Animating animals/creatures

So the first point of research is techniques into animating animals. I thought it would be a good idea to review the principles in relation to animation of creatures.

There is a note in the 'the animator's survival  kit', Richard Williams about animals (pg.327). This section focus's on the movement of four legged (quadrupeds). There are a few key points, where he uses the principles to show how you would depict the movement of creatures. He also mentions animator Milt Kahl, who was one of Disney's master animators:
http://disney.go.com/disneyinsider/history/legends/milt-kahl

In June 1934, Milt applied to The Walt Disney Studios and was hired to work as an assistant animator on such shorts as "Mickey's Circus," "Lonesome Ghosts" and "The Ugly Duckling," which won an Oscar for Best Animated Short. Over the years, Milt contributed to such Disney features as "Melody Time," "The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad," "Cinderella," "Lady and the Tramp," "101 Dalmatians," "The Jungle Book," and "The Rescuers," among others

Kahl swore by The Muybridge Books, finding them to be better than studying films, due to the grids. This is an interesting point to note when it comes to compiling references, as filming the action in front of a grid makes its easier to see accurately slight changes in shape when a person or animal moves.

This video here shows this animator making his references the same way, with a few good tips on animating creatures in 3D:
http://vimeo.com/33660586





I would like to include a study on The Muybridge books, and research the methods to compile my own references in a similar way.

Animators seem to agree that most animals walks are alike. The same principles to animating a human can be applied when animating animals, in this case quadrupeds. This short video gives a quick overview of some of the principles in a walk cycle:


I like this example Williams uses, where the legs of a dog can be considered as separate walk cycles almost, and the body will move and squash and stretch in accordance with the legs. Notice in his drawing how the dogs spine curves as the shoulders and hips drop and rise with each step.


 

Most animals seem to walk in similar ways, but its agreed that the best advice is to gather as many references of your chosen animal to animate. This would include photos, drawings, videos (the Muybridge books - animals in motion), sounds and also information on habits would help in thinking about your animal character. Other information, such as where the animal lives, its diet etc. would help in thinking about the setting for the character.

 Williams includes a very useful
http://www.animationmeat.com/pdf/featureanimation/4leg.pdf

Specialist study 1 - Animal-ation!

OK! So for my specialist study I had decided I was going to focus on character design and scene design, looking at production techniques, in particular story boarding. I was also going to include animal studies, so that I could create animal characters. This is my original proposal:

However, after revising through this original brief it was decided that my specialist study would be on animals. As the competition requests 2d animation only, I'l be using this method to create the piece. I may experiment with 2d styles, e.g. motion graphics effect, using AE (adobe), but will focus on traditional art styles, favouring drawn animation.

This video is a quick audio note on my revised pitch, which i'l likely be doing throughout the project to quickly record thoughts or ideas for progression.

I had a look at entries to the last competition, to gain some insight into what was expected for this genre (time/horology). This clip is last years winner:

I'l be revising the animation pipeline to remind myself of the steps and assist in writing a schedule.  http://cg.tutsplus.com/articles/step-by-step-how-to-make-an-animated-movie/
I've written my own schedule, which I can update in the notes section, and refer to for my dissertation as well as my progress. 
My original idea was to create an animation using lots of symbolism and acting from characters to tell a story. This was to include conversations through the actions and scene. However, as I want to include animals in my specialist study, I have decided these elements can be eliminated from my brief, so I can focus on creating animations and characters based on animals, as I like this as an area of specialist study. Though I have narrowed it down there is still plenty of opportunity to be had from this study and part of my research will include the different techniques in creating animal animation and also some uses, i.e. estimating walk cycles of extinct creatures in science.
My original idea was to have death walk through his hall of time pieces through the ages. However, I found this story difficult to incorporate creature characters, in a way that would fit the brief (time/horology) and not become over complicated.

I then played with a few ideas, thinking about how I could use animals as the characters, remembering that the theme should reflect 'time'. I thought of using a crocodile, who hasn't changed since the age of the dinosaurs, chasing an egg through the time periods. This was a nice idea as the story would have been simple and could be converted into short episodes.     However, ultimately I have decided that to keep the story as simple as possible, I have decided that the narrative will simply consist of two people walking into a zoo and take a trip to see all the animals that no longer exist. The characters, e.g. t-Rex, the dodo, amongst others will be symbolic enough to tell the story of how time has taken them. At the end, the people will approach a set of bars and look in through them at the audience..or out..depending on how you perceive it. 
I think this idea will allow me to focus on the study of animals and movement, without getting distracted by complicated narrative, and still be hard hitting with the symbolism portrayed directly through the characters. This brings an interesting aspect to the study of movement of creatures, as I can study the techniques used, by scientists, to predict movements of creatures that we have never seen before. I am very interested in science and this would be beneficial to know if my animation skills could be used in this field.
The BBC TV program, walking with dinosaurs, will be an example of animations and techniques I will be studying.
I will also look at the making of animal animations, looking at Disney 'lion king' and 'lady and the tramp', as well as case study of 'land before time'. 
I wont be including dialogue in the animation, as I would like to include this element of the brief to tell the narrative through the characters/symbolism. However, as part of my research I will be including personification of animals in film and animation and also VFX on animals in film e.g. lip syncing. So this will include methods on how this is done and how I could replicate this in the future!
And finally I will look at animals in art- so this will include looking at how the artist fits the animal in its environment, does it blend in, stand out, reactions or actions shown through the pose, backgrounds, style, medium etc. This will include one more case study!

GAME PROJECT - personal projects

I learnt alot from creating the vehicles for this game, however, I felt I could do more to learn about using Maya or 3D in a way that's suitable for games. I had kept the models simple before to ensure the resolution would not be to high to fit in the game. However with these exercises shown here I learnt new techniques to create low resolution props and models that can be animated within a game and its game play.

One of the first exercises I tried was to create some foliage for a game. The best method to create  and irregular shape, like this ivy leaf, was maya's create polygon tool. I added the details to create a high resolution leaf. But for just one leaf, this created alot of polygons to the model.

Used normal maps to create the leafs texture from the high res model. Add 32 bit in photoshop to use alpha channel. Only use alpha channels when using opacity maps as the empty alpha channel takes a lot of space within a game. Also, only alpha opacity maps use 32 bits to compensate for the alpha channel.

This creates a leaf texture that can be added onto a plane. Duplicate leaves along a curve (curve represents vine)

Underneath view

top view

 

High resolution model

 

Low resolution model

GAME PROJECT - BIKE

The smallest of the vehicles to be built next is the bicycle! This I thought would be the simplest but when I attempted it I was very wrong.

I started by gathering images and plans for bikes. The most complex part would be to create the gears so images that included the gears was important. Its important that the wheels of the bike can be animated but not necessary to animate the gears.

Bike plan

reference image BIKE HANDLES

reference image GEARS

One method I tried to build the frame of the bike, was to use extrusions along a curve. However I found the simplest method was to just use the extrusion method I had used before with the car and the tank, starting with a block and extruding the shape until it resembles the bike frame. This was effective but creates a blocky, square frame. Extruding along a curve, using NURBS circles, may have produce a smoother, rounder frame.

The handles and seat were created separately, as were the wheels. This was also to make the texture map editing simpler, when it came down to arranging the UV layout.

Bike frame UV

Handlebars UV layout

Gears UV layout

Wheels UV layout

Once again, the bike needs to be able to move along for the purpose of the game. In Maya I've been using locators and expressions for this, in expressions editor.

Gear UV texture

Once I lay out the UV's for each section of the bike I used Photoshop to create the textures that would then be placed over the UV layout. I was able to do this using the layers to see the UV outline and another layer for colour. Of course when placing the texture on the model in Maya, the outline of the UV texture shouldn't be included. Otherwise black outlines would show across the models texture. This is quite an interesting effect but not one I'm after with these models.
The bike had the most UV layouts and separate textures as this made it simpler when unfolding the UV layouts in the UV editor. Unlike say the tank or car which, though larger models were much simpler to unfold.

Games design - Building a car - MAYA

For this games design module we've teamed up with programmers who are designing a game that teaches concepts of physics to students between the ages of 14-19. The game engine they will be using is the free software, UNITY!

My team have designed their game that demonstrates the laws of physics by using different size vehicles to roll down a hill and land on a target. The idea is simple which makes it suitable for students in the age range    to learn these concepts.

My task is to create these vehicles. Using Maya, I will be creating a bicycle, car and a tank. The wheels should be able to move independently as the vehicle moves forward and back so to roll down the hill and gain momentum from its own weight (its weight would be programmed in UNITY).

To start with I began by building the simplest of these vehicles, the car. For this I chose a simple car design (fiat PANDA). I used simple extruding methods to create the shape and details for the car in Maya.

http://www.tutorialized.com/view/tutorial/Rotating-Wheels-on-a-Car-Maya-Tutorial/24527

The next step was to work out how I could rotate the wheels of the car.

I used the tutorial above and advice from tutors, who suggested using locators in Maya to create the movement of the wheels. This works nicely in Maya, but found when importing the object into UNITY, the locators were there but had no effect. This wasn't a problem however, for the programmers, as they said the texture itself could be animated to spin as the car moved, as opposed to the wheels themselves. This I was told would be a more efficient method and could be done in UNITY.

The next step then for me was to texture the car. The model is fairly simple so the texture would be responsible for extra details. I had quite a few problems at first when trying to apply my textures. I found this was due to trying to add too many textures to one model e.g. the car body was one colour, but the windows were to be more clear and transparent. But the problems started when I tried to directly apply this using Maya's own textures. I discovered this cant be done in Maya, which is why texture mapping is vital for this.

With the texture maps, I would be able to create a texture map, which I can apply all the textures to. I used help from tutorials online and games design books to help work out how to move and sew textures together to create a flat, opened out layout of the car.

I could then import the map into Photoshop CS5 and build them there.