As tribute to a YouTube channel called Unus Annus, I wanted to recreate the setup for the finale livestream to the best of my abilities in Blender. The premise is fairly simple and achievable. Only a few props are set up and were easy to visualize and potentially replicate in 3D. This was a very fun passion project that provided the perfect balance of challenge to my modeling skills, and drive to succeed as a fan's piece of artwork.
This project only took a few days to complete, broken up across two weeks. Overall, I would estimate it took around 10 hours from start to finish. Each component was easy to define and build sequentially. The props of note were: the chairs(cushions as a single piece and the bar frame), the coffin (base, handles, and lid), the back spiral, the TV(with text), the table, the flower bouquets (with corresponding letter shapes), the top-hat, and the pocket-watches. Additionally, I tried to match the floor and back wall textures. All of the above were modeled from scratch by myself, and almost all textures were done by myself as well with the exception of the spiral design. This was a big teaching moment for how textures and lighting work.
With the final render finished, I think it turned out better than I could have hoped for. There is still a lot for me to learn about rendering and scene composition, but everything I wanted to get done was checked off the list.
This
project took me back to my roots of Lego and Bionicle characters. I
once again put my skills to the test for modeling, rigging, and
rendering. This time around, I had some new techniques to test out and
plenty of new challenges to face along the way. This initially started
out as a small fan project, but quickly evolved into a real piece of
work I could not afford to leave out of my portfolio. So now I'm here to
detail the work process.
This
project took about two months to accomplish. However, I did take a
brief break in between work periods. Overall, it was done in
approximately a month and a half. With one to two hours (and possibly
three later in the game) of progress daily for said work period, I feel
that this project was much more lax in the beginning and ramped up
towards the end as I was yearning to finish.
For the full write-up where I go in-depth about every step of the journey, please check out the project's landing page.
As part of a fan art initiative, I recreated the Dimitrescu daughters from the game Resident Evil: Village with my own style. I built these characters up from scratch, applying my skills in modeling, rigging, and animation. Many references were used from the official characters, but I largely wanted to take up the challenge of doing it all on my own.
This project as a whole took about two months, covering all three main components plus posing and rendering out individual photos for social media; taking around 2-3 hours of work per day. Modeling comprised about 3-4 weeks of the time, rigging took 1-2 weeks, and animation/rendering took 1-2 weeks.
This project was meant to test my skills as a 3D artist across many areas of expertise, helping me to realize what I am most confident in down to what I feel could use work or I would rather not do in a potential professional environment.
For the full write-up where I go in-depth about every step of the journey, please check out the project's landing page.
This project reaches its end as I have finished adding in the hand movements and final tweaks for the animation. With this last stretch of practice, I have gone back to further push the fluidity and timing of the animation. This segment took about twelve hours across six days of work to complete. I am happy to say this will be the final post on this project, at least for the time being.
I have observed what movements work best, and even taken out some steps that I felt served their purpose for blocking, but ultimately did not fit as well for an animated application. Small frame changes here and there that passed very fast were cut in order to maintain a better flow. I have found that it is better to have consistent and readable movement is better than complete accuracy to the reference material. One example is the quick motions in the torso and feet that really only last for a couple of frames. When played back in real time, while it does still sync up with the reference, the animation itself appears jittery, and too spastic for the common viewer to really pick up on. It would end up looking more wrong rather than right. Another example is keeping versus moving away from accurate timing in favor of fluid and snappy animations. While I preferred to sync the key frames, in-betweens, and holds as accurately as possible in the initial move to spline, in the end it was better to either shrink or extend the range of movements to really sell a movement as quick and energetic or paused and eccentric. I am glad to have taken and accepted such liberties.
Additionally, I implemented the finger/hand movements which I had neglected up until this point. I set up a library of poses for the most basic hand stances like neutral, clamped fist, pointing, and so on. I called upon these as was necessary as I played through the full animation, inserting them where it fit best. This process was very efficient, and in the end, worked seamlessly with the more intricate movements across the body. In this case, having a less-is-more mentality worked out, because viewers would be more focused on the overall sequence rather than something as fleeting as hand motions.
