forest and on the way through some of the scenery, I began to build one of the scene, this scene, I used a lot of model resources and textures, and its plant drawing function can make my scene looks more lively full of plants, I use the assets in Bragg and all kinds of grip put away the stone trees and flowers and plants resources to cobble together I used the assets in Bragg and the various rock, tree and flower resources I had collected to put together the scene. With all the props in place I started adjusting the lighting, I wanted to create a scene where I was walking from the shadows to the light, the lighting was always very dim at first, I didn’t know what brightness to enable to construct the scene, and I started to go back to the story idea.
So I started my second full story idea I started with the characters and the type of scene I needed to make.

The main character and the first scene idea:
I started to think about what the main character would be like I didn’t want to define the main character as a human figure. I thought that a human figure would look less fantastical in a natural setting, so I chose a humanoid fantasy creature who would look friendly and cute. At first I set the location to be the creature’s hut, but when I set out to find the resources I needed I realised that the resources I could find were too modern and the design of the house I had inherited was too traditional, so I was going to abandon the hut scene. The props and clues needed for the purpose of delivering the letter at the beginning were the letter, which may be too inconspicuous and traditional in the whole picture, so I converted this prop into a ball of light, and the source of the ball of light, I set it in the cave in the Buddha’s niche in a dark environment with a glowing Buddha’s niche, as the initial point of the initial point seems to be more sacred, the story is not a good idea, but it’s a good idea.
Story:
The whole story also becomes the protagonist with his own hope to pray, and then the gods manifested, he followed the ball of light, through the path of hardship and finally collected enough flames when the ball of light became large, and then summoned the divine phoenix.
Title:
I set the title as Purse, he has the meaning of pursuing the quest, it can express the continuous exploration in a certain thing, I hope I can have such a spirit in my animation study, with piety and clumsy mind, this is also the simple title I drew when the title appeared, I mimicked the clumsy strokes is a stroke of a pen like a child’s writing, write this word, it is simple, but it stands for the beginning mind .

Other scenes:
After that I began to conceive other scenes, which I wanted to distinguish in several, the first being a Buddhist niche in a cave, the second a lush reborn canyon which I had already built, the third a cold place, the fourth a lost relic in the midst of the sea, and the last a mountaintop at sunset.
The first and second scenes:
I started left on the components of the first scene, I broke a hole in the cave just enough to have light to shine on the statue of Buddha the light source for the first scene, from the sunlight is more warm toned, after helping me adjust the light source for the first scene I started on the light source for the second, I wanted to differentiate between these two light sources as they both look like yellow light sources at the moment, I started adjusting the sky and I set up I set the sky and I set the colours of some of the light sources but it was hard to get the effect I wanted, by coincidence I gave a glowing material to the sphere and then I noticed that the colours reflecting off the sphere looked good on the plants, so I made the sphere bigger so the areas that weren’t hit by the sunlight became cooler colours of green, and then I increased the brightness because at first it looked a bit too dark in the scene and this Further on in the scene the lighted areas gradually warmed up again, and I set up lights with flames in them, which appeared as a symbol in each scene, meaning that the protagonist needed to go to this place to collect the flames. While experimenting with the recording, I realised that all the plants were moving too subtly. It was hard to notice while recording, so I increased the strength of the wind and the swing to make the scene look more natural, and the scene was built.

Other scenes:
With the foundation in place, the rest of the scene went much faster!
When I built the Lost Ruins at sea, I used a large asset building, and I adjusted the angle of the sunlight to split the scene in the middle, where the sunlight hits the centre of the ruins with the flaming lamps. In the shade I adjusted the colour of the object to blue to make the scene look like it was split between left and right. The model of the scene looked very cluttered and fragmented, so I wanted to build a simpler scene for the transition, so I used just a few mountain rocks to complete the scene, defining it as a cold no-man’s land. The colour of all the other rocks was a uniform black and grey and the material of the huge flame lamp was set apart from them, I chose an off-white material, which made it look like it had a layer of frost on the surface. The last mountaintop scene is much simpler, with a lot of grass on the top as a finale to the scene, and for the definition of the beast as a phoenix it can glow, so the whole scene is dimmed to better accentuate the scene.

