Category: 3DCA Fundamentals

This course have already gave me more knowledge about the 3D computer animation world than I could wish for. Before coming to the course I had almost no experience with any sort of 3D animation. But by the end of the first semester I have learnt so much that I already feel quite confident using the software.

Besides learning how to navigate the interface of Maya, what tools to use to create a model from a scratch and what editors can help to animate it, I have also learnt the basic principles of animation. In general, 3D computer animation fundamental classes were very helpful. Even though it was my first introduction to the 3D world and Maya in particular, the learning process was easy to follow. Yet, it was very challenging.

Knowing the interface of the software and basic principles is indeed important. However the ability to get a detailed feedback from the professors has definitely enhanced my skills. The professors draw my attention to the details of my projects that could seem irrelevant, yet every time it gave my work a huge improvement.

Even though I am still in the beginning of my learning process, I am very proud of myself for what I have done. I see imperfections in my past assignments which means that I am constantly growing in this field and with every next step the work will get better.

I am very grateful to be a part of this course and looking forward to see what will it bring next.

This week we had to animate a movement from a reference we picked. As a character we used a pre-made rig.

My first attempt:

This animation was lacking a bit of details. For example, the end of the foot that goes up was not moving, which made the animation movement seem less real.

As my second attempt I tried to pay attention to more details:

For my final animation I smoothed a bit of the end pose as well as removed first two frames on the hand movement, because it was unnecessary.

For this week I have finalised the lip-synch head animation based of the reference. Even though I have done a lot of work, such animation could never be perfect and there is a lot of room for me to grow.

For this week we had to find a reference and plan an animation of a movement.

My reference:

I also sketched the most complicated parts to see where the main key points will be:

This week we worked on adding blendshape edits to a character and making their lips move according to a reference.

The main issue with the selected reference was that the character in the film was not expressing a lot of obvious emotions. Instead, every detail was moving only slightly and had a big impact overall. For example, even the eyelids were almost not moving, expect a moment, when we closed them but still not completely. I tried to show that in my animation as well.

For this week we had to finalise a walking ball animation. A walking cycle had to look smooth and without a proper character.

After the feedback I payed more attention the the weight shifting when stepping from one foot to another.

For the final animation I added background and lights:

After customising a face with the help of the shape editor, we created certain mouth shapes imitating different sounds.

With these mouth shapes and other parts of the facial expressions, we made our characters imitate a monologue scene. For my reference I chose a scene from a film “The silence of the lambs”:

At first to imitate a chosen monologue, we needed to make our character talk like a muppet:

This week we needed to do a vanilla walk cycle in stepped animation.

While studying various references, I created a sketch that could help me to understand the key poses of the movement:

A first try of blocking in Maya:

After a feedback:

With the help of a shape editor, we customized a face and gave it expressions. At first, I created a model of my liking, slightly changing facial features, but in the end I decided to give it a little more character by adding horns and red skin texture.

With the help of the Blend Shape editor and sculpting tools, we were able to create different expressions:

For this week we had to study various poses. I decided to use as a reference one of the elements from a vogue dance – a dip:

While the reference does look good already, in the animation it can look different. In the sketches I polished the posed and emphasized attention of the detail of the hand:

The final pose in Maya:

I also added a camera movement to show it from different angles: