Turret Animation Test

Its been a while since I posted any animation, or even a video, on this blog (ironic really as its my animation blog, maybe I should change it to toby's 3D art blog it might be more adpt a description) But anyway just when you though "hang on, he never seems to do any animating" well here you go some animation.

This is a quick test animation using a rather awesome turret model made by Chris Currigan for the game project I am working on. The programmers were keen to try out their mad computer skills on something, and turret AI is apparantly significantly easier than enemy soldier AI. So we've built a turret and now I am starting to play around with some animations. The first is a simple pop up and sweep the area animation. The idea being that when the player comes within a certain radius, perhaps a little further than the turret can fire, the turrets motion senses inform it of a potential threat, so it pops up and scans the area. If the threat retreats it will pop back down again for safety purposes (ie to stop it being sniped by players who believe that camping is a legitamate strategy) Next on the list of animations in order of how annoying/complicated they are gonna be are as follows: Shooting animation (should be simple just get those snazy barrels turning, eventually gonna work out how to use sprite particlers to make the bullet effects), and finally but infinitly more annoying a turret being blown up animation. Not quite sure where to start yet, but we will see how that comes along.

Test Animation from Toby Rutter on Vimeo.

In other animation news there will be lots of animation put up here soon (I no your shocked, none for ages and now two or potentially more whats going on) as I've just finished the rig for all the human biped characters for the game (huzzzah woop etc) however I do still need to paint all the skin weights for the two characters so far, which could take a while, so watch this space eventually there will be some snazy character animations.

Storyboards

Another Storyboard

Here is another low grade storyboard, playing around with some different ideas for shots, and also adding bits and pieces here and there.

Character Ideas

My idea for my narrative piece is pretty simple, and also didnt involve a lot of characters (just the one). I still wanted to spend a bit of time working on character design, despite the fact that we were only making a storyboard/animatic and screenplay as opposed to a full blown animation which would have required a significant amount more design work. But anyhow, I wanted to have my character based within the realms of a very stereotypical scientist. As all the way through my screenplay/storyboard the style is very much in keeping with the cliches almost of the gothic horror genre. This is intentional as the idea is to build up a very cliched piece only to have it twisted slightly for a slightly ironic ending. This I often find works very well in animations and even better in short animated films. So my character designs again very much conformed with stereotypical evil/mad scientists.

Beat Sheats

In our lecture last week, as I have mentioned before, we were given some very good storyboarding advice. One piece of advice was to draw out beat sheats (drawings of key bits of the script/ storyboard.) I have gone away and done that, and here are some of the beat sheats I have drawn. I chose to draw some of the more complicated shots from within my storyboard, partially to check that the shot was right, and also to check I could actually draw the shot.

Character Rigging

Due to the upcoming deadline for my narrative project I'm not spending as much time on the digital stuff but heres something I've been wanting to get finished for a little while now, and bar one annoying orientation problem with the locator I am using to control the rotation of the wrist, it is practically done. This is the rig that in theory will be used for nearly all our game characters, and is set up to get some really nice movements. There is an ik in the legs allowing for proper leg movement, this is linked to a circular controller in the ankle region. The foot rig is actually moved seperate to the leg, so whilst it moves with the leg, all the rotation is delt with using the small sphere underneath, this is constrained to only move in the z axis between two points and drives a set driven key to rotate the foot up and down. The circle near the knee is constrained as the pole vector control for the ik handle controlling the leg allowing for rotation is the y axis. Moving up slightly and although not visible in the image is a locator at the waist the can be moved up and down to crouch the character or start a jump animation. The spine is controlled using an ik spline, which has cluster deformers attached to the cv's allowing movement, these are then attached to the large circular controllers around the body, one near the waist is controlling the twist attribute of the spline. Final the arms are set up in a similar ik handle fashion to the legs, only with the addition of a forearm joint that allows the wrist to rotate in the x from the forearm but from the wrist in the y and z rotations. The hand is simply made up of a thumb pinky and index series of joints.

