Now that I have finished my mug I need to make flowers that the mug aims to help and water. Here is an illustration of Pey-Chi’s of a flower. I am going to attempt to build, model and animate this character. I want the aim of the game to be that the mug goes around the land trying to water the flowers so that they are happy and dancing.
As I am learning about modelling, this is a good opportunity to learn how to continue to learn in Zbrush. I started off forming the shape of the flower in Maya, I thought it was easier to form a flower like model using just the simple geometric shapes.
Once I had taken my model into Zbrush, I realised that there weren’t enough polygons to bridge between the stem and the flower that it seemed like I was overexerting the model and knew I needed to go back into maya and add more shapes in.
After having added in a sphere like shape to bridge the gap, you can clearly see how the model is my smoother and natural.
Like I did with the mug rig, I used the clay tool to keep the aesthetic in keeping with the ceramics theme. Here Is the final outcome which I feel is quite close to how the flower looks in the flower. I used the Zadd and Zsub mode to mould accordingly.
I think took this model back into Maya to add the colours so that the character came to life.
My last chapter to modelling was the face of the character. I used the simple shapes Maya has to form the face like I have done previously. I used the ‘bridge’ tool to close the shape of the half donut so that I could make the smile face.
This is the final outcome for my flower rig. I was thinking that when I import the flower rig, I could change the colour of the petals like some of the other models Pey-Chi has made.
Now that I finished the modeling, I am rigging the flower so that I can make it move like I did with the mug. As you can see I have assigned different joints to the flower.
Now that I am importing the FBX, I need to build the materials that the mug needs to get my character to look aesthetically correct. As you can see below, after I have uv mapped the mug so that the colours can be assigned correctly to each separate part. As I import the FBX file, it was just the mesh so I can assign the mesh the different animation attached to it.
For the clouds to wrap around the mug, I needed to learn how to import textured on the material set up. This included applying a node for the texture sample to be uploaded to act as the base colour. And using the variable of 0-1 to determine the roughness of the mug. In the real mug photograph, the mug has been glazed so in order to keep this aesthetic I wanted the material to have a shine to it. 0,15 seemed to look good enough for this.
Below, I have created all the materials and assigned them to each part of the mug. I am happy with the results and has gotten me excited to now add in the animation to give my main character life.
When importing my mug, I had to include the physics and the skeleton which was already done in Maya when rigging.
When I was trying to add the animation in, the mug was moving in the wrong axis. I spent a while trying to figure out why, and re importing several times to see why I wasn’t succeeding. Turn out that I had not correctly adjusted the capsule because unreal automatically in looks at the handle being the bottom of the character. All I needed to do was rotate and rescale the capsule so Unreal knew where the physics of the mesh should be.
Now I am using the Blend tool so that I can control the transition of the animations from slow hopping to rolling quickly.
In the event graph, I can control the conditions of of the blend tool so that the variable is the speed.
When I want to make my character jump, I need to set up a condition so that when my character is in the air then the character needs to be in the jump pose.
I need to add a camera to follow my main character. The red line indicated where the camera is and where it is pointing. The set up of this game is in the third person so needs to be facing the character at all time so that one can play the game.
Now I have successfully finished my main character in my game and included a blueprint which tells unreal when to my character will do what in the live game. I am very excited now that I am seeing some results after this process. I have watched a lot tutorials so I am pleased I have found certain youtuber’s who explain well and will continue to go back to their channel to find out more when learning new skills in Unreal Engine.
Now that I have textured the mug, I want to make it into a simple rig so that I can animate for my game. I found this tutorial by this animator called Monica who explains really clearly in her tutorials. I watched and followed step by step.
Below I have added in 6 joints from the root of the model to the head. It is centred in the middle of the cup so the movement is even through out the model.
I decided against so many joints as 3 seemed enough if I am only doing simple movements.
In my outlined I have parented each join from the root up towards the head in the correct hierarchy. Now I need to add in nurb curves so that I can use them to control the mug. I used large circular curves larger than the circumference of the mug so that I would easily be able to access the controls and not touch the joint or model. I went through each nub and parented it to the joint with the model skin fixed to it so the model moves to the controls.
