Video Game Production Techniques - Summary

Through this unit I have vastly expanded my knowledge on rigging and animation, which was previously no knowledge whatsoever.
I have learned basic rigging techniques, through from the structure of a skeleton to more complex manipulations allowing for multiple movements to be applied to a foot using the input of basic numerical values.

I have also learned more of the technical features to character creation and rigging, such as weight painting, which allows me to select the degree of effect placed on each vertex via painting the mesh.

Whilst I know I still have a lot to work on to improve this avenue of 3D work, I am happy with the progress I have made through this unit, and though my animations are far from the best I feel as though I have competently produced 7 animations comprised of a piece of lip syncing work, an animated asset in the form of my own personal Gen 4 Glock model, for use in a future unit, and five character based animations, utilising the movement of more than one joint, resulting in both arms, legs or the neck moving together.

I am happy with my current progress and although this field of 3D is not ultimately where I want to focus my work and further my career. I plan on working more on my character based knowledge and expanding my abilities as I have ideas for potential independent projects in the future which will absolutely benefit further exploration into 3D character work and potentially manual rigging.

Video Game Production Techniques - Peer Review Cycle

To gain critical feedback on my animations, I prepared a couple of questions for peer review and set them for each animation. I would be looking for any ways possible to improve my animations in somebody else's eyes.

Questions:

Q1. Do you feel the animation runs smoothly enough?

Q2. Is the animation lifelike enough? if not, is there anything you would do to make the animation more lifelike?

Q3. Do you feel as though anything could use some exaggeration in the animation?


Animation 1:

Darren - For this animation I feel it animates smoothly and it is accurate to the real life version.I dont thing this animation needs to be changed at all.

Wayne - Aye, seems smooth enough on the frames and what have you. Don't really want to say whether it's lifelike or not, suppose you get some 'vote Trump' types that walk around like this mind you. Definitely doesn't need any exaggeration.

Animation 2:

Darren - With the punch taunt animation I thing it is a bit staggered and needs to be slightly smoothed out a bit more maybe round the elbow area. I do think the animation is life like. Maybe adding a bit more exaggeration on the elbows will smooth it out.

Wayne - It goes from point a-z well but could use smoothing - both the head and arms/elbows are fairly robotic, but thats just a case of more smoothing and additional movements so they're more realistic. Smoothing wise though the neck roll is solid. That said it does feel life like enough, it's believable for sure. Could exaggerate the animation to extend into a punch smashing the glass etc, proper hardcore.

Animation 3:

Darren - The crane kick animation is smooth and life like and nothing needs to be exaggerated for this animation.

Wayne - Definitely smooth enough. Start is quality, you've got the added breathing/balancing movement whilst holding the stance - goes a long way to adding realism. Wouldn't exaggerate anything tbh unless you were to go spending hours on end to add all the human realism to it, which we don't have.

Animation 4:

Darren - Item pick up animation is smooth and realistic and does not need to be changed.

Wayne - Smoothing is good, realistic enough and believable, like the added leg movement too. Wouldn't exaggerate this, no need - short and simple works here, use this in your game to test how it works properly, be decent practice.

Animation 5:

Darren - the reload animation is smooth and does not need any alteration.

Wayne - Reload is solid, grip around the gun looks spot on. Wouldn't change much else unless you had tons more time.

Animated Asset:

Darren - the animated asset is smooth and realistic with some create features.

Wayne - Seems great, I guess the full animation would be far faster when used for actually shooting projectiles in game etc - easy fix in UE4.

Lip Sync:

Darren - The lip sync animation is smoothed out. however ir is slightly out on time as at the end audio stops and the mouth keeps moving but apart from this there was nothing wrong with the animation.

Wayne - Bit short and it's out at the end but otherwise seems fine, generally matches and so on.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

From a couple of short peer reviews, I can tell there are certainly improvements I can make to some of the animations, smoothing some keyframes out by adding more movement to certain joints.