Henchman model

Second game character model down, this one took significantly less time than the protagonist. Now partialy because of the absence of as much facial detail (although the topology obvious reflects the main topology of a face to attempt to give the impression of it underneath). This characeter as the image suggests is just under 6000 polys a good amount for a low level enemy character. I modelled this in a few hours on thursday, but its taken me til now to put together the character sheet. I am quite pleased with it, although I havent yet had time to crit it properly and I am certain a fair few problems will arise. I am not as satisfied with these last two models now, as I think I am soon going to change my 3D character modelling workflow quite a bit, I feel for the better, and I am now aware how I could have made better models using less polys in the workflow I am going to be working in from now on. But this is life and you live an learn.

Low Grade Storyboard

Im currently onto screenplay draft three for my narrative piece and the story is pretty much settled, it's now just a case of tweaking what needs to be tweaked and creating the storyboard. I began with a low grade digital storyboard, as it gave me a chance to pretty much just whack out and move around the ideas that I had for each shot. When it comes to the final one i think I shall draw it, get it to a stage I like and then scan in. I am really looking to have the storyboard finalised by the end of this week, so then it is just a case of sorting out my animatic and making any tweaks next week nicely in time for the deadline. We were given a lot of storyboarding advice today which was really useful. Including the creation of beat sheets, of which I think I'll do 5 or 6 for this animation inbetween the low grade storyboards and the nicer high quality final storyboard. Thankfully once the storyboard is done it won't be difficult to turn it into an animatic and add sound effects.

Clip Character Models

Here it is, the protagonist of the game I am working on for my Digital Animation Module, this is the first iteration of the character model of "Clip" there will be more revisions to resolve the problems with this mesh. That said as a first draft as it were I am pleased with my modelling ability. The head/hair has been the hardest part for me. Human heads are incredibly tricky and require not only a knowledge of human anatomy but also and good knowledge of the topology needed to recreate the look of a person, whilst still meeting the various criteria (ie animatable or keeping to game polygon limits etc), and finally practise. But this is one of the best heads I've made, especially considering the polygon limit. The hair is a bit of a topologicl nightmare, its an awkward shape to create and I think I have managed to even the topology as much as possible and also keep ngons to a non existant minimum. But the rest of the model I am a bit proud of (never be too attached to your work in the animation business, or in my case rarely like the finished piece because if you did it again you could do it better). Thats why I am posting this within 5 minutes of finishing the first model, because give me another five and I will have worked out a hundred things I need to change when I re do the model. The next step is to get the finalised rig inside him start (and smooth blend) then once we start to play around with him we can really test the mesh.

Character Progress

Here are a few quick images of the character entering the later stages of modelling. The head was left until last to be properly done as I was experimenting with different topologies, and I probably havent got it quite right on this one. Currently nearly all the geometry is on the model (except the ears) and I am getting close to the polygon limit, however theres a lot of nice faces for me to delete hiding under the hair which will give me more to play around with.

District 9 Analysis

For narrative construction we also had to pick a film and analyse its plot and sub-plot. I decided to do the 2009 film District 9 by Neil Blomkamp, as it is one of my favourite films.

Key Characters in the Film

Wikus van de Merwe:
Wikus is the protagonist in the film. He is very much the protagonist rather than the typical hollywood hero. Wikus is a simple man, he is a burueacrat working at MNU, he lives for his wife, he is given the job of dealing with the prawn relocation by his father-in-law and boss Piet Smit, who he deeply wants to please. Wikus is at the beginning of the film a very unremarkable and ordinary person. He like the rest of the peopel of Johanesburg want to sort out the prawn problem. Wikus is not very authorative and is very much thrust into the events of the film that drastically alter his life.

Christopher Johnson:
Johnson is a rebellious protagonist. He is one of the view intelligent prawns left after so many died arriving on earth (the prawns have a hive system of drones, building all the way up to one queen). Johnson is trying to get his people home, he also has a son whom he deeply cares about protecting and keeping away from MNU, who dont look well upon the prawns with children due to the over population problem they have with the prawns. Johnson's motivation is saving his race, particularly after he breaks into MNU with Wikus and finds out that the humans have been testing on and dissecting the prawns. He is more the hero that Wikus, fighting for a higher cause than just his own survival but for the survival and well being of his race. However as the film progresses Wikus becomes for selfless and heroic, becoming more like Christopher Johnson.

