This
week has been quite productive, mostly focusing on the lip-syching using all
the temp tracks with my animation movements. In order for this to work, I will
attempt to get my actors to sound and get the pace as close as possible.
For
the lip-sych to work, I listened to the speeches over and over again, trying to
work out roughly where each word falls on what frame. Once I had an estimate, I
wrote down where each word started and finished. After having a list of
numbers, I went back to the animation filming reference to look at Jess’s various
mouth shapes. While these may not be exact, I have roughly tried to get these
shapes according to the rig. I also wrote down and draw these shapes to refer
back to. From my notes, I would start the animation using the GUI system I
created earlier by first placing the open and closed position of the mouth at
two frames before the words are spoken. Although at first I felt it wasn’t
working and panic set in after I placed in the keyframes for the lips moving
forward and back it looked far better. I felt I needed to exaggerate the mouth
movements to allow the audience to see my characters talking. During this stage
a bit of twecking was at times required.
Lip-syching is an aspect of animation I quite enjoy actually. I can
finally see the character/s at last working to how it should be.
With
almost all of Molly completed, it was time to move onto Bradford. It may have
taken some time but I finally received the file on Saturday. The model was
impressive, but Seon had some trouble with the rigging which I slightly
modified. Due to his nature of his movements as the rig was to be simple (and
also time constraints) so instead of having a IK/FK for the arms, a simple FK
is being used. In order for this to work I removed some aspects of the facial
rig, nose movements and cheeks, along with the joints for expressions. This choice
was simple because as Bradford is a Victorian upper class aristocrat, he would
be very limited in his expression and the only expression would come in the
eyebrows. As previously mentioned earlier, weight painting was a nightmare.
This was conducted a number of times, but after almost 7 hours straight, the
rig and weight painting was completed to a point where the animation could
begin. The animation for Bradford will be limited to mostly facial expressions,
but I am intending to do some movements to bring him to life.
Due
to time constraints also, one of the characters, the Butler that I had modeled
up earlier in the year was approved to be used. I had the same problems that I
had with Bradford, but the time spend was shorter due mainly in the fact he is only
standing and has little scene time.
Generally,
I have been up and down with one positive thing, the ability to get all the
animation and lip-syching done in time for our week 13 presentation (in one
week’s time). If you had asked me a few days ago I would have panicked, but now
having finished lip-syching both Bradford and the Butler (with animation), and
only Dr John left I feel that I will get his lip-syching and animation
completed on time. What I am worried about is finalising the texturing,
lighting, rendering and post to be conducted over a space of three weeks. I
will worry about that next week after all the animation is completed (which I
hope it will be by this time next week).
Until
next time when I hope everything (animation wise) will be finished.
Good
night
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