There are also factors however for example, with the lip sync being slightly out at the end, which are down to the software, as I used Adobe Premier Pro to make the side-by-side video, if the software were capable of allowing me to cut a video to the exact hundredth of a second, I feel I would have produced a perfectly in sync video.

I acknowledge my animations are not perfect, though combined with software lacking in proper cropping and timing methods, I cannot be too self-critical, specifically with the lip sync animation.

With deadlines fast approaching I may not look too much into adding further manipulations right now, the animations will be looked at and possibly developed on further in the coming months as I branch into full character implementation.

Video Game Production Techniques - Creating an Animated Asset

Following the animation of my character, I was tasked with creating a basic animated asset, for this, I chose to use my firearm shown in the character animation set.
For this I would need to set up a basic skeletal rig for the pistol, to do this I created a root bone, and applied this to the combined Grip, Recoil spring and Disassembly lever, as these three pieces were to stay still and not move on their own.
Therefore the pieces which had bones applied were the Slider, the Barrel, the Trigger, and Magazine release button and the Magazine itself, the setup can be seen below:

I began moving and keyframing parts in order to get a rough firing motion, using vvideo footage, images and animated gifs as research and resource to help my animation flow.

I added both a general firing animation and a final round in the magazine animation, in which the slider stays back, slowing the slider release to come into play holding it back in place.
The magazine is then ejected and replaced, allowing the slider release to be pushed downward, releasing the magazine ready for firing again.

I may yet tweak this animation following peer review, dependent on feedback provided.

My current animation can be seen below:

I feel this has been largely a success and am happy with where my animation stands, but will gain feedback to get a further opinion on whether or not I need to add extra detail to the animation, or refine the details and movements perhaps, before the animation can be transported into Unreal Engine.

Video Game Production Techniques - Lip Syncing

Following on from applying a skeleton and a rig to my character from Adobe Fuse, my first task was to create a lip sync, synchronising my characters lips and facial with a chosen movie quote or sentence of spoken test, for this piece I chose the quote "At my signal, Unleash hell!" from the movie Gladiator, in which Russell Crowe is preparing for battle.

Due to the nature of the clip, some of the words are hidden from view, and as a result, I began using my own mouth to make the shapes required, and then replicating those shapes into the model on screen, and referring to some basic images if I had trouble at any point.

I started by making general movements with each of the characters different facial controls and after a while, was happy with the outcome, although I did feel it necessary to exaggerate and accentuate some of the syllables of animation within the quote, as Russell Crowe's face moves quite a minimal amount during the Gladiator scene. Also, when he says the word Hell, the camera switches to another character completely, this led me to utilise my own mouth and research again, the resource video itself can be seen below between 00:38 and 00:43.

I continued to make small changes to the facial elements, including things like the smile and the frown, deciding to add in some emotion, so to make the character look more human. I added a downward movement to the eyebrows also, to accompany the "Unleash Hell" in the quote, timed with a turn of the character's head to face the camera.

After producing the syncrhonised lip movements to the audio and adding the facial emotional animation elements, I was asked to produce a pose of some sort, fitting to the quote, for which I made the character turn his head toward the camera from a neutral position, and clench a fist upon the "Unleash Hell" during the quote, my animation, in its current state, can be seen below.

As a comparative method, I have created a side by side view of the two videos, allowing myself and anybody else to compare the two videos side by side, and see the exaggerations and accentuation I have added to my animation work. As the animation is still far from perfect, I will also be gaining feedback in the form of a peer review for this work, to gauge on what elements I could or should change to make general improvements.

The comparison video can be seen below:

Video Game Production Techniques - Creating Five Character Animations

Following on from the facial animation and lip sync work, I was tasked with creating five animations which could be used with my character in-engine further down the line, these animations being otherwise unavailable in resource from Mixamo.

As this unit presented new elements of work which I had not yet encountered, and having onlt animated a face so far, I feel as though I started out small and then finished well, creating two animations which will be absolutely essential for my forthcoming project, and taking inspiration from both the internet, music and other videogames in order to create some others.