Colonel Koobus Venter:
Venter is an antagonist rather than a villain. District 9 is not a black and white film as so many hollywood films are, with set heroes and villains. Koobus is a very violent and sadistic man, who enjoys inflicting pain on the prawns. He considers the prawns a lesser species and would be happy to exterminate them. However unlike so many villains he is using power given to him by the people of Johannesburg and whilst he is very sadistic and is going further than many would, they all share a similar distrust towards the prawns, hence the segregated district, and voice that they want the prawns to leave. He is motivated by his hatred of the prawns and subsequently Wikus.

Piet Smit
Piet is Wikus' father in law and also boss at MNU. He doesn't really like Wikus and doesn't believe he is good enough for his daughter. But he puts Wikus as head of the relocation operation partially as a good will gesture but also as a test. However a much more sinister side to his character is revealed after Wikus is infected, when he orders for Wikus to be taken away and tells his daughter that Wikus is dead and that she can't see him. This is because he is ordering for MNU to run all kind of tests on Wikus before finally ordering for Wikus to be vivisected.

The film keeps you engaged by making you really empathise with the character of Wikus whose life is being drastically changed, and because of all the horrors inflicted on him. You also empathise with the character of Christopher Johnson and the prawns as an entire race, with deep parallels being drawn to apartide South Africa, because of the way they are treated during the film you find yourself more on their side as it where than that of the human race. It is almost ironic that during the film the people of the human race, who consider the prawns a lesser species, commit so many inhumanities.

Plot
The film begins with Wikus being tasked with the relocation of the prawns to a new district.
Christopher Johnson is looking for fuel in district 9 to help power the mothership to take the prawns home.
Whilst trying to evict the prawns Wikus comes into contact with the fuel and begins to get sick as he is turned slowly into a prawn. MNU take Wikus in and begin to test on him, forcing him to fire Prawn weapons on living Prawn targets. Piet Smit gives the order to vivisect Wikus.
In sheer desperation Wikus escapes trying to flee to familar places, but his wife has been told he is dead. And the press have been told he has an alien STD. The human race turn their back on him so he is forced to flee and hide in district 9.
Christopher Johnson tells Wikus that he can heal him, but he needs to get back the fuel so they can activate the mothership. They steal weapons from a Nigerian Arms dealer and his gang, before breaking into MNU.
Inside MNU Christopher Johnson is disgusted to find out that the humans have been dissecting the prawns. Johnson says he must save his people before he can help Wikus and needs all the fuel to take the mothership home, but they he will be back. But it will take three years.
Wikus in a rage takes control of the mothership control module trying to fly it up to the mothership to force Johnson to cure him. However it is shot down and they are captures by MNU. Before the can be taken back in Obesengo's men attack the MNU and take Wikus hostage.
Johnson's son activates the mothership bringing it to pick up the command module, and sends a mech suit to save Wikus. Wikus relents and tells Christopher Johnson to go and protects him while the mother ship takes the command module up to the ship. The ship takes off an leaves Wikus alone on earth. Koobus damages Wikus' suit forcing him to eject and is about to execute him when he is attacked by prawns protecting Wikus.

Sub-Plot
Obesengo is a paralysed Nigerian arms dealer, obsessed with the prawns and their technology. He is attempting to partake in voodoo involving eating prawns to "gain their power". He is facinated by Wikus and believes that by consuming him he will be able to use prawn technology.

Piet's lies to his daughter, that Wikus is dead, while they had Wikus in a lab being tested, and the further cover up that Wikus had sex with an alien.

One of the recurring themes throughout the film is the things Wikus makes. At the beginning an interview with Tanya Wikus' wife shows some of the things Wikus makes out of scrap as presents. When Wikus is forced to flee to district 9 after the human race turn their back on him, he leaves a flower made out of scrap metal on the doorstep of his house. At the end of the film we see a prawn constructing a similar flower out of scrap, this demonstrates that Wikus has fully transformed into a prawn, but has retained his human side. At the end their is another interview with Tanya showing that someone kept leaving the metal flowers.

