Evaluation

There have been so many upsets and niggles with this project I hardly know where to start. Issues out of my control have meant that the project has dragged on for a very long time, with sporadic bursts of work when I have been fit and able. Illness, lack of sleep, stress, money issues, major family issues and to top it all off a mugging that left me mentally, emotionally and physically drained of all energy. That being said, it is finally finished.

To begin, I had to re learn a lot of the fundamentals of Maya. Such as the icons and terminology, basically everything down to the interface had to be re-learned or attempted for me to be reminded how to do it. Once again proving that little and often is far healthier than switching off from something for any extended period of time. Really starting to see the mind as a muscle. If not exercised frequently, it wastes away. New information appear to replace the old if it is not revisited on a regular basis.

I decided to research games that I had enjoyed in the past to get a feel for the sort of character I wanted to create. These included Abes Odyssey, lemmings, Crash Bandicoot, Ray man, Croc. My decision was already predetermined in as much that I knew my Maya skills were lacking, so creating anything with any detail or with ‘human like’ qualities was unrealistic.
I persevered with a couple of designs that I managed to salvage from pathetic doodles and ended up with an alien like creature. Develop it, made turn-arounds and concept art, attempted to model it in maya and it was instantly apparent that this would be unachievable. The second re-design was much more simplistic in its form. It was supposed to be a number one (1) with a split at the bottom to act as the legs. This I took to the same level, beginning modeling, but then felt I had to stop due to the fact that I didn’t think it fitted the brief accurately enough to gain the marks needed. This is where this idea stopped. This was a shame as I liked the ideas simplicity, making use of simple geometry and suggesting archetypal human traits and characteristics, without being to obvious.

This was when illness and family issues really took a grip. Over the Christmas break and three weeks into the easter term. This meant an extension on the deadline as next to no work was completed.

Returning to the modeling process, I settled on a robot design. Simple geometry, all extruded from 4 planes, enough human features to fulfill the brief and easier to model in the animation software. This still took mammoth amounts of time that I hadn’t accounted for in my time management table. In future projects I will be making an allowance for much more time to be taken at this stage of the process. Beginning with image planes, a slow and methodical approach meant I was actually able to create a character that I was relatively happy with. It exceeded the expectations of my ability in maya and gave me the boost I needed to see the animation through.

Once the model was complete, it was time make the rig, comprised of skeleton (joint chains) and controls.
For this I followed the tutorial videos Mat made available on Moodle. Without these tutorials I would have been lost. Every book on maya techniques has a different way of tackling the same issues which made it very time consuming and confusing. I was mixing the process explained in one book with another and it never quite turned out right.
An amalgamation of IK and FK kinematics and parented joint chains were required. Most of the joints only needed a ‘rotate’ control, however the hips_dislocate needed a ‘twist,’ movement and rotate to allow for more detailed animation. The part that caused me the most grief was definitely the reverse foot set up. After hours of attempting this set up and moving joints microscopic amounts, it clicked and everything came together. I am so pleased that I managed to overcome this problem, again giving me the confidence and motivation to finish the project.
Attaching the controls was relatively simple, but again very time consuming.
All in all a painfully methodical process, but exponentially rewarding upon completion as there is a model that operates and moves according to the set up and controls added.

Painting the weights that movement would effect meant that the character further looked and acted in a human-like fashion. Flooding areas that didn’t need to react to movement and delicately painting in the bits that did. It was really a case of logically going through and thinking about how parts of my own body reacted to different movement. I should have taken more time over this but due to time restraints, I had to get on to animating, otherwise I would have fallen even further behind.

The jump I found to be the easiest of the 3 animations. Almost uniform animation of both foot controls. Altering the rotation of the feet to look more akin to a human jump.
The rotate on the hips dislocate I added for further dynamic. Think it really helped with the smoothness of the jump and lessened the rigidity of the character. The same process with the arms. I physically did the jump a few times myself and paid attention to how my arms moved. A static jump like this, my arms stayed loose by my side, raising a bit on the descent. These features were exaggerated and heightened for effect on the robot.
The final tweaks came by using the graph editor to manipulate the tangents. Mainly breaking the tangents to affect the flow of the animation.
Doing it again I would have a much longer time slider, allowing for more frames and a much more flowing animation.

The idol animation consists of a foot tap, side to side weight shift and a lean forwards.
Being a robot it took a while to decide on what to do with the character in terms of animation.
In thinking about the 2nd part of the brief, i wanted an idol animation that would work as an interactive animation. So this is the animation for when another character comes close and interacts with the robot.
Foot tap to initialise the interaction, then a weight shift and then a look down and up over the 3rd party character.
A similar process to before but more features on the robot needed animating. More rotates. More logic and consideration of the process is required before beginning to set keys.
This animation took 4 restarts before it looked anything like a smooth idol pose. I would have liked to think about another idol pose for moving into Unity, as im not sure if the gestures animated are exaggerated enough.

This was by far the hardest of the 3 animations. Requiring precision adjustments over 24 frames to create a (nearly) seamless loop. I watched numerous tutorials on walk cycles, and like with most outcomes in creative software, there are hundreds of different ways to go about it.
I decided to use this image as the base for my cycle. Ignoring the represented frames, and just using the static positions of the avatar.

The loop is by no means seamless as it should be. The right leg causing me so many issues. Every time I tried to remedy it, I made it worse.
Upon reflection, I feel this was due to the technique I used. 25 frames down to a 24f loop. I understood the logic of this technique, but could not see clearly enough how to apply this in Maya and went ahead with it anyway. A big mistake. Making a seamless loop is an art unto itself and requires patience and practice. Luxuries that were not available to be due to time restraints.

The last thing that is fundamental to any process in Maya is remembering to name everything. This caught me out numerous times in the early stages of modeling and from now on, I will be trying to ensure I attempt no shortcuts or dodges as it just wastes time.

Therefore, apart from the obvious difficulties and barriers I had to overcome, I am relatively pleased with how it’s turned out. Nothing like originally planned but then everything I try to make ends up like that so I don’t view it as a negative thing. This has been by far the most difficult and time consuming project of the course so far and I thought at one stage it had completely turnd me away from Maya. However perseverance wins out again as finishing the project has reinvigorated my enthusiasm for Maya work, but also animation in general.