Showreel

This is my animation showreel for the assets I created for this machinima project. It is comprised of all of my assets made this semester except for the gramps "model" I used in the animatic. It plays through a little faster than I planned but shows off what I've done quickly and to the point.

Final Animatic

This is my final animatic. I had some major issues when it came to putting it together in Unity. I was able to get all of my assets and animations imported and working, but I had major problems with setting up the cameras. I attempted using the camera script provided on blackboard but could not get it to work, even after hours of editing it and trying to find other scripts that could do the job from the Internet. The problem involved Unity switching to the wrong cameras, even though when revising the script, I was sure I was giving it the correct cameras to switch to. Scripting is my achilles heel and so having a major scripting issue put a halt to the production of the animatic through Unity. After hitting this wall in production I decided to set up cameras for the scene in Maya and playblast it in order to demonstrate how I had intended for things to go in Unity.

Below is my final animatic:

Below are screenshots of my failed unity scene and camera script:

Gramps: Character Development

Development went a bit dodgey when I realised I was yet to create Gramps. After focusing on the Jokid, Garden Gnome and Batgnome characters as the main characters, I completley forgot about this character. It took me until I was about to start the animatic to realise he ahdn't been made. As is has gone so far for a large chunk of this semester, I realised I was, once again, well behind schedule. It was too late to model, texture and rig another character from scratch and so I was forced to cut a massive corner for this poor character. I ended up creating a rectangular prism and texturing front and rear view sketches of Gramps to it to create his character. I died a little inside when I realised it was all i could do at this point in the semester, but its not a huge problem for the animatic as he reprises only a small role.

below are some screenshots of Gramps:

Scene Development

I went with a pretty simple environment for my animatic. The original concept I had for it involves a nice, big house with a beautiful front lawn adorned with an enormous rose garden. I wanted it to be picturesque so that when it is all destroyed at the end of the story, it added a little more bang for its buck and, in a parody, destroying things is always funny. For the animatic, I kept the scene very simple, due to time constraints, but still gave it enough to give good example of how I would like it to look next semester when I continue developing for this project.
As my narrative is a parody of the Batman universe, I attempted to merge my bright, cartoony style with that of Gotham City (the dark city in which Batman dwells), giving the house a very wonky shape and dark texture, while still making it look like the inviting dwelling of a friendly old man.

Below are some screenshots of the scene:

Garden Gnome: Character development

Things were starting to get a little desperate when I began developing the character models for the garden gnome and Batgnome characters. Under a lot of pressure to get going on the final animatic, I managed to model, texture and rig the garden gnome character in 2 days and then proceeded to alter his outfit to create Batgnome as well. This worked out well as I got two characters completely modeled, textured and rigged for the price of one, allowing me more time to get going with the animatic. I'm very happy with how these two characters turned out as they look very similar to the concept art I did earlier in the semester and I got quite a bit of positive feedback from my peers on their appearance. The only thing I'm a little disappointed about is the rigs attached to them. They do the job well enough for an animatic, but my rigging skills still have a lot to be desired if I want to animate these guys properly next semester.

below are some screenshots of the Garden Gnome and Batgnome characters:

Project 5: Character Animations Within a Realtime Engine

Surprisingly, I didn't have a huge amount of trouble with this activity. My rig for the Jokid character isn't perfect but I managed to make decent idle, walk, run and jump animations for him and got them into Unity with no troubles. Luckily for me I had talked to my tutor about importing skeletal meshes into Unity prior to attempting the activity, otherwise I would definitely have missed the 'bake animations' checkbox within the export options for FBX within Maya. The only thing that worried me when I first imported the animations into Unity was the fact that the character model was completely grey. Luckily, I snapped out of my stupor and remembered I need to import the textures as well. I guess these things happen when you don't get much sleep.

below are some playblasts of the animations I later successfully imported into Unity:

Storyboarding

When creating this storyboard I was forced to revise the script for my project. I didn't want to make any changes as I like my original script (outlined in one of my previous posts), but, unfortunately, they had to happen. The due date for this project is creeping up quite fast and there was a lot happening in my original script so I heavily simplified it and made it shorter. The fight scene between Batgnome and the Jokid (previously known as the Punk Kid) is much shorter and sweeter, but a bit lacking, but I'll have to deal with it for now. The ending now involves the firecracker being hurled into the air at the climax of the fight scene, with it flying towards the Gramps as he comes out onto his veranda for some fresh air, ending with an explosion.
I'm also hoping the theme of biodiversity within the conflicting forces witin this front lawn and its garden will still be obvious. It may just be a little overlooked this semester as I don't think I'm going to have much time for modeling a detailed rose garden. With these changes, the narrative is incredibly different to my first draft, but i'm happy with it as far as making a deadline goes.