Joyride Analysis

"Joyride" is a short film by Jim Gillespie, it follows the eventful evening of an engineer who neglects to fix a problem on the job because he is running late, and the people he runs into on his way home who kidnap him and steal his car. Our first task was to think about the character at the start of the film, and what the short film was trying to say, as stories in their earliest form were a way of passing on a message. For example prior to disney fairy tales all had particularly gruesome endings for the villains of the story, and the reason was that the stories contained a message, each were themed around something you shouldn't do, and the gruesome ends the characters who didn't pay attention served as a demonstration of what would happen to you if you didn't do as you were told. And the vast majority of films in some way have a message, whether its political or just something simple.

Describe the Character at the beginning of the film
At the beginning of the film the main character is very confident, perhaps over-confident, he neglects to finish his the job he is working on (fixing a sparking pylon) because he is already late for a date.

Sum up what the film is about
The film demonstrates the idea that making a choice can have a big impact on your life, ie if he had called and said he had to work late and finished the job he might not have ran into the men on the way home the events of the film could have been avoided.

Dont put off tomorrow what you can do today.


We were also tasked with thinking about how the short is divided into three act structure.

Act One
In act one we are introduced to the character of the engineer, and introduced to his choice not to finish the job he is working on because he is running late for a date. On his way home he sees someone lying near the road and decides to stop.

Act Two
Upon getting out of the car the engineer is hit over the back of the head, he wakes up, his hands bound in the boot of his car. Being a technical man he disables one of the back lights of the car by pulling the wiring out, this causes the car to draw the attention of two police officers sat waiting for speeding motorists. Sure enough they pull the car over to bring the drivers up on the offense of driving with only one rear light. Whilst they are talking to the joyriders, the engineer makes lots of noise to draw the attention of the police, who are about to question the joyriders, but are attacked and killed. The joyriders threaten the engineer and drive off, the engineer spends some time freeing him from his bonds. His car is now being chased by another police car, the police car hitting the back of the car causes a can of petrol in the boot to spill on the engineer. The engineer pulls out a fuse causing the headlines to fail and the joyriders crash his car.

Act Three
The engineer struggles free of the wreck, thinking himself free, the police car is still on the road and cant see the car from where they are. He is suddenly grabbed from behind by the surviving joyrider. In desperation he shoves his attack backwards hitting the back bumper of the car, setting off the car alarm and drawing the police's attention. A short stand off ensues but the police manage to negotiate the engineers safety. He is then lead towards the police car, its now that he realises hes back where he start earlier that night at the job he didnt finish, He looks up at the sparking pylon and as the final shot pulls up we hear the sound of petrol being set fire by a spark.

The film was interesting and did have some underlying message mentioned earlier, but whilst I'm thinking about it there were a few irregularities in the film. First of all the second police car that enters a high speed chase with the joyriders appears out of nowhere, in the previous scene whilst you didn't see the police officers die (so they could have called it in) the emphasis was very much that they had been killed. And to me whilst it wasnt the end of the film that was enresolved, there was some serious problems with how the kidnapping situation was resolved. After the joyrider grabs the engineer, after crashing the car, he holds a sharp implement to his neck, but the engineer is able to draw the polices attention, and here is where the resolution is very poor. The joyrider tells the police not to come any closer and that he wants their car. The police respond saying great just let him go, but we dont see anything happen (the scene cuts to the police officer and the engineer walking towards the car, which has obviously not been given to the joyrider) which means the joyrider just gave him up, which seems like a very odd way for a kidnapper to react. But these are just my musings on the film.

And on another note the true message behind the film is to drive a diesal car, as diesal cant be ignited by open flame or spark, which would have saved our engineers life whether he finished his work or not

Examining Three Act structure

This is a bit of an overdue post from a narrative lecture two weeks ago, the works been sat in my sketchbook, and the looming deadline for the module has prompted me to start organising my work. It the lecture we looked at three act structure, plot and sub-plot. Taking into account devices so as the highway mind map, characters stereotypes and archetypes, and then looking at two stories, one a short animation called special delivery, the other a short film called Joy Ride.

