Topic 2 - Cow Modelling

This is how i created a cartoon cow.

Process

Cow Head:

First, I start by creating a simple cube. From there, I will manipulate vertices and extrude untill it becomes rounded.

Then, I used smooth on the cube.

After smoothing, there are more vertices everywhere now. I scaled down the right vertices of the cube to form the peak of the mouth and moved up the bottom vertices of the cube to make up the flatter base of the mouth.

From the side that i scaled down, I extruded the faces twice. I moved out the faces as you can see. As you can see here, this creates sort of like a connector between the main head and the mouth. From here on, I go on to making the main head.

Then, I extruded 3 more times. I rotated and scaled those extruded faces to make the head more rounded as it looks like above.

Then, I used vertice manipulation and moved vertices around to make the mesh more smooth and to make the head have less sharp edges. I also made the head more rounded than before and pulled out the vertex at the top of the head to make it not so flat an unnatural.

I then moved the vertices in the middle to get ready to model the eye of the cow. Thus, I moved up the middle vertices to make the mesh look more flowing and moved the 2 center edge loops closer to each other so that the eye wont be that wide.

I then deleted the four faces needed to make an eye. Now there is a hole in the cow's head which will be modified to become more rounded and smaller to make a good looking eye.

I used the edge border tool to select all the edges around the border of the hole and then extruded them inwards to make the eye hole smaller.

The eye hole is smaller now. I then rounded up the edges by dragging some vertices closer to the hole so that the eye wouldn't look that squarish and the corners of the eye wouldn't look that sharp and squarish.

I extruded two more times to make the hole closer. Now it looks like a spider web. After that, I extruded yet again, but this time I moved the vertices inwards to make an eye socket. I then scaled in the eye socket to make it more realistic.

At the top right of the cow, there is a face which allows me to create a ear for the cow with it. Thus, i selected the edges on that face and extruded it inwards. I then moved the vertices around to make the ear a diamond shaped like face.

I then extruded the face I created and moved it out. Then, I scaled it to make it small at the ends of the ear and big in the middle. As you can see here, this is how I made the pointy corner of the ear, through another round of extrusion.

I then selected two faces in the front side of the cow and deleted in place of the nostril. I then used the edge border tool to select the border edges and to get ready to extrude them to make the nose.

I extruded the edges inwards to make the nostril hole smaller. Then, i used fill hole to fill the holes of the nostril. However, it also filled the eye socket. Thus, I deleted the extra face in the eye socket and the moved in the new face in the nostril.

Then, I moved the vertices of the nostril around to make it more rounded and more realistic. As you can see here, this is the product of my vertex manipulation.

Now for the mouth. I extruded the bottom faces on the part of the head connecting the mouth to the head. I then rotated it to shape a mouth like structure. I repeated it twice to form a longer mouth.

The front of the mouth looks too flat. Thus, I moved the middle vertices to the front by a bit and scaled inwards the edges on the sides to make a more rounded mouth.

I used the sculpt geometry tool to make the model more rounded. I then deleted the unedited half of my cow head.

I then used Mirror Geometry tool to mirror the remaining half of the cow head and form into one complete cow head. Then, I smoothed it to see how it looked like. This is how it looks like after smoothing. This is the complete cow head.

Cow Body:

First, I created a rectangular cuboid with 3 x 3 x 5 dimensions. This is long enough for the cow body.

Next, i extruded out the sides of the bottom of the cow to create two legs, each of size 1 x 1 x 4. This will give me enough size for proportion and feet.

Next, I selected all the vertices surrounding the cow and then scaled them in to make the model look more rounded. I also added the cow head to refer to for proportion.

I then moved the vertices of the body, making a rounded belly, short from neck and getting wider till hips. I also made the cow have a spine by making the back of the cow curve in and making sort of a butt for it. Then, I started sculpting on the legs. At first, the legs were very thin, so I scaled them out to become this size. I also had to take into consideration leg proportion to the body and feet too. Thus, I extruded more vertices at the bottom to make the ankle of the legs and then extruded it again to make the foot.

then, I decided to extrude yet another time, as the original feet of my cow was too small and flat. Thus, I split the bottom polygon into two parts, extruded one part at a time and then scaled them in to make them look like toes of a foot.

I then extruded arms from the top few faces at the side of my model. I extruded a few times, with more extrusions near to the joints of the cow's arms.

As you can see here, this is what my cow model looks like after smoothing. Now, I need to make a hand for the arms of the cow.

I created a new cuboid of size 3 x 3 x 1 to make a hand shape. This new polygon acts as the base for the hand.

Then, I extruded fingers from the cuboid polygon. I made the thumb curve in as the thumbs of normal people are usually curved in. I also have extra extrusions at the joints of the hand.

After that, I did some vertex manipulation and scaled the fingers in to make the fingers look more rounded and natural. I also made a sort of a palm shape.

From here, you can see that the fingers on my cow's hand are too small. Thus, I had to scale it up in order for the hand to look realistic.