Placement of the main character:
After that I started to simulate the route according to the scene, thinking about the action of the protagonist, at first I encountered the problem of not being able to add hair to the protagonist and the problem of flickering hair, but later I solved it, then I started to study the action of the protagonist, I adjusted the protagonist’s skeleton in UE5 to achieve the pose I wanted, and I modified and intercepted the animation animation part of the blueprints that could be used in the animation, and I needed to create the rest of the animation by myself. The rest of the animation I had to create myself.
Running the camera and creating the animation:
I use the mouse to advance to imitate the way the camera moves, from the beginning after the protagonist gets the ball of light, from the niche of the Buddha down into a white area when out of the cave, this time can be put into the name of the animation, the protagonist arrives at the second scene after the light area, the canyon in the middle of the only road, so it is a straight forward, and there is not much of the character needs to be in the camera, the first flame lighting needs to be completed, the first flame lighting needs to be done. At this time, I need to complete the first flame lighting animation, I found the flame movement effects will be put into it, and then access to the third cold scene as a transit point to show the difficulties along the way, I will be on the character’s movements slightly trembling to show that the windy cold scene, the fourth scene is more peaceful, take the boat straight to the altar in the centre, at this time, the character’s mood should be joyful, so I made a The protagonist cheerfully ran up the stairs, and then shake the action, with the last flame lamp flame collection is complete, the light ball reached a great extent to switch to the last scene, walk to the top of the mountain after the light ball burst open to summon a phoenix room last brightly coloured phoenix, in the dim environment, become brighter and the back of the character constitutes the end.
Editing and soundtrack:
I put together various bits and pieces from each scene in PR, making transitions in the middle of some scenes to make it look more natural, and then started looking for a soundtrack, for the main theme I found one of the music in the forest rhapsody area after that, added other sounds generated by the movement of the other characters as well as ambient sounds and other sounds such as the whimsical sound of the light orb after it collects the flames.

I’ve been tweaking the walking forward animation and the sitting down animation from last time.

Throughout the whole semester, I have benefited a lot from learning animation, I have learnt how to adjust the movement of objects through curves in Maya, I have learnt animation techniques to make the character animation look more flexible, as well as I have learnt about the trajectory of running and how to balance the whole body, which has laid down a very good foundation for me to create more movements in the future.

This week we needed to animate continuous body movement.

During the critique process George pointed out that the hand movements are too redundant, and that the hips should move in an arc when sitting down, and both legs should be visible in the side view. The character’s head should be raised and then lowered when sitting down, and then lowered when approaching the chair.

In the forward walking animation, the feet should touch the ground when landing to adjust the position of the feet during the movement.

Based on George’s input, I removed the character’s hand movement from the reference video, pulled one foot forward, adjusted the angle of the hips as they fall into an arc, and adjusted the head lift as he sits down to make him look more normal and appropriate.

For week 8 we had to create a blocking animation of an entire movement to investigate body mechanics.

George asked us to refer to a lot of animation footage or do an action shot to get reference footage to make our animation reference better and better understand how the action moves, need to spend more time studying our video references to understand how each limb moves George provided us with reference websites and how to turn it into a 2D animation test based on the action reference. George provided us with the reference website and how to translate it into a 2D animation test based on the movement reference. Before making the animation, we needed to sketch a complete 2D movement process, which was much more conducive to making it.

After that there was a homework critique George taught me how to keep the character moving forward with regularity, adjusting the parameters on the Maya curve can keep it in the same position and height. Afterwards I refined this animation by making my own changes.

I chose to animate from standing to sitting in a chair to create this, searching the website for reference videos of real people to refer to, as well as filming the movement as I sat down. I found a video screen of the side as well as front movement of this action, which I drew as 2D keyframes before creating the video so I could better understand what angles I needed to achieve for each frame. I made one side and then turned to the other side during the production process, this makes the whole movement more reasonably adjustable with slight turning movements for each action and makes him look better.

In week 7 we needed to create a continuous animation of walking forwards.

In the subsequent critique of the assignment, I had no major problems with the modified side-step continuum animation. For the forward walk animation, I’ve adjusted the leg straightening on the first step and the body sinking.

Turning to the front is a little more noticeable, with some adjustments to the leg turns. Point out where the second loop repeats itself and modify it according to the first loop. Based on Blocking’s walk forward I created a continuous walk forward animation.

In week 6 we had to create a side step blocking animation that loops twice to move forward.

George showed us an animation he made of himself walking forwards to give us a better understanding of what he wanted. In the PowerPoint we are provided with a plan of how each step of the keyframes moves. This was a great help to us in animating it ourselves, we still needed to turn to the front to adjust the relationship between the hips and the legs after we had made the side view.

Afterwards for the class critique George made changes to my model where the foot landed and lifted.

At the end of the class, I created a complete continuous side walk based on the Blocking side walk I did the first time. In the process of creating the continuous animation, I found that I needed to exaggerate the movement of the foot when it was lifted, so that the foot would appear to be softer and more flexible.

After that, I started to create the forward walk animation. It was easy to create the side walk animation by comparing to the flat forward walk diagram provided by George, but when the camera turned to the front, I found that there was a big problem with the hips and the stride which needed to be adjusted and then adjusted again with the idea of maintaining balance in mind. The side-to-side wobble.

week5

For the fifth assignment, we needed to create a video of a blocking motion of a character stepping sideways, and three poses showing the contour lines of its movement.

Afterwards, I watched a video of how someone else animated a simple side-step based on a video provided by George, which was very helpful and helped me to understand that the movement could be a bit more exaggerated when animating. When trying to make my own, I kept in mind the idea of keeping the character balanced for the chase, and then I made another one to put the three models in motion poses, which I referenced into a quick sketch once, with me understanding it better.