Three Act Structure
Three act structure is a very typical hollywood method of telling a story, you don't have to look hard at all to see it emerge in most pieces of film, whether they be shorts, feature lengths or anywhere inbetween.

Act One: Introducing the scene, introducing the antagonists and protagonists, introduce the goals and conflicts of characters, and or ask questions.

Act Two: Introduce a problem, or answer some of the questions we have as an audience, develope the characters, show their strengths and weakness. These are often displayed through the challenges they face.

Act Three: resolve the characters problems/ challenges, (or alternatively don't several films "No country for old men" for example, leave you at the end feeling strange because they didn't stick to the hollywood convention of resolving the characters problems). Show life lessons learnt by the characters over the course of the film.

We also view the story of a film or a short as a circle, often films end, in at least one way, back where they began, the difference however is the character has changed, they have overcome adversity, solved problems, gained wisdom from experience. And it is the resolution that gives us that satisfaction and the feeling that everything has come to an end. And as I mentioned some films, Cohen brothers in particular, choose not to. This can work well depending on the films setting, often dystopian films dont just end with the character not resolving their problems but many actually end with the character failing. This can cause people to be unsatisfied with the film. However I don't always agree. I am going to use an example of a book (it has been adapted to a film, but I havent seen it yet, however the books serves as just as good an example). In the book 1984 Winston Smith tries to contact the resistance and join them in order to bring down the oppressive government, however the book is ended in a bleak manner due to Winston's capture, imprisonment, torture and release back into society. WInston by himself simply could not compete with the sheer size and will of the entire government.
This ending does not annoy me, while its true it doesnt resolve in a "hollywood" manner giving me the satisfaction of resolution it feels more realistic.





The contrast is the film "Equilibrium" in which Christian Bale's character is an enforcer of a dystopian system, until he is freed from the drugs that suppress emotion and starts to fight against the system, joining the resistance and eventually fighting by himself, against surmountable odds to the heart of the government killing the dictator behind it. This is very much the hollywood approach that the character overcomes almost insane odds, to give you the sense of resolution at the end of the film. However interestingly neither method is wrong, I enjoyed "Equilibrium" and "1984" it is just a case of how you want the audience to react to your story.

Clothing Modelling

Wow so this is blog post 200, sadly I hadnt planned anything in particular and right now what I really want to post up is the progress im making on my character modelling of our games protagonist "Clip". I have decided that the game blog (tripleagames.blogspot.com if your interested) should only be used for vaguely finished pieces rather than WIP. So lucky (maybe) for you, I'll be posting all my work in progress modelling, texturing etc here. There are a few changes to the image I'm posting from the last one, for one the general increase in resolution in places (he's now up to about 3500 triangles, which I think is pretty good going, especially with the amount of interior faces that I will be cleaning out of the mesh, the collar in particular has quite a few). You will also notice that the organic bits of the model have disappeared, this is because I am currently building/ playing around with topology on them. The head in particular I have started modelling twice playing around with different topology, as heads are hard and something I am not as completely confident yet, clothes however I am really enjoying making, the coat with the awesome collar was a challenge and I tried making a few ways but I really like how its looking and will be a key part of the finished character. The astute among you will notice that Clip only has one shoe at the moment, and may be asking (or not but I'm gonna explain anyway) why has he not just duplicated the shoe for the other leg, and the answer is simple (elementry in fact dear watson, sorry getting carried away) when we were doing the character, one of my suggestions actually made it to the final image and that was that we really liked the idea of odd shoes to represent the scavenging nature of our main characters in the post apocalyptic wasteland they live in. Anyhow next step is to start to add some detail to the belts and straps, make another shoe and then go back to trying out methods of building the head. The arm I can do pretty easily as only a small section is visible on the model but I like practising the topolgy particularly the join between peck muslces and shoulder muscles (which have proved tricky so far).

