MYSTERY BOX - SESSION #5

This post is looking at another Mystery Box CG session.

Before we got on with our work, we were shown how the animation timeline works more thoroughly. The timeline in animation mode, when selecting a certain element that's able to be animated, will show a series of strings and lines that represent different aspects of how that part is moving. For example, a line going up when looking at the "TranslateY" attribute signifies the object is moving upwards. 

There's processes to change the line type of your animation too, being able to switch from stepped to splined, among other combinations. These are going to be necessary later on, since Max needs to move smoothly and without just teleporting to places.

By the end of this session, I got my main blocking all done! Max now has all his basic movements down, and with a couple more tweaks, he should be ready for splining! Those tweaks, along with things I fixed today, were done with the animation timeline editor. It's a really useful tool, and I'm glad we managed to learn how to use it to our advantage!

MYSTERY BOX - MAYA SESSION #4

Further development on Mystery Box animation in this session.

There wasn't anything huge in terms of the session itself, but I got some good feedback from Jon. He had a look at my blocked-out animation, and while it was alright, he pointed out how difficult it's going to be to work on later down the line. He said that making a walk cycle between two blocked-out poses would be difficult, especially matching the end of the walk to the final pose it needs to get to.

The easiest option? Start from scratch. I was fine to do this; while it was a little bit irritating, I'd rather have an animation that's both easier to work on and looks good over one that's tricky to work on and would look so-so.

So that's what today was, just working on the animation again from the start. It's good that I learnt certain workarounds and shortcuts for setup. The camera is all set up the same, the box is still there, I just need to clean up the animation of the previous version in this new version! 

Apart from that, I didn't have much going on in this session.

MYSTERY BOX - MAYA SESSION #3

In this session, I carried on with my Mystery Box animation.

Before we started on our own animations, we did a small exercise involving Max. We were given a file of Max sitting at a desk with a computer. He was set in a default sitting position, and our task was to show two different expressions with Max, using his body language and facial features. He had to be looking at something on the computer, and then react horrified to what he saw.

After we had our poses, we splined the two to create a short smooth animation.

After this exercise, it was essentially business as usual. After getting some feedback from Jon, I was advised to redo my walk cycle, just because it was looking a little bit weird with things clipping and, when splining comes in, sliding. So I did just that! At the end of this session, I managed to get all my major blocking done. Ignoring the walk cycle that's going to be fixed up, Max now:

• Sees the box
• Turns to look at it
• Checks his watch
• Looks back
• Ends up next to the box
• Crouches down
• Looks inside
• Stands back up in shock
• Points to the box
• Hands in the air
• Starts leaving

So my next step is... steps, essentially. Make Max actually walk over to the box, and fix up the walk cycle that I've got going on at the moment. Feeling like good progress made this session!

MYSTERY BOX - MAYA SESSION #1

Today we started actually animating our Mystery Box project.

Before the animation started, we had to choose which discipline we wanted to use for it; CGI or Stop Motion. I chose CGI, mostly because it was the only one of the main 3 disciplines where I didn't know how to animate characters, and wanted to get as broad experience with character animation as possible.

Speaking of which, the character rig we're using is from the website 11 Second Club, a site where animators are challenged every month to create animations around a certain idea. Aside from that, they also provide character rigs, one of which being called Max. Max is a simple human rig, resembling the wooden figures used to work on posing.

(A screenshot from MAX-verse expedition, an animation created as a part of one of the 11 Second Club's monthly competitions - credit: Paul Jun-Ho Chang)

Max has lots of controls for every joint in his body, from big joints like the hips and shoulders all the way down to individual finger controls. These can all be edited using Maya's rotate tool (or in some cases, like the shoulders, can also use the normal directional controls). Modification of one part can also influence other body parts to move too; for example, rotating the hips also rotates everything above the hips, instead of just the one joint.

Using Max, we used this session to mostly play around with the rig and get to grips with it. We had a light brief of making Max perform poses. Our first prompt was "waiting for the bus", followed by the emotions happy and sad, and we also got the chance to put our own pose in as well.

I found this pretty easy, and actually fun to do! It was a lot easier to make the character pull poses than I thought it'd be, and having accessible ways to make the character move around with the different handles was definitely a factor into making it a much more pleasant experience than it could've been.

(Waiting for the Bus)

(Happy)

(Sad)

("You Know I Had To Do It To 'Em" with reference)

To finish off the session, we very briefly started looking into how to make a walk cycle. We were recommended to use a different camera angle for it, specifically one that's fixed. Maya has two preset angles perfect for this; left and right cameras. They let you see from the chosen angles, without the ability to scrub across the Z axis, leaving you with essentially a 2D plain.

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Overall, I enjoyed this first session of Mystery Box animation! It was a lot easier and much more interesting to figure out how character rigs work than I initially thought! I don't know exactly what I was expecting, since the only time I've seen CG character animation behind the scenes was from old Toy Story featurettes, but given they're from 1995 and it's been nearly 25 years since then, the techniques are probably easier than back then. Looking forward to more!