Jiawei's Blog

This week, I received the Doctor’s final model, including clothes and body parts, from our team’s modeler. My task was to refine the skeleton positioning and weight painting on the previously rigged bare model. Most of my time went into meticulously painting the weights for the shirt and pants. To give the character more flexibility and a muscular appearance in animations, I also added blendshapes for muscle deformation.

Additionally, I continued working on the Soldier’s animations. This part involved animations that couldn’t be done with motion capture, such as characters hitting walls and performing unique movements.

Below are some showcases of my work from this week.

In week five, I started creating some of the Soldier’s animations. My first step was to focus on the parts that could be done with motion capture. This approach ensured that I could complete a significant portion of the animations quickly, a crucial factor given the sheer volume we needed to produce.

However, there was a unique challenge. All our animations were destined for Unreal Engine, which meant a different workflow than Maya. We couldn’t predetermine the camera angles, requiring the animations to look good from all sides. This is particularly tricky with motion capture, as it complicates the adjustment process. Ensuring the animations looked right from every angle added complexity and took up a lot of my time, but it was essential for the quality we aimed for in our project.

In the fourth week, I received the model of another character – a Soldier. My task was to fully rig this character to ensure smooth animation production. The good news was that the Soldier’s face was completely covered by a protective shield, which meant no facial rigging was needed. However, the challenge was the multitude of parts this Soldier had, which made weight painting quite time-consuming.

Here’s how I approached it: Before working on the Soldier, I asked the team member who created the model to keep a basic, unarmored version of the character. This made it easier for me to paint the weights. After ensuring there were no issues with the model, I first positioned the skeleton for the Soldier’s unarmored body. The reason behind this was once I finished painting weights on the bare model, I could copy these weights to the armor parts. Even though this method still required some adjustments for the armor weights, it significantly saved time, as I only needed to fine-tune the armor weights after completing the body.

Below are the results of my final rigging test for the Soldier character.

In our third week, I started working on character animation. This time, instead of traditional keyframe animation, I tested motion capture to see if it could speed up our animation process while fitting our realistic theme. I began by filming a reference video, focusing on a crucial part of our story – the transformation animation of the main character, the Doctor. The Doctor’s transformation required preparatory movements, which I captured as my reference.

Since this was my first attempt at motion capture, it took some time to get the process right. To ensure the smoothness of the motion, I did a lot of frame cutting and used animation layers for adjustments. Below are the results of my motion test. Although there’s room for improvement in terms of flexibility and fluidity, I’ve pretty much figured out the motion capture process. I learned how to redirect skeletons in Maya and how to bake frames on controllers for easier future animation edits.

For our second week in the 3D animation project, we focused on saving time for character animation. Our team quickly sculpted a basic model for me to start rigging. This isn’t our final model, but it’s good enough for a basic rig and some motion tests. I used the Advanced Skeleton plugin in Maya for the rigging. This plugin is a real time-saver, making it easier to set up a simple rig.

We know this is just a basic model without any clothes, just a bare one. So, when I was rigging, I made sure to leave space for the necessary joints. This allows me to work on the movements first, and then I can transfer these movements to our final model using the Studio Library. It’s a neat way to move the animations I create onto the final character.

Also, I rigged this version using references. This way, when we get the final model, I can swap it out accurately. All I’ll need to do is adjust the bone hierarchy, the number, and position of the bones, and then match everything up for the final rig. This method will help us finish a complete character rig more quickly.

In our first week of the 3D animation project, our five-member team got busy setting up the story and characters for our animation. We aimed to create something both professional and visually appealing. After a lot of discussion, we decided on an action-packed theme: a battle between giant monsters and mechs. Once we nailed down our main idea, each of us started looking for references and ideas to bring it to life. My role in the group is key. I’m handling how the characters move, making sure the animation effects are top-notch, doing character rigging, and working on special effects and fabric simulation. I’m using scenes like the Hulk versus Abomination and bits from ‘Pacific Rim’ as my go-to examples. This week was all about laying the foundation for an animation that’s not just technically sound but also visually impressive.