Below is my current storyboard:

Project 4: Punk Kid Character Rig

For this week's activity, I applied a rig to the character I modelled and textured for the previous activity. As I have very little experience in the field of rigging, this proved to be a very difficult activity. It took me a couple of attempts to get the joint structure correct so that it would bind to the mesh properly and move in a desirable way and still be simple enough to allow it to be imported into Unity without any troubles. After getting the bones right, I created the controllers for each of the limbs, etc, using NURB circles and locators (with pole vectors attached to the elbow and knee points). At first, I applied parent constraints from the controllers to their respective joints and, after binding the mesh to the joints, this caused some major issues, mainly on the hands. The hands and a couple of other body parts would stretch and fold strangely as I moved the mesh around. After deleting the parent constrints and cleaning up the heirarchy, I applied orient constraints to the hands and this solved the problem. The other problems lied within the default weights Maya applied to the mesh. After sifting through each of the joints and their weights, the rig was pretty much complete. There are still a few issues with it but it should be fine for use in the animatic for the end of semester.
After creating the rig, I attempted importing it into Unity. It imported without any trouble and there didn't seem to be any problems. Hopefully I can use what I learned from the problems I had with this rig, as well as what I did correctly, to create the other characters for the final animatic with a bit more ease.

below is a screenshot of the character rig:

Project 3: Modelling and Texturing a Character (Punk Kid)

This week's project involved modeling a 3D character and applying a texture to it. Using Autodesk Maya, I created the Punk Kid character for my final project. This character is a cartoony parody of the Joker character that recurs in much of the Batman franchise. To communicate this I attempted to give him the key features that have defined the Joker character in each of the different mediums in which he has been involved (various comics, cartoon shows and live action films). These features include his trademark enormous, goofy, evil grin, large, beakish nose, white face paint, green hair and purple clothing. As my parody of the Joker is an annoying neighbourhood child, I gave him a propeller hat (a great cliche for depicting childhood figures), filthy clothes and dirty skin in order to effectively portray him as a stereotypical child.

When texturing the Punk Kid, I stuck to using mostly solid, flat colours as I am aiming for an overall cartoony style for the final project. Although I did use some grunge brushes in Adobe Photoshop to create the dirty look of the character's clothes and skin.
Although I'm working on a cartoony style for my characters, some areas of this model still looks a bit bland to me with just one solid colour. At first, I failed to unwrap the UVs of the model very well, which made it difficult to texture these areas without one solid colour and neglected any detail. I later decided to unwrap the UVs again and did a much beter job. I was able to add more to the texture, such as the smiley face on his shirt, paint on his face and dirt on his clothes and hands.

Below is a front, side and top view of the 'Punk Kid' character:



To add some final touches to the character, I created pimples on his face as a normal map. I found this process very difficult at first as I couldn't bake the normals properly. This was resulting in weird solid black lines and other strange bits of shading all over the character's face and entire body. After seeking help from a few different people I learnt how to fix my problems. To fix all of the random lines, etc that were appearing on the mesh, I edited the normal map in Photoshop and then had to delete transparency that Maya had applied to the mesh after baking it. It was a pretty simple normal map but I'm happy enough with it as I don't really plan on using much normal mapping on my final scene's characters.

Below is a screenshot of the normal map I applied to the character:

Project 2: Final Project Proposal

Original Concept:

My concept for the final project involves a garden gnome, the protagonist, defending the bio diverse ecosystem dwelling within a cranky old man's garden. This particular garden gnome possesses the attributes of a superhero, using unnatural strength (not that it's natural for an inanimate object to possess super human attributes) and various gadgets to protect the garden and its inhabitants (such as flowers, worms, other garden ornaments) against various threats which are constantly looming over it. These threats include the likes of neighbourhood children playing pranks on the old man and hungry crows and aphids.
This machinima animation will largely be a cartoony parody of the popular comic superhero, Batman, and the different universes his character has been placed within. These universes include those such as the original comic series, the television series (circa 1960s) and the latest live action movies. The animation will be riddled with over the top fight scenes, accompanied by ridiculously designed characters, all made to parody one of many Batman characters in some way.