I then scaled up the hand. As you can see, it looks much better than before. Then, I joined together the vertices of the hands and the arms using the move tool and then merging them into one object by combining them. Then, I merged the vertices so that the mesh is connected. Then, I manipulated the vertices of the arms a little bit to make the elbow and the wrist of the arm more defined and proportional.

Then, I extruded a neck from the top face. This is to be used to merge with the cow head that I have done earlier. Thus, the body of the cow is done.

I then used the split polygon tool to create two new edges at the two middle faces. Then, I deleted off the face that is between the two new edges that I have created.

I then used the border edge tool to select the border edges and started to extrude the edges downwards to form a connector between the head and the neck.

I extruded yet another time to make the neck more rounded and to make the merging of both the head and the neck more accurate.

I then combined both meshes of the head and the body together to form one single mesh. Then, I used the move tool to connect the adjoining vertices together and then merge them.

Then, I manipulated the vertices at the neck to give the neck a more rounded and spiny look. As you can see here, the neck is curved in both sides without much sharp corners. With that, the cow is complete.

This is the end result of my Cartoon Cow:

Learning Process

After learning the different techniques on how to model organic models, I feel more equipped in doing 3D work. The head was pretty simple, but the body was slightly harder, due to less guidance given. The head was just done with a step by step guide. However, when I finished my cow, I felt a great sense of satisfaction, due to having modeled an organic character for the first time.

Also, this exercise taught me a lot about modelling with character analogy in mind such as body proportion. All the information from the previous topic has been worth the time as it gave me more insight on how to model the cow properly so that it would look nicer.

Overall, I felt that I have learnt many things during this exercsie and hope that I can do some more stuff to this cow, such as give it poses or animate it.

Topic 1 - Character Design

Character Sketches & Poses

Character Description

Name: Kyle MacMillian

Tagline: "I fight using my virtues, not physical strength."

Description:

Kyle is part of a secret order known as the Legionnaires. The Legionnaires are made up of male warriors who intend to seek further knowledge into Starlight energy by harnessing the powers of elements. He is also Psuedo-Human, as the other half of him consists of a spectral being known as the Psytrix. He is also a master swordsman, having learned the ways of the Bushido and earned the right to call himself the Leader of the Psytrix.

Story:

Kyle is the son of the former leader of the Psytrix civilization, Lord Zealous. He had two older brothers, Kilian and Kendall. However, Lord Zealous and his wife was assassinated by oneof their two bodyguards, Dreax, during a coup d'état of the Psytrix leadership. Kyle and his two brothers were then taken in by the other bodyguard, Tzory. Tzory, unable to cope with the responsibility of taking care of 3 children at once, placed all three children in an orphanage. One day however, the orphanage was burned down by Dreax and Kyle was the only survivor. Feeling extremely guilty, Tzory lit his mask on fire and burned it to his face, unable to face Lord Zealous and his wife for the irresponsible actions that he has caused. Tzory then took Kyle to a local town where he started his own order called "The Ghost Order". This order consisted of the Legionnaires, male warriors and Invokers, female mages. Each team must have one Legionnaire and one Invoker. He then harnessed the power of the atom gods and imbued the students with elements. All that was done within the period of 17 years.

When Kyle turned 18, he managed to become a Legionnaire and master the element of pure Starlight. He was sent on several missions, such as recovering an ancient artifact and ancient scrolls. Throughout this course of action, he found out that he was actually part of a race called the Psytrix and that he was the rightful heir to the throne of the Psytrix civilization. However, this throne is currently being usurped by Kyle's eldest brother, Killian, who actually survived the fire. Killian was not a villian though, he was just holding the position, waiting for his brother to realize about his background. Kilian is part of a evil organization called Dientra, led by the evil Dreax. However, Kilian is in the organization for one purpose - to save Kyle's older and his younger brother Kendall, who was being brainwashed by an evil force and to exact revenge on Dientra for killing his parents.

At that time, Kendall was evil. He tried to kill Kyle many times, but failed. There was once where Kendall killed Kyle's lover, Chika, whom was also at that time, an elite member of Dientra. This also awakened Kyle's Psytrix side. All three brothers are Psytrix and each of them have one ability unique only to them - Kyle can manipulate time, Kendall can manipulate matter and Kilian can manipulate space.

In the end, Kendall and Kyle had one final square off. Kendall used his Psytrix powers against Kyle but it was no use. Kyle managed to overpower Kendall and defeat him. However, just when Kyle's back was turned against Kendall, Kendall gave him a fatal blow in his chest. Kyle mustered up his strength and then slashed Kendall with his sword, killing him. This death also lead to Kendall being released from the brainwash spell. However, due to excessive blood loss from the wound, Kyle died too.

