Some Script for the Documentation Animation

 Voicing Over, Script

(Did voice over but left headphones at home and didn't have time to add to video) 

(Side Note before video starts:
This is very long documentation, feel free to skip or speed it up. I tried to edit this as best I could.)

(First Plan)

So, first (or was it second plan for 3D animation, think was second) I wanted to do this anti hero, cyber punk character. Named Hu. I really like her idea and the story I made for her, but After the first stages of modeling. I knew realistically that isn't going to happen. But here we are with the beginning process of this idea.

Lets Restart this process.

Before 2nd Semisiter - Restarting project...

Character:

So this human character was my original first idea for this year, but had a different story (but thought was too complicated). But, last year I designed this beauty of a creature, 'a monster tree', in drawing class for a speed sketch challenge. He is a gentle giant that wants to help those in need in the forest, but also wanting a friend. The story goes with these two character was, one day this human as a child was lost in said forest, and saw a path of glowing lights. Instead of flowing the lights out of the forest, she flowed where they were coming from, and come in contact of this giant tree. Long story short, they become friends and she becomes an earth witch, because of that. The rest of the story comes with this animation.

Because of modeling, I was nervous of the modeling aspect, I tried to keep the fashion to a minimal but impactful. I got inspirations from these images online (sorry I don't remember exactly what they are from but they are off pinterest), these are classified as low poly models.

Thought nice knitted cardigan and pants would be a simple idea for her, but my partner kept mentioning my characters always look like me, so I made this character similar to him (kinda like gender bending). As you can tell I had some issues with the hair designs, and throughout the modelling process, it continued to be that way.

Here I made some ideas for fashion and got my partner to pick, as previously stated 'your characters always look like you'.

While this is finishing the speed drawing, here is final designs here. Side and front, with and with out clothes. My partner did say 'She diffinatly needs a shawl', which I did model and texture, but for animating/Weight-brushing simplicity sake, I ditched before the weight-brushing stage. Also with the belt, I did try and model the plait, but it got a bit hard to model, with limited time I also too scrap it.

(Modeling)

See, I forgot to do the OBS recording for the modeling stages, but here is some images and turnarounds to show some process.

With the hands I may say, I wanted them to be chunky as she has a green thumb so to speak. Also referring to the inspiration images in the concept stage. Later on, I did have some comments to 'they look swollen', which I didn't take into consideration, after making the face more 'realistic' modeled shape.

Most of my modeling time was the clothing as I really want to focus on improving my fashion in character designs. Instead on experimenting in 2D I just kept testing through 3D.

With the face I did want it to stay simiple with the low poly, but it looked more fish or weird alien like. In the end I looked to more modeled faces on pinterest and saw how they modeled their faces, like this example.

As said previously, had issues with the hair modeling, I just ended making an messy bun. I used model of the hair cap and the scuplturing tool to get the imprision of mess bun. Now we add head to the body.

BAHAHAHA, yo gamers, its PlayStation 2 cheat code 'big head'. Any way lets fix this, better.

As a earth witch we need a witch hat. I made this on another computer quickly getting an idea, I did remade it later, as you can tell that is alot of vertics in this on object.

And here is the final models, first one, the first wardrobe, first act. and second wardrobe for the second act.

(Texturing)

I remembered to start OBS recording for the texturing. As this is my first texturing, this part of the video is the longest as there was a lot of trail and error, also program glitching or user error. Who knows.

Issue with the dark tones painting. To this day, I dont know what happened. Think it was something to do with the eye picker, making the paint brush paint metallic texture. In the end, I re done these areas and use use Hex code for getting the right colours (later figure out the save colour function).

(Painting Eye)

It took me some time to learn about the masking effect to be able to paint on select faces on the model. It was PAINFUL to hand paint on selected faces.

I tried copy and pasting the texture of one eye to the other, but didn't really work. Later on, when loading the eyes into Maya, for some reason, didn't load same as substance. So I deleted one eye, re UV wrap it the other one and blinn that. Then dupilcate. This made it easier to texture the same, as it was same UV wrap (? I'm actually unsure how it works, but it worked)

(Painting Hair)

Hair was somewhat inconvenience, as it was a thin plane. Whenever I slightly go past the fringe, it would paint on the back piece. It was just something I need to keep in mind when doing the hair.

With the hair, I wanted to make it somewhat natural, and comparing my mother and partner hair (both ginger, one natural and one not so much), what is common is dark roots and then lighter ends.

(Started paint lashes)

These lashes were worse to do free hand painting, I did think is there a way for 'clipping mask in substance painter' but didn't think much of it.

(Painting Blush)

Time to make more lively character

(Painting darker tone)

This is when I fully realized that the skin dark tone, it was all splotchy and shiny for no reason. It was the layer I done, cause if I did it on another layer it would work. It seemed like it was ripping away the other layers? Also the dirt on the legs had stuffed up some way. Then I particularly redo the dark tones and the dirt. This was later on the end of the texturing, when I learned about masking.

(Corset)

It was now I completely gave up free hand and needed to fine 'if there is a way to clip mask in substance'. The reason being was, painting one area, it would do the same thing with the hair, and paint on the part I missed the faces. Then when erasing the part or cleaning the edges it would make it more messy cause it was so small. So I put on the back burner until later.

(Clothing)

With the Texturing I really wanted it to seem somewhat realistic, as I believe my modeling skills were somewhat lacking (in my opinion). So I used a combination of different textures and different styled paintbrush to get these final results. Yet also making it very artist as I mostly used this brush (Show on screen)

As shown before I wanted to do an over skirt, cause of colour (particularly), rather than full white dress. So thought, why not imply with the colour of the top part of the skirt. 