Basic Script:

• An old man is gardening and goes inside for a drink of water as it is a hot, sunny day.
• During this, lifeless garden gnomes are sitting in the garden. A Punk kid (joker parody) straps a firecracker to one of the garden gnomes. The other gnome then comes to life, dives underneath the soil and re-emerges in costume (as Batgnome) and proceeds to beat and tie up kid. During this fight, camera frequently switches back to the gnome that is about to explode (it is panicking).
• The fight will involve much of the “BAM”, “POW” and “ZOK” text used in the old Batman television series.
• The punk kid freaks out at the sight of a living garden gnome and attempts to run away only to be lassoed by Batgnome’s rope (from his utility belt) and dragged back to the fight. The punk kid then pulls out a Swiss army knife and tries to stab Batgnome, which does nothing to pierce his porcelain skin. Batgnome smirks while the kid fails to stab him, but then the tables are turned as the punk kid switches from the knife attachment to a hammer. Batgnome then desperately dodges each swing of the hammer, occasionally getting lucky punches on the punk kid. During this part of the fight, the Batgnome leaps around the front yard (over the garden, the letterbox, the rainwater tank), resulting in the punk kid hammering all of these things, destroying them.
• Batgnome escapes the punk kid with his grappling hook and hides behind a bucket on the lawn, next to the nozzle of the garden hose. He then sees the punk kid, who is creeping around trying to find him, walking towards the sprawled out garden hose, which is attached to the rainwater tank. As the punk kid comes up to the slack part of the hose in the middle of the lawn, Batgnome pulls the nozzle end tight, causing the rest of the rope to trip up the punk kid. He then leaps in a uses the hose to tie the kid up.
• Just as this happens, the fuse of the firecracker that is strapped to the other gnome runs out. As the distressed gnome and Batgnome flinch in anticipation of an explosion, smoke billows out of the firecracker and they realise it was a dud. The punk kid then starts laughing and says “why so serious?” as the old man comes back out from the house.
• The camera zooms in on the old man’s face as his face goes from a relaxed, refreshed look to a look of unwelcomed surprise and anguish. The camera then zooms out to a wide angle view of the area, giving a full view of the destroyed front yard.

Mood Board:

Character Sketches:

Project 1: Introduction to a Realtime 3D Engine

This week's project was an activity involving learning the basic elements of using the Unity game engine. This included creating simple assets in 3D (using Autodesk Maya), importing these assets into Unity and then using them to explore some of the attributes Unity allows users to implement into game environments. I decided to explore Unity and its tools by creating a small skate park. This skate park involves a half pipe, quarter pipe, rail, etc; many of the essential pieces to a regular skate park. I also created a skateboard for the player to navigate through the skate park. When creating this game environment, I had to make use of Unity's importing methods (for the 3D assets and their textures), collision tools, cameras and player controls.
Most of this was relatively simple to learn and implement within Unity. Importing all of my assets was simple enough, although some of the 3D meshes I had deleted within the scene in Autodesk Maya reappeared when the scene was imported into Unity. I wasn't sure how to stop this happening so i just sifted through the scene once in Unity and deleted these unwanted objects. For most of the objects in the environment, mesh colliders were good enough to create basic collision detection. Although, for the skateboard I used a wheel collider and a mesh collider caused it to half sink through other meshes in the environment. Once all of the 3D assets were imported and collision detection was set up, I parented the skateboard to a camera for the player's perspective and applied a basic movement script to the skateboard. To get the skateboard to rotate instead of strafing left to right across the screen I had to edit the movement script (with some outside help seeing as I'm not a programmer) to allow the player to use the mouse to rotate the skateboard. The skateboard doesn't rotate perfectly, but it's good enough for now. After completing all of this, I created the executable file for a playable version of this game.

Below is a screenshot of the skate park game environment: