3DPF Spiderman Animation

Lab 1 (Character Posing) --- SpiderMan Relaxed Pose 

This would be the new start of the week after we have completed our Project 1 which would be on the Video Production. Overall, i find that it is a challenging and a tedious one but i am able to manage it and overcome the situations faced. 

On the first lab of Week 6, I need to bring myself to a brand new level, heads up! With the new topic, "character animation " . It would be something interesting and fun on. Learning how to animate a character making sure that we apply the principles of animation correctly to produce work that is of a quality, learning posing and the expression that is being act out by the character itself. I look forward working on the individual project 2.

For today lab, i have work on a posing of a spiderman character that is being provided by our lecturer. The modelling, and the rigging is done well as to make sure everything works properly and effectively for us. 

Firstly, we are brought through a mini lecture on the brief knowledge of character animation and how we goes about doing it. Then, we would open up the source file in Maya. 

Our lecturer, Mr George, explain to us the different types of rigging, how it moves by selecting the relevant rig and handlers. By making sure we understand, he move on further in elaborating, and refreshing our memory on the things we learn in IN3D. Namely, they are IK handler and FK handler.

We must always remember IK handler is for Rotation and FK handler is for Translation. After, teaching us the basic and given us a better understanding of the rigging, and the character animation, we move on...

We start on animating or posing a Relaxed Pose

Step 1

Firstly, for the start, we need to make sure that we are familiarize with the rigs and the handlers, joints that we are going to manipulate them later on. I would try to move the IK handler, where rotation can be used. In order to make it to a relax pose, i would have to move the T shape standing posture down, moving the hand down to his side by playing around with the IK handler. Getting the position is correct. Moving on, there would also be a need to record the values of the translate axis and the coordinate axis to make the pose a more realistic one.

(Remember the IK and FK Handler and also to record down the Value!)

Step 2

After adjusting the posture of the right side, i would used the same value for the left side but, there would be a need to change the value from a negative to a positive one. We need to estimate the value by looking at the value we have created for the other hand as shown in the above print screen. 

The values are box out in yellow for better visual and focus point. 

Step 3

As a human being, we can make ourselves a reference of standing in a relaxing pose, while calling our friends to take a photo of us posing that particular scene. This would act as a good references, it would be also allow us to have a clearer view on how the posture should be like. 

Basically, in the screen shot above, i would move the spine shoulders part with a rotate X of 5 and the changing the spine root values too. 

Step 4

This would a screen shot of the spine root being move and edited to fit the right position and a nice/correct position for the relax posture. The value set would be only for rotate X 5.

It look's good.

Step 5

It would be good if we are able to look into detail of the relax posture of the character. The hence can be pose out even more convincingly. I will always refer to the Outliner, to have a clearer perspective on what it looks like. I need to select the ball as shown, this would be the joint of the fingers that includes the 5 fingers as shown.

A relax pose do not have fingers that or very close or very wide out. It would be more on the comfortable placement of the hand. We will then go to All spread and adjust the spreading of the fingers to a value of -3. When the value is negative.. the fingers are close together. When it is positive, they are further apart. We will also do it for the other hand (fingers)

Step 6

In step 6, We will make the same arrangement for step 5 and to create it as equivalent as the right hand . Next, We need to have a background in order to have a better view of the spider man standing. 

If we try to render out, the character is not able to see very clearly. 

Step 7

This is how it looks like when there is no plane or background available. This would be the rendered one shown above. 

Step 8

With the plane being drag out, acting as a temporary background, we can also create a layer as shown in the yellow box, we are able to create a new layer to store the necessary items for the scene.

Step 9

By double clicking on the layer 1 name, it would bring out a panel called Edit Layer. We will then change the name of the particular layer selected.

Step 10

I would then rotate the plane with -90, 0, 180 for Rotate X,Y and Z. After that we will shift it back, behind the spiderman and scale it to a suitable size acting as a background.

Step 11

I would wish to add some color to my plane to create a better visual. I use a very simple way to toggle to Assign New Material > lambert. This is a way for me to fill in the color of the background. I know it would be wrong way...

Step 12

Lastly, the color is chosen and we are done with the relax pose of the spiderman as shown int he print screen.

Final Product 

This would be how it looks like for the front view.  

Close Up

This would be the perspective view of the spiderman, i have render out.

Lastly, this would be the side view of the spiderman in a relaxing pose.

Then the next lesson, our lecturer continue to on teaching us on how to apply background texture using images to make the spiderman more realistic when viewing after it is being render out. Below will be the screen shot of the steps that i have follow during lesson. 

This screen shot was a shot i tried during lesson, i toggle around with the maya software and maya hardware and maya hardware 2.0 . It is shown from the yellow box that is being highlighted out. I have learn and notice that using maya hardware, it produce a strong silhouettes of the spiderman standing in the position. A strong silhouettes is important in showing the viewers the character posing of the character and also the overall mood of it. It might also reveal the action and the key poses of the particular character where sometimes it might be familiar to us.

After that i move on to the maya hardware 2.0 to try out what is the difference, i render it out and take a look. I was taught of using the keep image icon as shown box in a small yellow square. Once it is click, it will then keep the image of the render image. We can see the different image by scrolling the scroll bar as box out to see the different quality of the render results.

I try out the Maya software, render and keep image. As seen in the scroll bar, it is at the different position. This means that when you keep the image at one of the render, you would be able to scroll the bar side way to see the other image that is render out.

Then, i tried out maya hardware and click on keep image.

Continuing on with the previous steps of applying background for the spiderman, i uses lambert while assigning new materials to it. I google a brick image and save it. Click the color tab with the small checker box as shown, it will bring out the panel to create render node. I will choose file.

I will then locate the file of the image. The source image is being show as seen in the print screen. This might not be a very useful method of adding background.

We should used Planar Mapping. Planar mapping can create shared and overlapping UVs that look equally alike the texture borders.

Then, we will test on the camera settings > flim gate. Shown in the print screen above.

For that, we are able to scale around with the scaling tool that is being provide after we have planar map the background surfaces. It gives an overlapping UVs shells, it can be perfectly looking the same as the single UVs Shell. 

We need to create a NURBS polygons sphere and place it at the center of the grid. This sphere can also act as a background or a room of space for the character. We need to make the sphere bigger by increasing the size of the radius. and also to turn the End Sweep value to a negative -180. This would make the sphere half hollow in the middle of it.

We will place it at the relevant and choose a good spot for the spiderman to be place inside. With that we will select on the sphere and create a new layer for the selected item. This would allow to toggle the visibility of the NURBS sphere more conveniently, remember to rename it to dom_layer. Lastly, i might one to assign new materials to the NURBS sphere. A bright color would be good.

With this explanation, the screen capture of the steps are being show above... This would be Week 6 Lab 1 exercises that is being done. It was a fulfill task i have done for the start of the new week, new topic.