Character Block Modelling

This post is really for joe blakeston, who was somewhat pleased when I started blocking in the one of his character concepts for the game. I thought it would be good to actually document this early stage before I get ahead of myself and before I know it he'll be finished. So Joe here is the blocked out character you designed, I've added more bits since earlier this afternoon, and I've also gone about creating the torso a different way (experimenting with topology is always fun). Now its just trying to work out how I'm gonna make that tricky looking collar. Damn you concept art Joe

Low Poly Game Assets continued

Low Poly Game Assets

Here are a few low poly assets I put together about a week ago as a method of demonstrating some modelling techniques to the team working on the game. The idea was to convey the shape of the item in as little polygons as possible and to bear in mind their scale, ie how far from the character would these assets be, when thinking about what detail needed to be added, and whilst these arent textured (yet, I'm saving them for when I invariably will have to do some texturing demonstrations) I did start to allude to how much a difference textures make and what can be achieved without adding unnecessary geometry.

Level Concepts

Here is another level concept map that I sketched up today, it is for the second level of the game, which is a halfway point between the enclosed interior corridors of the third level (previously posted) and the very open and non linear first level set in the slums. With this level we wanted to keep the open pretty non linear environment, but have more interior sections. The happy medium I feel is met with his level, as the characters explore the ruined buildings (albiet still in better shape than most of the structures you would around/in the first level) fighting their way through increasingly tougher guards on their way to the pyramid, the player is given the option to explore still, and choose to navigate through ruined buildings for anything that might help them in their upcoming battles, whether it be equipment, experience, or perhaps an easier way into pyramid.

environment concepts

Here is a level map for the third level within the pyramid



A quick sketch I did on top of block shapes in maya, trying to plan the look of the city

Character Concepts continued

Character Concepts for Games

Again with the posting updates I thought it was time I posted some of the work I've been doing for digital animation. The next few posts with be of characters I have designed over the last couple of weeks.

Mood Boards

Time for a bit of an update on my narrative posts/ tasks. My blogging has fallen behind a bit over the last few weeks so I thought it high time to catch back up again. Anyhow here are a pair of mood boards for the location and the character that is featuring in my screenplay/ animatic which is the assessment task of this module, enjoy.

Zbrush Work

It's been a while since I posted stuff up on this blog, or any blog for that matter, so I thought it was high time to update this one. At the moment I am doing quite a bit (many things going on) but one of projects I am most enjoying is a bit of character modelling I am currently working on. I have previously posted some maya shots of the finished low res model (my workflow is very much game themed) and this next screen shot is of a slightly higher poly version ( I havent altered the uvs just fortified some edges so that when I opened the mesh in zbrush edges wouldnt change to much from the smoothing) which has been opened in zbrush and has had be sculpting with it for a few hours. Im gonna take this time to say how much I love zbrush, its so very intuative, and even with just using some basic tools you can get some great results, currently I have only used the standard brush, move brush (a tiny bit) and the smooth brush. As you can see I am currently working in the folds in the trousers, this is a bit tricky but fun, its hard to get a good sense of realism to the folds, and also not exaggerate them too much. But anyway I dont want to ramble too much, as zbrush is beckoning me back to work (along with many other things). But my final words about zbrush are that the program is simply ab-tastic, seriously video game characters would be looking far more weedy if it wasnt for zbrushes ability to very easier create abnormally hench people in a matter of brush strokes. I've had to keep myself in check as the concept art for this character was more malnourished that ripped

Witchdoctor Modelling

Here is an update on the now pretty much complete low poly witchdoctor model. I am really pleased with how this model has worked out, and I am looking forward to taking it into the next steps of the next gen character creation process (zbrush and texturing) I cant wait to see what he will look like with normal , colour, bump, spec and ambient occlusion maps. There are a few little things left to do, mainly the hair and one or two little detail bits but I am confident those will come together quite easily, particularly as I set myself a polygon budget of 10000 triangles and have just broken into 8000 with this model, This means I can go back in and so some analysing of the mesh and add resolution where I feel its needed. I am also pretty pleased as although I started out with an attitude towards triangles that I would make as many as was needed to create the shapes there are actually not that many, meaning I shouldnt need to rebuild it before opening it up in zbrush, I can just tweak one or two areas or even in some cases make no changes as the triangle is in a place when a slighting uneven distribution of resolution wont be noticed. Next step is to finish the remaining things and then uv map with maya and headus uv layout. Hope you enjoy these images.