The challenges faced in this final stretch really came from the repetition and struggle to find balance between reference accuracy and personalized movement. Once I finished the finger and hand integration, it was a matter of going back through and seeing what works and what doesn't. Some parts had a really good transition from start to finish, while others seemed to have problems that I perhaps could have foreseen earlier and fixed, but now were too far gone to start over. In consequence, I tweaked what I could and ultimately settled for that. In another attempt, I might look closer at what movements to take more liberty with before diving into the intricate changes.
In conclusion, this project has taught me so much about what it takes to do a dynamic animation of a character. I was a bit overwhelmed by the scope of the project and how much of a challenge is posed, despite considering it a decent and necessary length of animation to tackle. It had many repeating movements, challenging twists and turns, and a varied pace that required extensive thinking in order to bring it all together. For the future, I would like to keep my scope tempered, maybe even more than this time.
My main takeaway from this project is to have an even better foresight and motivation for the desired outcome of a project. I feel I have gotten a much better idea of finding what I want to make versus what I expect to make. This project came out almost exactly as I had envisioned, and I am very happy to have reached a satisfactory endpoint.
I have taken the next step in developing this animation by moving into spline. Going through the same segments outlined before, I checked to see how well the animated sequence held up with streamlined in-betweens. Overall, it was fairly in tune with the source reference, but in need of some significant improvements for fluidity and time syncing. This process took about 24 hours of on-and-off work to move from the last progress point to here.
This part of the animation process was particularly difficult because not everything translated as expected going from key poses to full spline animation. Some poses needed to be redone in order to maintain the proper motions that preceded or followed. Additionally, certain poses needed holds so they could last longer, like the source material. I made the mistake of separating out keys among different joints before this, and had to double back and re-sync. I made sure not to worry too much about getting the exact frame-for-frame replica. That leaves room for improvement and exaggeration on my part for a better and more unique animation.
Next up will be further refinement, and implementation of hand/finger joint motions finally.
This latest progress report has taken me through the next and likely final blocking phase for this animation. Additionally, in response to my previous render, I have synced the key poses up with the reference video.
This time around was much easier, as it was mainly based around tweaking and foresight going from blocked to spline animation. In preparation for the next step, it is essential to actually take a few segments and analyze the start and ending keyframes in spline, since joints can have extra movements that occur in passing, not important enough to carve out an entire pose for the entire character. Certain arm flourishes, leg twists, and overall timing of the body flexing were implemented. Some parts needed to be sped up or slowed down when approaching the next key pose.
The challenges this time centered around the accentuated poses. As a creative choice, I want some movements to be exaggerated in order to convey a better flow of body mechanics. Since the reference only goes so far to help drive the animation, I had to imagine what areas could be pushed further, and what needed to stay dialed back for the sake of realistic movement.
With this next part of the project finished, I now move on to spline animation, which will test whether or not my blocking was effective enough. I hope to also add in the finger joint movement in effort to match the reference even better. I may slow down and split the overall scene to focus on specific segments for the following progress reports. Eventually, all should come together for a presentable final product.
My latest animation project will demonstrate and help my practice of body mechanics. I have chosen a dance sequence to base my animation on for key poses and flow. Throughout this process, I hope to hone my skills and gain a better understanding of dynamic movements for full-body animations. This first progress report has taken me through about a week's worth of work, 2-3 hours per day.
This initial phase is strictly blocking, and what I have to present today is about a third of the intended length of animation. I tried to keep to as few but crucial key poses as possible in matching the source material. I started with just the center of gravity, spine, head, and feet movements, in order to get the most important shapes of the body down. I then moved on to the arms and hands, plus shoulders. Next I will move to the fingers, and after that the in-between poses wherever they may be needed. I have yet to adjust the timing of animation to the corresponding audio, but will do so once I begin the next phase. The source material has repeating motions, so I plan to copy the key poses, but alter them to make each phase unique in the future. Otherwise, the process has gone very well, and I am excited to move forward.
So far, no hardships getting the motions and poses I'm looking for. I am, however, sticking very close to the key poses. I intend to stretch the rig to more extreme poses in order to convey more dynamic motion later on. For now, matching the poses gets the job done. It will depend on how it looks once I begin to ease into spline.