In conversation with my peers, whilst batting around ideas for animations I could potentially make for my character, the emote system within Destiny came to mind, as their animators have created multiple popular dances, poses and other animations to allow players to interact with each other in social spaces.

When thinking of popular dances, poses and internet content in general, Marlon Webb's 'Band of the Bold' came to mind and can be seen below.

Others have been inspired to create their own versions, going on the original content and as such, I decided to make my first animation an interpretation of the Band of the Bold.

I raised both arms via rotation on either shoulder, then keyframed the shoulders and elbows to give me a point of reference to return to when straightening the arms back to that point, I left the fist aligned with the forearm.

From here I rotated the arm at the elbow and keyframed again, using a specific set of numbers so as to make the repetition easier for myself throughout the process.
Once each arm had been moved to both respective positions and keyframed, I copied the animation values via keyframes and pasted the values in, alternating between the more bent and less bent elbow position to give both arms the desired animation.

I did the same for the legs, creating the initial keyframe, positioning the leg at the alternative position and keyframing again, taking care to note that the knee control must also be moved from its original place to the next so as to not warp the mesh during animation.

I once again copied and pasted the values for both the legs and the knee controls until I had the alternating pattern lined up perfectly with the arm animation.

I also added a slight arched back and bounced the character up and down at the hips to emulate a hop from one leg to the other.

The end result of my first attempt at this animation can be seen below:

I made some slight modifications to this later on when watching the source video back again, and having not actually implemented the base idle stance into this animation first time around, added this in retrospectively too.

I began with an idle pose, from which I would begin all of my animations and and where possible, moving the hands down by the sides and keyframing to make sure that the animation began there.

I added a slight amount more bounce to the hips, left the back arched as it was, and set the elbow angle to a lesser value by default, bending both of the elbows upon the character raising his arms to begin the animation, below is the edited version of the animation.

The second animation I created was to be a taunt in which I envisioned my character punching his own fist and flexing his neck. The inspiration wasn't particularly taken from anywhere, and was just aimed to be more of a taunt than anything else, with the use being aimed at other players and/or AI for nothing but cosmetic effect.

As with the edit of the first animation, I made sure to use the idle position as a starting base. proceeding to raise the hands, bending at the elbow, whilst loosening up the fingers in the right hand, enough to effectively wrap around the wrist with each coming together of the hands.

From here, I placed keyframes on the shoulders and rotated outward on both sides, keyframing again at an extended point, then bringing them back to their original point.

I also added a nod to the head to add further animation and a sense of emotion to the taunt, then followed by a rotational flex of the neck.

Whilst a simple animation, the taunting effect could be used within both solo play and possibly more adequately multiplayer games, to taunt an enemy.

The animation, in its current state, due for review, can be seen below:

My third animation was inspired by both existent videogames and the movie industry, and as such I produced another basic emote for use in-game, whether aimed at another character or not.
I took inspiration directly from Destiny's collection of emotes, and also from The Karate Kid to produce my iteration of a Crane Kick.

I began by raising bending the arms at the elbows, and raising them via shoulder rotation, whilst at the same time lifting the foot to bend the knee and raising the knee control to make sure the leg once again bent the right way. I also relaxed the ankle using a downward rotation, to let the foot hang somewhat loose, as would be done in a real Crane Kick.

From here I added a bounce to the hips, which in turn bent the standing leg adequately to suggest the character is readying to hop up and perform a crane kick, after three complete hip bounces I shot my character up slightly higher to show the jump, then bringing the right leg upward as the left leg returned to its normal position.

The arms were animated to be brought down to the height of the kicking leg, then brought down to the sides as the leg was returned to its idle position. this completed the draft of my first animation for review and subsequent tweaking if required.

The animation in its current form, ready for review, can be seen below:

My fourth animation was created as a simple template to allow my character to pick up items in-game, with the idea being that health, stamina, and other replenishment items would need to be picked up and applied to an inventory system within Unreal Engine.

