Part 1 , part 2 , part 3
PROJECT WEEK 4: Final Polish
Finally this week was dedicated to cleaning all the breakdowns of all the animations, the feedback list covered two pages since I was noting in which frame I had to repair what aspect.
Considering that Douglas's animation covers more than 1000 frames, we had to start cleaning up by yesterday!
In general, the feedback was focused on:
- Hip movement.
- Eliminate leg slippage, especially in dramatic pose changes.
- Eliminate unnecessary rotations and translations.
- Increase the appeal of the hands (especially in the attack combo and walk cycle)
- Review balances.
- Offset of elements such as ears, clothes, hands, so that each animation sequence does not end at the same time.
- Drag and overlapping
- Review the list of animation principles over and over again.
Final details for all my animations! implementing tutor's advice.
Walk Cycle
- Focus on ears, clothes and hair for overlapping and drag.
- When in the last scene he falls, he first "bend" to the front and then fall and "reverse" the line of action.
- Add some extra element to the background. (I added some bottles, they jump when He fells)
Attack Combo
- Check that there are no more overextensions.
- Limit some animations of the tail, they are a litttle distracting.
- SMEARS!
Performance
- Review transitions.
- Change pose "no no no no" to one that favors the transition.
- Add more secondary movement to the tail.
Almost there! Playblast improve
Once all the necessary transitions have been repaired, it is time to generate my playbast, first of all modify some textures and backgrounds, using the ramp option following some tips from Amy Tron.
After one of the most important points: Lighting! Now if I'm honest with you, lighting has never been a strong point (in terms of photography, I prefer to ask my good friend Julito for advice) but in this case I found this incredible, magical and highly recommended video on Maya Learning Channel.
A more visual version of how the distribution of lights was in my scenarios, keep in mind that in all my main light is SpotLight.
Last Problems
As the saying goes '' Si el pato no se hace en la entrada, se hace en la salida '' that means if a problem does not appear in the beggining, it appears at the end. In this case, when I already placed the textures that I wanted and playblast, the textures would "blur" and it was something that could not be fixed with Crlt + Z, but until the file was re-opened.
First of all I started researching some forums, finding someone with a similar problem and experimenting with some of the solutions, without actually working.
From what I also asked my tutors during support hours, the solution was going to (in viewport menu) Renderer> Hardware Renderer 2.0 Options> Scroll down to Maximum texture resolution Clamping> Change it to custom> 2048> Reload All Textures , and If that did not work, try 1024.
It worked!
And finally, the last of the last problems in Maya, every time I exported my video in .avi, the document was '' corrupted '', but this is considerably easier to solve, simply in the playblast option it was to change to export as a sequence of images, and '' paste '' everything in Nuke / Premiere.
Please, enjoy my ''final'' versions
I plan to keep cleaning these animations and create a breakdown video of how it progressed, with music, but for now this is the delivery video for the class.
References, Credits and Assets
Alexander Williams. (2021, March 25). Speed Lipsync [Video]. YouTube.
Andree @maestronoov. (2018). Empanada [3D model].
Barrett, J. S., Widener, A., Herbez, J. A., & Lango, K. (2014). TweenMachine (3.0.0) [Maya plugin].
Coldesina, F., @topfrank2013. (2017). Classic Chair [3D model].
FAIL PARADISE. (2017, September 17). Funniest Drunk Walk Compilation [Video]. YouTube.
Freepik. (2015, December 28). Ornamental chinese monkey new year background 831240.
Freepik & fwstudio. (2016, November 7). Texture of wooden boards 971817.
Freepik & Patchariyavector. (2016, May 13). Oriental elements collection 868067. Freepik.
Hooks, E. (2017). Acting for Animators (4th ed.). Routledge.
Maya Learning Channel. (2018, October 26). Creating great lighting for Playblasts [Video].
NimbahTech. (2013, March 10). Ultimate drunk man beaten by hill [Video]. YouTube.
Schaal, B. (2018). Douglas (v1.3.1) [3D model].
Toshpointow. (2011, December 8). Drunk Walking With Style! [Video]. YouTube.
Truong Cg Artist, Nguyen, T., & Nguyen, L. (2014). Zhu Baijie [3D model].
TruongCgArtist, Nguyen, T., & Nguyen, L. (2014). Wukong [3D model].
Williams, R. (2009). The Animator’s Survival Kit, Expanded Edition. Faber & Faber.