Avatar - Final Sprint

For the final sprint, I focused on smaller animation fixes and adding secondary animations (finger and facial animation). I had to check back and forth between Maya and Unreal since the model looked so different in both programs. I'm very grateful for the wonderful team I worked with on this project and I'm pretty pleased with our final product.

 

Avatar the Last Airbender - Sprint 5

For this sprint, I've been focusing on cleaning up the animation. I did some initial work on the proxy rig. However, I also had to go back in and update small parts of the animation when the rig mesh changed. The rig itself still needs some edits, most likely some corrective blendshapes and skinning adjustments. We will also be adding (small) facial animations so Aang's expression isn't completely dead.

Avatar the Last Airbender - Sprint 4

 

For this pass, I finished the first pass of the entire animation. I also started doing proxy VFX animation in Maya. We had some issues importing them into engine, but it's something we plan to fix next week. I also re-animated the camera in unreal to match the new timing of the animation.

For the next sprint, I will be focused on doing secondary animation and animation clean up.

Avatar the Last Airbender Project - Spring #3

For this sprint, my focus was on creating the first pass of the first half of the animation (up to the rocks breaking). I started animating the sequence in Maya, did a couple revisions, and then uploaded it into Unreal. I then re-animated the camera in Unreal to match the test camera I created in Maya. For the next sprint, we are going to focus on getting a lighting pass as well as adding the proxy VFX to the scene. 

Avatar the Last Airbender Project - Sprint #2

 

For this sprint, I took the proxy rig that Jacob made and brought it into Maya.

The first thing I did with the rig was a range of motion test. I did a quick animation of Aang doing a hurricane kick. I wanted to test a few things, such as the ability for the rig to rotate 360 and hand contact with the ground. There were a few things about the rig that I wanted to change, such as the shoulder orientation and adding a peel function to the hands. Those things will be added once Jacob reiterates on the rig.

Next I finished placing all the keys for the project, which will make the animation process go a lot smoother. I also started blocking out the camera for the scene, so we will have an easier time figuring out the camera in Unreal.

Avatar the Last Airbender - Common Art Project

 

Bending References and Videos

Avatar Schedule

For this first sprint, I started off with doing a ton of research on the different bending styles. I created a google doc that included the elements, the martial art they were based on, and reference videos that can be used for animation. The doc also has some VFX references that our Tech Artist (Jacob) can use in his research.

After pooling together all the animation references, I wrote out the basic story beats for what I wanted to happen. I wanted to be sure that every element was used and highlighted in this animation. From there, I started actually drawing out the storyboards. I worked with Jacob to ensure that all of the VFX ideas I had were in scope for this project. After a couple of reworks, I adjusted the timing and added the music to create the animatic.

For the next sprint, I will be working hard to recreate those key frames from the animatic using the proxy rig.

Lighting Workshop #4

Daylight

Even though this is a daylight scene, I still wanted to environment to feel somewhat dark. The colosseum walls are huge and oppressive, blocking a lot of natural light. I wanted all the light pouring in to focus on the main character, who is getting ready for battle. I did still have to light the architecture to keep it from being completely covered by shadow. My reference images for the daylight used a lot of blue and orange, so I created a LUT in photoshop and applied it to my post process volume in order to dull down the bright orange and bring out some bluer tones.

Sunset

 

For this scene, I had to cheat a bit to get the effect of light pouring through the window. An actual sunset would have the sun lower, but because the windows are so high, there was no way to naturally get in directional light, which I really wanted for this outdoor scene. I played around with the temperature to get the warm orange color. I adjusted the temperature on the other lights as well.

Reference (Daylight and Sunset)

Lighting Workshop #3

 

Lighting Workshop #2

 

Lighting Workshop #1

 

RGB Lighting (Red = Key Light, Green = Fill Light, Blue = Rim Light)

VR Final Week

For this final pass, the animations changed a lot from their proxy states.