I once again started from my idle position, and began by moving the lower half of the characters body first. I keyframed the foot and knee control elements and made my character take a single step forward, followed by his right arm being brought up in front of him. I animated the fingers to open and grab the item in front as the arm was being brought back down to the character's side, at which time the foot was also brought back into alignment.

Whilst simple, this is more of a crucial animation and one done more out of necessity than for visual effect, as I will definitely be using this animation in-game. It can be seen in its current form below:

My fifth and final manual animation for this unit was also aimed at 100% confirmed use in-game.

For this I needed to slightly edit the skeletal rig which had been applied to the mesh, modifying the rig in the process.

I will be using a gun which I have created in my own time in my game, to save some time in the creation of assets at a further point, this will aid me in allowing me to create either a higher quantity of assets or add more quality to my assets across the board.

I added a bone to the base of my Glock, and moved it into place, I then parented it to the bone at the base of the hand in the skeletal rig provided by the Fuse/Mixamo character generation process.

I animated the right and left hands to upward and together, with the right thumb pressing in onto the magazine release button, which would in theory release the magazine from the gun allowing my character to then grab the magazine as it falls from the firearm and place it away, then pick up a replacement full magazine and insert it into the firearm ready for use.

As such, the left arm, which was grabbing the ejected magazine was rotated toward the rear of the character as if to place the empty magazine in either the back pocket, or a pouch on the rear of the character, a fresh magazine would then be pushed into the mag well and pushed in with the palm of the hand.

Whilst this animation may be done slightly differently in a professional environment, for example the gun may be attached to the character differently, or may even be removed after animation completion so that multiple guns can be used, I am happy with where this animation stands. Bearing this in mind I will still be gaining some opinions on this animation from my peers, to see if they have any opinions on where I could improve along the way with this and the other four animations also.

The animation in it's current state can be seen below:

Through my animation creation and the modification of the first animation, I have come to gain a simple understanding of basic animations and some more complex movements.

I feel as though I have done well with most elements of my animation and may potentially have more work to do, some minor elements with things like finger positioning and possible over extentions may yet be highlighted by peer review, by my own eye for now though, my animations look like something I could use within a game.

They are by no means 'Triple A' game worthy in their current state, but I feel for a first shot at bodily animations using manual positioning and keyframing, I feel it has been a success.

I may also be able to utilise a motion capture setup at some point soon, if this comes to fruition I will add more to this post, detailing the animation data gathered from the Motion Capture suite.

Video Game Production Techniques - Character Animation: Idea Generation

Before I can begin animating my character, I would need to develop an animation-based mind map to generate ideas for animations as this is what would be done in industry for some, if not all titles, elaborating on only animations that are actually necessary in games and expanding the library of animations both physically and emotionally.
Even though I had a rough idea of some of the animations I would need to produce for my game, I brainstormed some others to generate some potentially useful animations, which could be used for movement, acquisition of items, or with a view to simply amuse the potential end user, playing my level.
Taking into account multiple emotions, gestures, and bodily movements, I quickly generated the below mindmap:

Video Game Production Techniques - Graph Editor

Through the animation process, another of the tools I have had at my disposal is the graph editor, this editing tool simplifies the manipulation of an already existing animation through selection and translation.

Through manipulations both vertically and horizontally on the graph, I can change both the length of a single animation, for example the opening of my character's mouth, and then draw out the subsequent closing of the mouth. The emphasis on the animation can also be modified on the graph editor.

As can be seen above, there are not many significant movements on the graph editor, this is due to both the movements only being slight in the chosen animation and in part due to the fact I did not utilise the graph editor for most of my animations.

I instead used specific numbers to work with angles of rotation and values of translation, this was the approach I used from the start and felt easier at the time, as I could modify one joint using specific numbers and then reflect the joint using some positive and minus values mirrored in the opposite joint.

Whilst this is a massively useful editor, I am not currently using it. I will be looking to include it more in any further animation work and develop my understanding of the graph editor further as necessary.