Animating Rig for Unreal Engine:
Now that I have finished rigging my mug I need to figure out what I need to do next to import the animations to Unreal Engine. The tutorial below is an extremely in depth and clear tutorial of how to set up the game character from start to finish. It is about 4 hours long and took a long time to watch and follow but I wanted to make sure I learnt how to use Unreal correctly even if I didn’t get too far with it. It is important that I learn how to use it more so than finishing this project because that was the main objective.
I needed to create different exported animations of the character moving depending on what it was doing in the game e.g. jumping or running.
Idle Animation:
The idle animation is basically when the character looks as though they are breaking continuously when nothing else is happing. This gives a sense or realism to the mug that is needed for this mug. I followed the tutorial in how many frames the breath should be fore and overlapped the spine when splining the movements in the graph editor.
Jump Animation:
Now I am moving on to the jump animation, I thought I needed a good reference that I could use online from one of the Disney characters like Miss Pots from ‘Beauty and the Beast’ but then I found the dancing mushroom jump sequence from Fantasia. As you can see in the reference, the mushroom has more joints than my model because the mushroom has two feet and knees which allow him to move in this way.
Jump reference
I thought that because the mushroom moved this way that I needed to copy the style of rigging of this game character tutorial. I tried putting the model into the rigging workspace to create a skeleton so I have more control in the movement of the mug. However, even though I learnt how to do this, I don’t think it made sense and was over complicating the movement of the rig. So I decided I would stick to the original rigging.
In my Sponge Bob Squarepants Nintendo switch game I saw that Patrick the starfish has a double jump switches worked well for his inflexible body type so I decided I could do the same for my mug to give it a bit more movement.
I have tried making a Uv map on Z-brush but haven’t been able to export it correctly because I am still not totally sure what I am doing. So now I am learning how to do this in maya. I think this will be easier as I can go to Luke for help when needed. He sent me a tutorial which going into the basics and then more complicated so I think this will be a smarter way to start so I at least know how to do this properly in the future.
Screenshot from Youtube video below
Due to the fact I have never made my own UV maps before, I thought it was best to watch the whole series of tutorials so I could actually understand it so that I could do this again when needing to texture.
Now that I have watched the tutorials, I am making the UV map in Maya. I opened up the workspace for UV mapping to insert my textures here.
On the mug I am texturing, there is only a cloud pattern on the outside of the mug. I therefore only selected the UV shells that are on the outside of the mug. This means I have to lay the shells on the UV map flat in the correct way so the pattern doesn’t stretch and warp.
As you can see below, the UV maps of the outside of the mug is not attached to the eyes, nose and mouth shells. This means that the pattern wont have to be stretched and warped but stay warped around the mug.
I had to change the UV shells from plain to cylinder so that Maya knows I want the texture to wrap around mug.
Here you can see the final result below. And I am pleased I have got the clouds to not stretch but look as it does on the original ceramic mug.
I am in the process of writing my first draft of my thesis. I wrote my introduction and chapter 1, 2 and started 3. I know that there are holes in my research now so from whatI have written on the headers and sub headers I can now start to structure my essay more and draw up a mind map to see where still needs filling out.
Because its a comparative essay, I need to include an older and newer example where I can discuss the interesting theories and arguments I have come up with to make it relevant to my audio driven animation topic.
I used the back of my door so I can look at it from my bed while I am working so I have visual aids to help me continue.
As you can see, I have still quite a few examples to fill into my map but I have about 3000 words worth of quotes that support or counter point my arguments which is great but need the examples to support this.
My next plan of action is just filling in the gaps and beef up my plan even more before I get back writing my thesis.
The cable station MTV (Music Television), the first platform devoted entirely to music videos as we now know them, started broadcasting in 1981. Appropriatly enough the first video it showed was “Video Killed the Radio Star,” by the Buggles.
“Video Killed the Radio Star” is throughout medium aware, it consciously expressed and illustrates Marshal Mcluhan’s famous claim that “the medium is the message”
P4
…popularity of music videos means that musicians need to pay attention to visual presentations as well to sound.
…music videos are the product of cutting-edge audiovisual technologies and are bound to change as these technologies change.
P7
…music videos fascinate me because they are so complexly overdetermined.
P8
…music videos are often deeply self-reflexive and strikingly innovative in form and technique.
They push the latest programs and devices to their limits, and they experiment with the new modes of visualisation and expression.
P9
Recent development in digital technology have only let to radical changes film and video production methods; they have also opened the way to new audio-visual formal structures and styles—or, more loosely, to a new sort of “look and feel” for audio visual artefacts.
I am applying for this job which I think would be well suited to me which specialised in Houdini but also use Unreal Engine and Z-brush. I am currently learning Unreal but but not Z-brush. I thought it would be wise to have a go at using Z-brush as it would obviously be good to have an idea of how it works and make my model look more hand made than such a rigid form. I think the element of it being handmade ceramics is one of the most important design aspects of this project. So I need to take that seriously and respect the designer but attempting to keep this aesthetic.
I found this simple introduction tutorial to Z-brush to navigate around the programme and try to mould the mug to be uneven and natural looking.
After having continued to research further into my topic of audio driven animation, I have been particualy draw to the association between music and animation. I came across ‘music mood’ as an interesting idea to how to gage the design of the animation.
Mood Definition:
a temporary state of mind or feeling
an angry, irritable, or sullen state of mind
Music Mood Definition:
music intended to create a particular mood or feeling:”the sound quality of the film was top-notch, with excellent moodmusic throughout”
There seems to be a perceived emotion associated with different sounds we hear. These interpretations are choices made from the musician, directors and illustrators of these audio driven animation e.g. Fantasia. I wanted to conduct a study to either support or disagree with this theory by collecting data from a wide target audience e.g different ages, professions etc.
I will conduct an experiment with a selection of different songs which differ from each other in genre, pitch, frequency, mood etc and ask participants to choose from a selection of images. i.e. colours, scenes, objects etc.
From this table that was created in one of the books I was reading. I want to try and play music that will either support or deny this table.
I wrote up a questionnaire which would bb accompanied by an online playlist of Fantasia (1940). I was going to look at a selection of genres and music that emulated different dynamics and pitches etc but I think that this would be too complicated and I haven’t enough skills to formulate a good experiment. I decided to keep it simple so that it would only support my work and not take over.
I decided to use Fantasia because a lot of my ideas have originated from the film. I found it interesting the interpretation of the music fascinating and wanted to see what people of the general public thought about this. Would it be different? How do different people interpret what music would look?
I took a colour wheel from online and took away their names and replaced them with numbers so there were no bias in choosing colour. I also arranged the numbers clockwise so that the numbers were not pared with the same colours. This could have jeopardised the validity of the experiment. I wanted it as simple and quick so that it was more about associating the colours with the sound and not dissecting what it might be using long term memory.
I was going to get people on zoom together to play the clips and get people to write down their answer in a controlled setting but I realised this would take a very long time to collect a lot of data. So I decided to rethink how I was going to execute this experiment so that it was accessible to anyone, anywhere.
I have now made a video on After Effects which I have uploaded to Vimeo which will be accompanied by an online questionnaire os I can collect as much data as possible.
I changed it from 15 songs to 9 as I was only allocated 10 free questions on Survey Monkey. I used the last question for a little bit of extra information that might be useful in my experiment. I have sent this messsage:
Hey,
I am collection primary research for my written thesis and was wondering if you could take 5 minutes to complete this ‘Sound Association Experiment’ to help towards my research. It is probably easier to do on a computer as you need to watch a video simultaneously to filling out an online questionnaire. Hope you enjoy it and also please pass this on to anyone you think would like it e.g. your parents.
Apologies for the layout of the experiment, it was the easiest way for me to collect data for free
I have sent this message to about 200 people of all different ages, professions, countries etc. It was to get a more diverse and better representation of the public. I have had a few responses already so now I will be creating a table where I can collate the data so I can analysis once enough people have taken part.
I have designed a table to collate all my findings where it will be easy to create comparative /correlation charts, tables and observations. Here it the first 9 participant results. I have done it purposely where I wont use names as there could be preconceived ideas from me when analysing the data. I want it from an objective point of view to create a general public experiment.
I have added in the colour to the numbers in the table so I can get a visual representation of what people have chosen. I have already started to see correlations with peoples answers. Either there are more lighter colours which refers to the intensity of music or there are darker ones. There are also different variations of the same colour which shows a similarity in the mood of the music. These are just comparatives I have made off the top of my head but will make more accurate percentages later with more results.
This is quite exciting as I can see that there are some positive results which could either support or disprove the Fantasia theories of the art directors/animators/musicians. I think there is definitely music moods to analysis further. I am excited to see more result coming though on my online survey.
