IPS_Sprint #2 Delivery

  IPS_Sprint #2 Delivery

Deliverables

For this sprint I worked on finishing the layout for seq c, organizing tasks for the animators and helping with troubleshoot issues, exporting all the sequences for the layout reel and research for unreal maya live link. 

The sequence took up most of my time. I animated the character a bit to try to match with the timing of the animatic. 

I set up the camera and imported the story board into the engine for the layout artists to use to make sure everyone is accurate with their timing. 

I also made a layout guide for the layout artists to make sure everyone was on the same page. 

I helped set up the animation pipeline to be ready for sprint 3 

IPS_Sprint #1 Delivery

 IPS_Sprint #1 Delivery

Deliverables

For this sprint I worked on updating the shot list, dividing out tasks amongst the team, sprint planning and in engine camera layout. 

I updated the shot list based on the new reference animatic we had last week. 

I also helped outline tasks for animators during out team meetings. 

I made a first iteration of our sprint planning that we will test out and finalize next sprint. 

I organized how our camera layout would be done in engine and did all the camera work for SEQ_C. Kiet and David did the other 2.

Lastly I worked on some storyboards for our storyboard animatic

Perforce and in engine submission

Week 15 - Final - 'A' Stage

 Week 15 - Final - 'A' Stage

On out last week of the project I spent it perfecting the skin weights on the fingers/ body of the Dracula mesh. I wasn't happy with how the sleeves were deforming when the arms were raised up and down so I added some supporting joints to try to make the sleeves deform in a more realistic manner. The joints worked well, however I ended up not using them due to finding a better solution using just the original joint chain. I also updated the assets both in maya and unreal with the texture and final higher poly mesh. I plugged in the vfx I made for Johnathan's run and jump animations. If we come back to this project next semester I want to tweak the dust during the running animation a bit more since I wasn't fully happy with how it turned out. Either way I think the project turned out great. 

Shoulder Before 

Shoulder After

Perforce check in

Week 12 - First Bake - 'B' Stage

 Week 12 - First Bake - 'B' Stage

This week I worked on reskinning the model to the rig I had as well as fixing some things that were not working on the left hand. after I had done that I reimported the model into unreal and used Mixamo animations as a place holder to make a simple state machine. I wanted to make sure that what I had was correct so I worked closely with Gabe to make sure that everything I made worked with his blue print of Dracula. I received a new version of the model to reskin so I copied the skin weights over from the old model to the new one and tweaked some errors that occurred. When I originally made the blendspace for the locomotion, I had an idle, walk, run animation. However we switched to a floating idle instead of a standing idle so I want to tweak the transition between walk and idle a bit to make it look better. 

Week 11 - High Res Meshing - 'C' Stage

 Week 11 - High Res Meshing - 'C' Stage

This week I wanted to focus on implementing a simple walk cycle VFX for Johnathan's footsteps.  I had to redirect my focus back on the rig however, because of continuous issues with exporting and importing animation in unreal. I also received a higher mesh model so I also worked on readjusting the joints for both the arm and legs because they were no longer aligned with the mesh. I added finger joints now that the fingers were placed in a final position as well as joints to manipulate the jacket. I really liked how johnny rigged the dress for medusa so I utilized a similar method for Dracula. I did a first pass of the skinning for the new mesh and plan on further refining it later on next week. 

Once that was done I reimported the new skeletal mesh into unreal and updated the ABP that we already had as well as the Dracula blueprint that Gabe was working on. I also started working on making a retargeter just to put some place holder animations for the state machine but the ik chains are still not responsive ;-; so I pivoted my focus for the time being to working on the footstep vfx instead. The one shown in the video is specifically when Johnathan jumps up and touches down on the ground. It is still a work in progress but the only thing left to implement is the dust cloud ring which will be easy. 

Week 10 - Protomeshing - 'D' Stage

 Week 10 - Protomeshing - 'D' Stage

This week I spent the majority of my time fixing the rig I built last week. I had a lot of trouble with the fk Ik blend not working properly between multiple iterations but I was able to fix it

I also renamed the skin joints to match the Mixamo rig and imported the mesh/rig to engine and tested it out with a simple animation. I started working on the state machine for Dracula but ran into issues when using the IK retargeter because the joints are not responding to the ik chains built in unreal. I plan on reaching out to other members of my team for feedback on why this could be happening. 

Week 09 - Initial Block Out - 'F' Stage

 Week 09 - Initial Block Out - 'F' Stage

For our initial block out I worked on making the proxy rig for Dracula

The limbs only have IK chains at the moment but I will be incorporating both FK and IK in all of the limbs. 

I adjusted the arms a bit to move them further away from the body to make the weight painting easier.

 

I believe that my outliner is really messy, and the hagiarchy is not 100 percent correct so I plan on fixing that asap

A problem I had not anticipated was weight painting his jacket. Since you see a lot of the jacket from the back the geometry is double sided which caused a lot of issues when weight painting. This is something I also want to fix sooner than later in my second pass. 

Python Intro

 

Animation State Machines

 Animation State Machines

Week 07 - Let’s Make It Stick

 Week 07 - Let’s Make It Stick