The first rig was only FK, so there were no hip/leg movements and no weight shifting. With the new IK rig, I was able to add those subtle movements to the previous animation states. Also, because of the new rig, I was able to animate transitions between these states.

However, each time the rig evolved, changes needed to be made to the animations to make sure they looked good.

Due to some technical issues, our team changed the Nazgul's clothing. Instead of a cloth simulation, the cloak was modeled directly onto the character. With the clothes added, I needed to go in and adjust the animations to make sure that the cloak was not clipping through the model. There were plenty of challenges with this and it required a lot of successful rig breaking to make it look nice and also look natural.

Interactive Character Proxy

For this round, the goal was to get in four different animations: idle, awareness, and two interactive reaction states. Our character is one of the Nazgul, so the idle animation is based off of how the Nazgul hold their sword straight up before attacking. 

During playtests, we saw that our players really wanted to be able to pick up the swords and attack the Nazgul, so the two interactive animations are based off of that. There is a block reaction, where the Nazgul will hold up his sword in front of him, and a stabbed animation, which plays when the player hits the right trigger to harm the Nazgul.

Next week, the plan is to add an ik/fk switching to the rig so the legs can be animated in a realistic way.  I will also be adding transition animations between the states, such as swinging the sword and pulling the sword back.

I also added a couple fixes to the hand animations from last week. The grasp and index curl didn't quite fit around the sword correctly, so I adjusted those in Maya.

VR Week 03 - Final Hand Pass

This week, I finalized the hand animations. Fortunately, the animations from last week were pretty clean. I made a couple timing adjustments to vary the fingers. I also adjusted some of the weight painting issues that I was noticing in our mesh. Once the new animations were finalized, they were uploaded to perforce. 

My second focus this week was to do one more special animation. Our team wanted to find a way to do a one-handed animation for putting on the ring. I decided to do a "ring flair" animation. When the player picks up the ring, they can press a button on the controller to put it on. When the button is pressed, the hand will curl into a fist around the ring and put it on in a very stylish one-handed way. This was to streamline the process of getting the ring on and preventing potential bugs from a two-handed animation.

VR Week 02 - Hand Clean Pass

 

This week, my goal was to clean up the hand animations and add a new one as well.

The feedback I received on the previous iteration was that the hands moved too evenly and needed some more irregularity. I went back in and did two things: one, change the the finger timing so that the fingers all raised and lowered at slightly different frames, and two, added a second cycle to the idle. Each idle now has two different up and down cycles within it, to give more variation and be more realistic. 

The previous week, the hand mesh had some issues and couldn't be animated in certain positions. Now that the bug was fixed, I was able to go in and adjust some of the finger positioning.

I also added a new character-specific animation, finger-spreading. In our game, we want the player to be able to put the ring on their hand, so we needed an animation that had the fingers spread open a little wider to make room for the ring.

VR Hands Proxy Animations

 

My group is working on the Lord of the Rings VR Project. As the animator, this week my task was to create six different hand animation clips for our Proxy Hands. 

The first five animations (idle, point, grasp, thumb out, index curl) were pretty simple loops. For idling/resting animations, I animated the movements similar to taking a breath. There's a shorter rising motion and a longer falling motion, like breathing in and out.

The sixth animation, the thematic animation, is a ring-holding animation. Most people hold a ring differently than they would grasping a larger object, so a special hand animation was necessary. We plan to have an event trigger in the future with the ring, so having a holding animation was integral for later down the pipeline. 

Once the animations were complete, they were put in engine and hooked up to an animation blueprint. The animations were then mirrored from the left hand to the right hand.

Week 06 - Use of Composition

 

Week 05 - Use of Perspective

 

Week 04 - Use of Basic Lighting

 

Original Silhouette by Sunny Zheng

Value and Linework by Brian Rushing

Use of Value and Contrast

Silhouette Credits:

Ness - Brian Rushing

Samus - Sunny Zheng 

Week 02 - Silhouettes and Thumbnails