Lights , Cameras ,Action Its Animation time !!

So the last part of this module was to rigg , skin then animate, Dean wanted us to provide at least 5 different animations to prove that the rigging and weighting worked and to see if we could make some realistic ' Anims '

Easy said than done me thinks :)

So using the Unreal biped we had to then skin our character to make sure that evrything worked as it should do hmmmmmm !!!



I didn't really realize how much different processes you had to go through to get your character to move 'Patience is a Virtue so they say' ! ,or something along those lines.


So my character looking like something out of elephant man time for weighting me thinks! This is all a bit new for me but i soon got my head round it .



So this is handy to know,I can control where the vertices of my mesh is suppoesed to be so that when i animate i dont get the Elephant Man thing happening, and slowly but surley my character is looking human :)



So thats how to Rigg my character now i can have some fun with ANIMATION.


So Animation Time is here so let the fun commence !


I got into college a bit late , so I missed some crucial info on this whole Amination business, but if I want to make characters for future I guess i pay some attention to this.

I did learn there are two types of animation in Max Forward Kinemetic and Inverse Kinemetic basically the difference is Forward is where you control the parent bones e.g if i was to pick up a pencil i would bend down first by chest and rotate down , then rotate the shoulders ,then the for-arm , then the hand , then finally the fingers.

Inverse is where i control the hand and the rest of the bones follow suit, and Max tries to work out where the bones follow, i think thats how it works .

So for my example for the picking up of a pencil, i basically put the hand where i want it to be and the rest of the bones follow behind and hopefully look right.

I did find it was much better to place the pose i wanted and the move each bone frame by frame, but there must be a quicker way round this judging by some of the animatons I look at in games.

So i babbbaling a bit on with the show!

So with Deans expert tutorials there are four key elements to walk cycles


1. Contact - where the heal touches the ground , and the oppposite leg, the toe touches, and the arms are opposite to the legs.

2. Pass - this is where the legs cross each other or just before

3. Down - this is where the forward legs knee bends and the weight shifts forward so the hips and the head shift

4. Up - where your character weight is upward and the hips move back to centre line and the other leg is ready to start the whole process again

The first process is to learn the art of walking, sounds easy after all we do this for the best part of our lives till where all in that wooden box, but to be honest i found it a bit hard to follow Deans Tuts on the whole walking thing in 3D Max but i had a go



Ok I think I got the walk cycle pretty much sussed I can have some real fun and Ive thrown in some of my models from my Doomsville Level just to give it a bit of reality..... hope you like as I enjoyed making this

DRAW -



Wagon Climb -



Sneaky crouch -



Brush shirt-



Walk -




Final Animations-

So thats about it , if Ive got time I mite have a go at doing a death scene to go with the others ......... If !!!!!!!!



THATS ALL FOLKS !

IT's Time For TEXTURES !

Well i thought id start a new blog fro the textures of my character , its been a while, sorry bout that boys and girls , ive got a family to run as well as studying, and my daughter leaving school in 2 months, more money for prom dresses and trivial things like that but hey thats waht you get for change in career at my age !

So on with the textures



So this is the final UVW for my character body ,




And this is the head UVW

I made a big mistake in the UVW though, ive put his stop watch on the same UVW as his head, now this works fine for models but when i come to animate afterwards in UNREAL i mite have to loose the watch, but hey its a learning process

So i got my UVW pretty much nailed and my model unwrapped , the next stage was to
get into Photoshop and start some textures,


So this is the Diffuse maps for the bulk of my character



The skin textures are from me and the hands are my own hands taken by me, the waist coat is made up of a block colour and then i overlayed a fabric pattern , at first i used a net curtain and it looked ok , but with DEAN's critical eye he advised me to make the best textures posssible as this was the main part of the model it had to look good , and so i used a fabric overlay i found on CG Textures




I think it worked out really well and the back of his waistcoat i took from one of my own, you cant really see it in the Diffuse but when i apply the spec map with same shiny texture it really works well






A lot of my textures i got from looking at sites like http://www.westernemporium.com/western.php

as this gives you a good idea of the style i was looking for






The Head is my ugly mug of course :)

Diffuse Map:



I even got out of shaving for a few days to get the goaty and stuble :) and the hair is mine but ive put some more grey in it using and overlay, the eyes are mine, my first attempt at eyes was not good to say the least, my character looked like he was on another planet, and Deans critical eye again showed me where i was going wrong so i took the liberty of nearly blinding myself by taking lots of photos of my eyes close up till i got the snap i was after

and these are my SPEC Maps





Normal Maps





Once applied to the model they really bring it to life ,





So thats the textures done and dusted now its time to animate !