Then use same texture and colour for the shawl.

(Over skirt clean) (Mini Lesson)

You know I've been talking about 'is there a clipping mask in substance painter' ... Finally had enough with how messy it was to free hand I finally researched..... there was a very simple solution. This button here, is called a mask. I mostly used black mask cause you select the areas you want painted. Then select the black (or white, if you use white mask) then make sure you have this tool selected, then select required faces to paint. UGH it was that easy! Now I know for future. Even better if you have a folder and the mask on it, then all layers in the folder have the mask on it.

(Glasses)

Glasses in the substance painter also didn't came out the way I wanted in Maya. I had to in the end, I believe have the glasses part in maya as a blinn.

As previously, redone dark tones in skin and dirt.

As she was an earth witch, I wanted her to have a bit of dirt on her as she loves to plant nature. Dirt on her hands, arms, knees (as she kneels often to do ground work), possible some on her face and behind the ears. Alot of mud like dirt on her shoes as wouldn't mind walking through mud and dirt.

(Mouth)

Then just finish with mouth colouring as she will be possibly talking. 

(Leaf Texture)

Oh I found this really cool brush where it paints leaf prints. As the second bit of the animation is set in Autumn, thought it would be prefect to have leaf texture on the shawl and on the hat. This would be another issue bringing into maya, as you see the squares there, yeah they come exactly like this into maya. Even though this is another layer on Substance painter. I just fixed this with exporting colour layer without the leaves, and one with the leaves. Then go into photoshop and place the non leaf one first then, leave one ontop. As the square area that is translucent, show the colour underneath.

(Complete Texture)

Here is the Complete Textured character. Act one fashion, then act two fashion.

(Rigging and Weight-brushing)

Rigging and Weight-brushing... who loves this phase? This phase will be extremely speed up, just to show how much I had to do, with doing, then redoing it. Like to be honest even though I re-rigged (like re skeleton) this character I think three times maximum, wasn't too bad. Reason for re-skeletion, was the head controller was too far up causing the head to do this. So I have to lower the head controller down to be able to weight brush properly. (This example)

Weight-brushing on the other hand. I remember weight-brushing a lot. Something might have worked before then I moved a body part a different way, it would clip.

Had to reskin and weightbrush later in animation stage as my wrists (Scene 4) were wacky when animating, picking up the paper. Thought I could just add edge loops to the wrists and touch up in the animation. Nope had to go back to the previous document (Weight-brushing, natural T-pose), deskin forearms, add edge loops, then add skin back again. Note I learned was, dont delete history of object between these stages, as the previous weight brushing you have done, still is there, you can just edit when you add the 'skin' back on.

(Blinn shape - facial expression)

I had a blast using blinn shapes to animate the facial expression (here is some quick clips of that process). I was really inspired by some of the pinterest expression I saw, so I wanted to do extreme facial expressions.

The thing I need to think about for next time is, how to blinn shape lip sync with the mouth expressions. As when I combine the two, the mouth goes REALLY strange, either too wide (Smiling with 'A' shape is an example).

(Staff, Fallen Guardian, extra environment)

I just quickly show all the process of the rest of the stuff quickly here. I did learn by my mistakes and research into how to model trees before modeling, for efficive time management. There was other research into how to make trees, but I couldn't find a way to make it work. The part was making a model of branches with leaves, then make a replacement model, so it is easier to place on tree and quick substitute to rendering as well.

With the staff, I blinn shape the staff, instead of rig/weight-brushed, as I still wanted to animate it in some way. The quickest way was blinn shapes.

(Set dressing)

It was easy enough the place all the little environment pieces around and give a cool atmosphere.

(Paint effect)

As the brunches weren't really working I look to Maya library, to see if I can use pre existing modeling for completing the scene. I looked at their glass, fire and brunches paint brush. I need to make them into poly shapes for the rendering process and change the textures on it. The poly changing was easy enough to do, but the texture replacement got a bit too much, so in the end only used the grass paint brush for the final touches.

(Animation)

This year my goal was to fully focus on the animating aspect, more to the point, principles of animation. I felt like most of my animation in the past were very rigid and stiff. Fortunately, with 3D animation and the 3D rig I was able to complete this goal of mine. I am very proud of the end result of the animating section.

Side note, with the point of view shots, I hide the head model with other features and parent the camera to the head control. So I was able to get a natural point of view. Also proud of myself thinking of that.

(Issues with Rendering)

(Words shown on screen)

(After Effects)

Post production, I had little to no knowledge of how to use after effects, but with Jess is expertise sitting beside me, she gave me helpful handy tips to start me off. I added a bit of motion pixal blurr to animated parts to make it look realistic, and camera blurr for point of view shot 4, when Autumn had no glasses on. Basic colour correction was added to scene two, cause of rendering. 

Then  lastly in post production, I 2D animated the intro of leaves flying in the wind and the energy that the sapling takes in and shoots out to show Autumn, 'where too next'.

(End Card)

So that is it (particularly), I spend a lot of time on this paper, as I had to catch up with the class outline and while have to learn new programs, Maya, Substance Painter and After-Effects. 

I'm proud that I was (I think) the first to fully render everything completely (Took me over 5 days of rendering to complete, side note for future knowledge, make sure you have the time to render) and how to end result is. I did put it up on YouTube in the end, to this report got 159 views, that is astounding in my mind.

Apologies for how long this documentation video was, I really wanted to show the full process of this project. I do wonder how many hours I spent, out of class to complete this though.