Animating the Model: Keyframes

Much like with using image referencing when animating movement there are distinct points where we consider the movement to have a keyframe. A standard walk such as above has around 8 keyframe points. Preston Blairs image above demonstrates this, the first frame needs to be the same as the last to create a loop. Essentially although my demon walks differently the basics are the same in the way of contact, weight distribution and movement.

UV Mapping: More Pictures

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These images are a few more screenshots of changing the UV’s in the head and unwrapping the claws. To UV my model I had to separate all the claws, stumps, teeth, feet etc and make them separate objects. I used the UV’s from there and reattached them all. I am positive there is an easier way to UV, from a few hours trying the Mastering Maya 2009 tutorial it tend sto work better with a shape with no UV, then by selecting faces and reas create UV’s bit by bit and sew them all together.

To make my head better UV’ed I separated the inside of the mouth and all the teeth. Its time consuming and hard work but in the end the textures looked a lot better.

Animating The Model: Reference

As we started to animate our models the easiest way to animate is by following our real life movements. Most often than not our human bodies can walk like the character we make if it is bipedal. I recored two videos of myself doing a slight crab walk, this is how I imagine my character to move, slightly hunched back on bent knees and in a kind of alert stance.

Pretty much the same as image planes in Maya I just created video planes and move my character in time with the video of myself, this helps to get the timing right and also get the parts of the body in the right place at the right time.

This method is used pretty much in all professional animation companies, we saw an example of this at BAF 2010 with the game Enslaved produced by NinjaTheory, they used Andy Serkis using a motion capture suit. Essentially its the same as taking video of actions and animating from them.

Importing Into Unity, Plus tree tool

We had a quick play at importing assets from Maya into Unity. For this instance I added in my character(Unanimated) to show how the model looked in unity as sometimes the polygon faces can be inverted which in a game engine means they are not visible. We also looked at a tool in Unity called the “tree tool”. This tool allows you to manufacture your own tree model using Unity assets. An example is you can add a hierarchy of trunks and then decide how many branches come of that trunk, and how many branches come of the branches etc. For an environment that is set in a forest I can see this tool being useful. Especially as you can then mass plant the trees you make.

Rigging The Character

Following Matt’s tutorials I created a rig for my character. This was interesting for me as have previously watched and rigged characters in the past. Last time I used IK handles on most of the joints and then parented IK’s together. Matts method involves just IKing the legs and SKing the feet for the reverse heel joint. Matts reverse heel joint is also interesting as it uses less joints than the conventional one on the internet. It creates a nice walk movement on the foot however I believe the other version is easier to manipulate.

To rig my character I IK’ed one leg ad parented all the joints to each other in the order of anatomy. Eg. Wrist to elbow, elbow to shoulder… This is a much nicer method of rigging compared to my past attempts. Control points are added by creating nurb circles and centering them to each joint and constraining them. The contraints we mainly used was orient and point, this gives the user the ability to easily move the joints and control them using the controllers rather than the actual joint. We had too controllers of the hip joint, one to rotate one to move. One thing I learnt is that while rigging you MUST freeze transformations on everything! I had countless problems later on due to this problem. To test this, select your whole model and 0 everything, if it does not return to its default position its not all frozen. On my model I added every controls such as neck and jaw. I also added some in the claws, these extras just add more controls and help with such animations as screaming, they also add more details in the walk if you can see the model breathing or clenching its claws.

Making the Model: How I originally started modelling

With modelling any model is maya the easiest and fastest way to create its base is to have to measurement front, side and even maybe above concept art planes for you to trace. When adding these in Maya as image planes you can simply swap to your side or front view and trace round the outlines of the model creating edge loops as you go. However one problem I encountered was my concept art was slightly off scale and thus did not fit together properly when connected. Therefore I used the art to create the main blocks of shape like body, leg and arm and then modelled by eye and using the art.

An example of how I started id in the picture above, I create a simple shape for the body in which I can connect the leg and arm.