For units 71 and 73 we were tasked with creating the animations for our trailer. Prior to starting any of the final animations we did a series of animations practices and the creation of animatic. By using my time during the creation of my assets for practicing animation it allowed to create my final animations at a higher pace. Without effectively spending my time during asset creation, my final animations may have taken a lot longer.
During the creation of my assets we were task to do some short animation practices. For one of my animations I made the character jump. This animation practice would prove to be invaluable as I would later be animating my own character. By doing this practice animation I got a grasp of how the golden positions for the jump would look. Although the characters are different this experience allowed me quickly create the golden positions before later tweaking them to suit my character.
An area of this project that caused me some headache was that I skinned my mech prior to applying the texture. As I had no experience with texturing in Maya, I was forced to re-import the texture model from 3ds max and re-skin it. This wasted valuable time and was caused by two factors: my hastiness and my inexperience with the texturing tools in Maya. In hindsight I should've either completed the model prior to skinning it or texture it within Maya. For future projects I feel that learning to skin within Maya would be a very important skill to have and is something I need to work on.
As for the organic character that we created as a group, I was given the role of the rigger. This was a fairly straight forward task for me as after some research I had create a test rig. Although a feature that I did miss out on adding was an attribute for flapping the wings. I only realised how to implement this feature after I had completed the rigging for my character at which point I was very limited on time. To improve in this area I feel that if I had done extensive research into the subject I may have found the answer earlier.
As for the final animations I felt that they went fairly smoothly. With periodic feedback from both my lecturer and my peers I was able to complete the animations fairly quickly. Following the three steps: start with keying the golden positions, then the in-betweens and final tweaks in the graph editor. By following this structure I was able to complete my animations in time for render tests and my final render.
Overall for these two units I feel it went really smoothly. Although improvements can always be made such as improving the organic character rig. By improving the rig, we could've had a easier time animating the organic character for our trailers.
During the creation of my assets we were task to do some short animation practices. For one of my animations I made the character jump. This animation practice would prove to be invaluable as I would later be animating my own character. By doing this practice animation I got a grasp of how the golden positions for the jump would look. Although the characters are different this experience allowed me quickly create the golden positions before later tweaking them to suit my character.
An area of this project that caused me some headache was that I skinned my mech prior to applying the texture. As I had no experience with texturing in Maya, I was forced to re-import the texture model from 3ds max and re-skin it. This wasted valuable time and was caused by two factors: my hastiness and my inexperience with the texturing tools in Maya. In hindsight I should've either completed the model prior to skinning it or texture it within Maya. For future projects I feel that learning to skin within Maya would be a very important skill to have and is something I need to work on.
As for the organic character that we created as a group, I was given the role of the rigger. This was a fairly straight forward task for me as after some research I had create a test rig. Although a feature that I did miss out on adding was an attribute for flapping the wings. I only realised how to implement this feature after I had completed the rigging for my character at which point I was very limited on time. To improve in this area I feel that if I had done extensive research into the subject I may have found the answer earlier.
As for the final animations I felt that they went fairly smoothly. With periodic feedback from both my lecturer and my peers I was able to complete the animations fairly quickly. Following the three steps: start with keying the golden positions, then the in-betweens and final tweaks in the graph editor. By following this structure I was able to complete my animations in time for render tests and my final render.
Overall for these two units I feel it went really smoothly. Although improvements can always be made such as improving the organic character rig. By improving the rig, we could've had a easier time animating the organic character for our trailers.