Animation I: 2011

Final Goals

The original model of the cricket

For the final project in this class, I decided to: a) expand on the little animation I had already added to the cricket and b) actually rig and animate the cricket to perform a small jump. The image above was the mid-term model that I used, as the final product had very little, if any, adjustments made from the original model. Additionally, though my inclusion of the moon was planned from the start, the grassy environment that I included for the final movie (if only it had rendered out properly) came about a bit later, when I realized how plain everything looked on its own.

Rigging

The very beginning of the rigging process. The above picture shows the joints of the "spine" as well as the beginnings of the joints that would comprise the front legs. Eventually, the spine would be moved down to actually be inside the model but was left outside for the purpose of building it as well as documenting the process.

Undoubtedly, one of the more difficult aspects of the project was to create a working skeleton that would move smoothly with the provided model. As seen above, I began creating joints for the spine outside of the cricket, and originally I attached the joints of the limbs to the "spine" as I went.

However, a problem seemed to occur when I went to Smooth Bind the model's skin to the joints; when I went to actually start animating, certain parts of the skin would move with joints that they weren't supposed to. To fix this I ultimately deleted all the connections/joints that I had put in place, as well as detached the skin, and redid the rigging, again starting with the spine. However, instead of attaching limb joints as I went, I rigged and attached the skin of each limb separately and then recombined the cricket into one once all the limbs were completed on their own. This seemed to fix most of the problems I had with the uncooperative limbs, though not everything was entirely resolved.

This screenshot shows multiple views of the fully rigged cricket. At this point, the grass was already added in as well.

Animating the Cricket

Admittedly I think I had the most fun when it came to actually animating the cricket, as it allowed me to add a little bit of character to the cricket's jumps, shrugs and twitches. My reference for the jump likely stems from too many childhood hours watching Animal Planet.

The cricket mid-jump. As you can see, not all of the skin distortions were cleared up (his left "hip" had the tendency to elongate when it wasn't supposed to). Likewise, the final product would have his forward limbs in a more intense back-facing position.

I was actually most satisfied with the animation of the cricket "preparing" for the jump, when his legs are all bunched up and he springs from the ground. With more time I think I would have made it a bit more forceful and quick but ultimately I think the result turned out well. His actual landing could still use a bit work, as there's not enough tension in his limbs when he hits the ground.

Another aspect that I was satisfied with was the various camera angles I used. Although it came to be a bit confusing when it came to rendering things out ( with 4 cameras in total, occasionally I would forget to change which camera to render from in "Render Settings" and would be left with shots of the empty grass, as the cricket moved elsewhere), the effect when edited together in Final Cut Pro was more interesting.

I had the final shot of the movie be of him bobbing his head up and down, perhaps in laughter, just as a coy, character note to end on.

The Moon

The moon was actually a fairly simple structure, essentially consisting of a NURBs sphere with a bump map texture applied to it. Below is the image I used for that bump map, as well as the link to the website from which I got it (credit to Wm. Robert Johnston):

http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/spaceart/cylmaps.html

I added a very light grey, vaguely bluish tint to the Lambert-applied sphere and lit it with a low-intensity point light to get the final effect. If I were to continue further with this, I would love to include particles o act as stars. But as it was, considering time and deadlines, I was a bit leery of working with particles in Maya, as I heard it could get a bit complicated. Instead I aimed my focus on the moon.

A still of the moon from the finalized movie.

Creating the Environment

One of the more disappointing parts of the final project was the necessary exclusion of the long grass, which was created from the built-in Maya Grass tool. Initially I had the grass length be much shorter than the cricket, which allowed the animation to be seen without hindrance.

The grass extends up to about the top of the cricket's front legs.

But later on I actually decided that it would have been interesting to have the environment more to scale, which prompted me to increase the length of the grass blades. Because it became more difficult to actually see the cricket through the dense, tall grass, I decreased the Density settings as well as played around with the Baldness in order to get the grass to be more sparse. Ideally the cricket would be jumping over the tall grass, rather than having him interact with just a flat environments.

Unfortunately, when I went to render out the movie sequences, the grass that I wanted was left out completely, and all that remained was bare dirt (at some point, not even "Render Current Frame" would yield the grass). Though I tried cycling through Maya Software, Maya Hardware, and mental ray, none left me with the result I wanted. As a quick fix, I applied more green tones to the Granite-textured plane, which was originally just the dirt, in order to simulate grass (though this meant compromising the length).

The look of the finalized grass.

Final Thoughts

Despite some pitfalls and struggles, I am happy with the way the final project turned out. Once I got beyond some of the more technically frustrating aspects, such as rigging and rendering, I actually had a lot of fun moving around and giving life to this character, simple though it was. My learning style relies heavily on the hands-on approach, so there was a lot of trial and error involved with creating this project, but I think it benefited me in that when something turned out well, I could be happy with my discovery and when things went wrong, there was no one but myself to blame (excluding the times when it was the software's fault, of course).

For my mid-term project, I chose to do a figure that was small enough so as to allow me enough time to complete it fully, but had enough possibility for detail and interpretation as well (to keep it interesting!). I did a similar form earlier with the fish (though, these are two completely separate projects), but I decided to do a more refined version with a different animal.

This is the beginning of my cricket; it's a bit hard to see so I wish I had taken a more decent shot of it from different angles. Initially, I had just been playing around with NURBS primitives but one of the shapes I was working on (this would go on to become the body) inspired me to go with an adapted cricket form (it's not entirely accurate to what a cricket should look like). Since I prefer organic forms, a lot of my work will lean towards things found in nature or people, as opposed to more rigid structures (not including my earlier projects with the bed and the rocket ship).

Here's the rendered still of the cricket, as it looks in it's final incarnation.

In regards to things that I would improve on, I do think more accurate lighting would be better, as many of the fine details such as the wings and the antennae get lost against the dark background. Additionally, I had animated the head to swivel back and forth. Unfortunately, for some reason I wasn't able to render the scene out as a Quicktime clip, so the animation is not shown here yet. I do hope to be able to post the fully animated cricket eventually, so perhaps for the next post I will have that up and running.

Another part I would be interested in working on would involve the creation of my own texture/skin for figures. Though I am fairly satisfied with the way the cricket's skin turned out, I think more variation in the color or roughness would add to its depth.