Video Game Production Techniques - Mixamo Rigs

Through this unit, I have been tasked with creating and animating both a character and an asset for use within Unreal Engine 4 at a later date for a forthcoming project.

To start the project, I was asked to create a generic character within Adobe Fuse and export it to Adobe's Mixamo software, this was used so as I could also apply a generic rig, with both bodily and facial controls, to the character.

When exporting from Mixamo, there were a few specific settings I needed to make sure were selected, utilising an Unreal Engine 4 FBX file type and the skeletal base of my choosing, with regards number of knuckles and finger control, this did present issues with functionality and compatibility, and as such, I reverted to a standard FBX file, with no direct correlation to Unreal Engine.

With the rig complete and exported as an FBX, I was able to drag and drop it into Maya to begin my animations, both bodily and facial.

Upon import to Maya, I was presented with another issue, albeit with a simple fix. Upon import, the textures I had applied to my character within Fuse were carrying over transparency values which were affecting the model in Maya.

To fix this issue I simply opened my Hypershade editor and began disconnecting the links to transparency values in each of the materials within the scene.

From here I loaded Adobe's character rigging script from Mixamo, with this I was able to take the skeleton already applied to my character, and apply a rig to the skeleton to speed up the control and animation in this unit tenfold.

With all but the Eyewear Material transparency removed, to allow for ease of viewing with regards my character's eyes, and with the rigging script run, I was able to begin the animation process.

Video Game Production Techniques - Deformer Research

Utilising more research techniques within this unit, I have been looking at both linear and non-linear deformers to be potentially used for animation purposes.
Non-linear deformers, such as the Bend, Flare, Sine, Squash, Twist and Wave have a much larger place in animation as well as modelling, as they can be used to both intricately manipulate objects to exact values, and also to emulate certain things, for example the Squash deformer could be used in a slow motion animation sequence using a ball, representing the deformation of the ball itself, as it compresses on contact with a harder surface.

Whilst Some have similar, simple uses, some of the deformers can even be used in the creation of particle effects, like using a Wave deformer to produce the normal map for the splash of a raindrop, combined with a Diffuse and Specular map to emulate the moment a raindrop makes contact wwith another fluid surface.

I have also done some minor research into the manipulation of meshes using Linear deformers, looking at Lattice, Wrap and Shrinkwrap deformers as can be seen above, the most commonly used of these is the lattice deformer, which gives any mesh a bounding box, controllable via the channel box/attribute editor.

All of these deformers, whilst easily used for modelling purposes, cannot necessarily be used for animations in just any way imaginable, as the values of the deformers do not transfer directly from Maya to game engines with ease, this currently limits users to making full animations for objects and not using deformers. However, as game engines develop further, more and more of the deformers will be capable of use within, to aid animation in the long run, saving time for animators and modellers alike.

Video Game Production Techniques - Weight Painting

Through my character based research and studies in this unit, I have also had to take a look at weight painting, which in its simplest form, constrains which vertices can be manipulated by the skeletal animations when taking the joints into account.

As a low poly character had been provided for weight painting research and practice, I began by setting the view options to x-ray joints and binding the skeleton within the scene to the mesh, allowing me to begin the weight painting procedure.
Short animations can also be applied prior to the painting of weights, this allows for ease through the working pipeline as an animation can simply be played to allow a view in progress of the weight painting, with the timeline being set back to the start to manipulate further.

I began with the black and white view, which allows for a simpler approach to weight painting, with a two tone view on which vertices are allowed to be manipulated. Using this method, vertices in contact with a more progressively white shade are manipulated more when animating, using a black to white value of 0 to 1.

I started at the left shoulder and began working my way down to the fingers, mostly negating the manipulation of vertices through painting of negative values represented as black in the viewport, and adjusting as necessary as I went, through trial and error testing with slight rotations in joints, as can be seen by the bend in the elbow through the images below.

