Character Animation

January 29, 2013

Today I finished animating my character for this week's iLab assignment. This was probably the biggest pain out of all of the modeling steps we have covered so far. I initially had a different character modeled, but giving him bones turned out to be too difficult due to the size of his hips and legs, so I made a new one and shrank down the final model before attempting to give it a CAT system. The new character was much easier to put bones into, which I suspect is a side effect of me scaling him down after the modeling portion was completed. This is what the model looked like after some initial messing around with the bone structure:

I know his texture is quite creepy, but it was a quick and dirty texture that allowed me to test the skinning portion of the animation process. This is what his inner bone structure looks like:

He is made up of a pelvis, 2 legs, 2 arms and 2 spines. The second spine, which you can see above the first one, is used to animate the neck and head regions. It is the only way to do so, which I find weird. I wish there was a head option, or something like it, which would add in a neck and head box on top of the spine. This would make it easier as you would not have to determine how many bones the spine needs to have.

The next sequence of images shows one of his animations cycles. It is a kicking animation. Please excuse the extreme warping of his skin, as I did not take the time to paint weights onto the bones. Painting weights onto the bones would allow me to control which areas of the skin each bones can act upon.

I also made a clapping and punching animation. I still cannot figure out why his right hand (our left) ended up in such a weird position from the start. Never could fix it properly either. I assume it is from having an issue with the weighting system, which I would have to go in and manually fix. It is a gigantic pain, so I will save that for a later date and later models. This was just a quick and dirty set of animations.

Group Work Update #1

January 22, 2013

Today after class our group finalized our design with the selection of models to make in 3DS Max. We are going to be making an in-game cinematic that is from a horror game. The story is fairly simple (and a little cliched) as it centers around an investigative team that runs into trouble in an abandoned insane asylum. When the group enters they setup their gear and go exploring. Over a couple of hours, the mad doctor that still inhabits the asylum, Dr. Wilson, begins to take group members hostage. Jane is the only one left, and she is tasked with finding her friends before Dr. Wilson turns them into abominations through experimental medical procedures.

The cinematic will show Jane running through darkened hallways with flickering lights, broken doors and eyes peering at her from dark rooms. There will of course be creepy music and sounds, just to add ambiance to the scene. The meshes that we have chosen to create for this cinematic are science equipment (syringes, beakers, etc.), an iron door, a gurney, a wheelchair and fluorescent lights. We believe these meshes, when paired with lighting and music, will have the greatest impact on the viewer. I have chosen to model the iron door and the gurney. The iron door will be quite easy, but I am going to make two models of it. One will have a little slider that you see on prison doors, and the other will have that slider missing so we can have things come out of the slider in the cinematic. The gurney will be a bit tougher, as 3DS Max does not make filling holes in geometry very easy. In the end, it shouldn't be too difficult to model these things. We shall see.

Soda Can UV Mapping and Texturing

January 10, 2013

Today I wanted to work on the UVW mapping and texturing for the soda can model I made the other day. The soda can was a hard task as it was, due to my minimal knowledge and skill set within 3DS Max. I started out by opening my model and putting the Unwrap UVW modifier on it. Since the can is mostly cylindrical, with a flat portion on the top and bottom and some flared edges at the top and bottom, I decided to map the UVs for the can body by themselves in a cylindrical manner. I also decided to map the flared edges on the top and bottom with the body as well, as when I tried it earlier they just came out looking weird.

The UV Mapping itself was not very difficult once I started getting results I liked. I just chose to map the can body and flared edges as one unit, the top cover of the can, bottom cover of the can and the sides to the top cover, as the top cover was extruded from the can body. The can body I did with a cylindrical mapping, the top cover and bottom cover were done with planar maps and the top cover sides were done with a cylindrical mapping.

As shown in the picture above, I chose not to stitch or weld anything together. It was much easier for me to just break them all apart into the sections I wanted and place them accordingly. It also made painting much, much simpler. Here is what the final texture looks like (excuse my lack of artistic ability. I was going for the feel of a Coke can without having to write out Coca-Cola or find a can texture. Also had to change filetype to a JPEG, as Blogger doesn't accept .tga filetypes).

The completed model, with texture applied looks like this. I know there is a little silver in the red area, but I am no artist.

In hindsight, I should have UV mapped the flared edges on their own. it would have kept me from getting that little bit of silver in the red area of the can body, and would have looked a lot cleaner.