As can be seen with the final screenshot, the arm bent perfectly at the elbow joint, this is because I have no effect painted onto any vertices above the elbow, if vertices are painted above the elbow then manipulation errors begin to occur during animation.

I took the weight painting a step further by using the fully coloured filter, going from blue to red, , through Green, Yellow, and Orange progressively in scales of manipulation.
I was aiming to have the painted weights as near as the black to white scale, and adjusted any painted sections accordingly.

Once happy with the results through each joint I mirrored the painted weights, this did present some errors in the form of weights painting themselves into position, but these were rectified easily enough.

I feel I have gained enough of a basic knowledge through this to progress with weight painting at a later date, as and when I have time to do so or whenever it is required for a project, my skills are by no means developed, but I will look to work further on them in the future and further my understanding of weight painting.

Video Game Production Techniques - Manual Rigging: Foundations

Throughout this unit, I have been introduced to the basics of rigging a skeleton within a character in Maya, and was tasked with drawing out a skeleton using the joint tool, taking into account all of the required naming conventions and parenting procedures.

I began from the spin, and built one leg, then built upward from the root point of the spine up toward the neck and head, from here I branched a new joint string out to the shoulder, to the elbow, wrist, into the hand and down to the tip of the first finger. Once finished with the basic outline I selected the hip bone and shoulder bone, allowing for all child joints of each to be selected and modified.
With these joints selected I mirrored the joints so that I had two identical legs, and arms all the way to the fingertips.

I have included a capture of my outliner to give a rough idea of my naming conventions and parenting scheme.

This has provided me with the basic foundations to go from, from here I can apply IK handles and manipulators of different types to gain control of joints using advanced methods, I can also apply other manual methods to rig a character using control constraints, which are otherwise more commonly applied through scripting, allowing me to select an external control point, for smoother control as opposed to selecting by single joints. Also, when bound to the skin, this skeleton, whether transformed into a full scale rig or not, will ultimately let me animate a character.

Video Game Production Techniques - Manual Rigging: Fully Animating a leg

Following on from the generic layout of a skeleton within Maya, I was asked to follow a tutorial to fully rig a leg, in a capacity which would means adding more to the leg than previous rigging work.
This leg setup would be adding a Toe Tap, a Heel Peel, a Swivel, Toe Tip and Ankle movements.

The tutorial I followed can be seen below:

I started by adding an IK Solver to the leg, stretching from the hip to the ankle, making sure to set the right type of IK handle in the settings prior to applying it to the leg, for a generic leg setup, a Single Chain Solver is used.

From there, more IK handles were added to give more points of character articulation, for which the pivot points were placed allowing rotation on specific aces for specific joints.

I had to pay close attention to my Outliner during the creation process, both for tidiness of my work overall, and to order the joints correctly, as there is a specific order in which the items, joints and IK handles must be parented to one another.

With this in mind, my Outliner looked like this upon finishing the leg rigging. The specific ordering of the setup found under "L_Foot_Control" is absolutely necessary for both the leg and the foot to work properly.

I added the extra attributes and edited them accordingly, for the toe tap, heel peel, swivel, toe tip and ankle movements, again close attention was needed whilst doing this to make sure each attribute was applied correctly, allowing rotational movement on the correct axis.

With the right axes of rotation selected for each of the newly implemented animation values, I could then apply movement both through viewport rotational movement and through changing of numbers within the channel box.

My skeleton would now have a full range of foot animation, allowing me to tap the toes of any character I applied the skeleton to, raising the heels to an extent to aid a walk animation or even for example, swivelling the ball of the foot on top of a cigarette to put it out, as can be seen below, utilising the swivel at a value of -30 rotation and the toe tap at -10 rotation.

I feel though blogging this and documenting it will aid me in creation of another skeleton at a point further down the line, although I feel I will probably need to consult the tutorial again, as having only run through the process twice, I have not yet completely memorised the system, parenting procedures and such and whilst I am more than confident in my competency with Maya and the functions within, I will more than likely not remember it fully when I next rig a skeleton.