However, that was not the end. Each of the three brothers have unique trait that no one else in the world, not even the psytrix, have. That is that each of them have 3 lives each. Kendall and Kilian actually died in the orphanage fire but was resurrected again by their unique power. Kyle was resurrected again too, but he disappeared from the world for 5 years to train up so that he can protect the ones he love. Now, his loved ones are in danger again and now he has to reappear to save them. With this, he dons on a new look and a new personality - a serious personality with a bushido code manner.

Driving force:

At first, his driving force in life was to bring honor to the Legionnaire name and protecting his friends. When he met Chika, that was his new driving force. After Chika died, Kyle was distraught but he got back up on his knees again and fell in love with his Invoker partner, Yvonne. He had two children with her before he died, unidentical twins, one boy and one girl. His driving force is to protect his family, his friends and his town.

Appearance:

1. One of the key features of Kyle is his black trenchcoat. It is called "Mantle of Masters". This mantle is to symbolize Kyle's leadership among the Psytrix and all leaders of the Psytrix must wear this mantle. This mantle can change appearance according to the personality of the person wearing it. It is long and flowing, symbolizing his heroic personality, replacing a cape instead. However, the irony is that it is black, symbolizing the darkness in his heart.
2. Another visual feature of Kyle is his katana. His katana has a white sheath and black blade, with a golden hilt wrapped in purple cloth. The black blade is to symbolize his personality after his initial death, darker and more serious than before, as this katana was only acquired after his first death. The hilt is white, however, to symbolize that he is still a good person. However, this may also represent the fact that looks may be deceiving.
3. When Kyle becomes berserk and he uses his Psytrix power without himself knowing, his eyes turn black and his pupils turn white. This shows that something within Kyle has changed and that a certain darkness is enveloping his soul. Also, the pupils become smaller, hinting on the possible insanity that might take over his mind, making him more of a feral beast with extremely dangerous power in this form. However, if Kyle decides to use his Psytrix power but is not in a berserk state and has total control over himself, his eyes become grey and his pupils become a light, glowing blue. This shows that the darkness is taking over his mind, but Kyle managed to control it, giving off a blue aura in the pupils and even harness it as his own power.
4. Another feature is his spiky and explosive blue hair. His spiky hair represents his explosive personality, being able to charge in without a single doubt either. Blue somehow contradicts the spiky hair as it represents calmness. This shows that Kyle is somewhere in between, he thinks before he reacts, but when he reacts, he has no regrets and never turns back from a fight that he started.

Behavior:

1. Kyle has a personality in which he treasures his friends and family more than anything else. At first, Kyle's personality was a more friendly and sociable person, well-liked by everyone he meets and rash. He was young and somehow immature. However, after his first death, his personality changed. He became a colder and somewhat more sardonic person, making less jokes and thinking more about the situation before rushing in to fight. His personality for caring for friends didn't change fortunately.
2. Kyle walks in a slow and majestic manner. He holds his sheathed sword in his left hand when he is not using it. His manner of walking is such that when any enemies try to ambush him, if they get near him, they instantly get defeated due to his time manipulation abilities.
3. He has his own morals and values but he also follows the samurai bushido code of honor to a certain extent. He doesn't strike an enemy further when the enemy is already down and unable to fight. He also doesn't strike an enemy when they're not looking and would instead fight them head-on instead. However, if the opponent is truly a nasty and repulsive being, he will abandon these values for the time being and make sure that the villian gets his justice served to him in a rightful manner.
4. In front of his children and lover however, he is more of a caring person and likes to spend time with his children, bringing them out to different places and spending quality time with them. He also loves Yvonne very deeply, but sometimes, he does not think of her feelings and does what he feels is the rightful thing for his family.

Short Dialogue:

Kyle: This shall be the final showdown, between you and me that is, brother.

Kendall: I'm impressed. You know that I'm your brother. Why bother even fighting me?

Kyle: The fact that you're my brother is enough for me to fight you.

Kendall: Why is that?

Kyle: You killed Chika and Daniel. You have sins that can never be forgiven.

Kendall: They deserved to die. Chika was a traitor and Daniel was just a weakling.

Kyle: I'm not finished. They are not the reason I am here to defeat you. I have come to save your soul. Only by saving your soul, can I appease their departed spirits. That is what they would have wished for me.

(Readies demonic starlight energy arms)

Kendall: Maybe you should join them in hell. They will be satisfied with the company you will give them!

(Kyle and Kendall starts fighting)

References:

Vergil from Devil May Cry

I got the trenchcoat idea from Vergil along with the katana idea. Also, the gloves were adapted into Kyle. The sword style, poses and the way my character fights is also adapted from this character. Vergil is a cold and sardonic person who would do anything to achieve his goals. Part of that personality, such as the sardonism, was introduced into Kyle's personality.

Jellal from Fairy Tail

I adopted Jellal's blue hair and put it into my character. The blue hair idea also suited Jellal's personality, as he was cold, calculating and evil but at the same time calm too. I also got the idea of the leather boots, with the pants tucked into the boots from this character.

Ichigo from BLEACH

The spiky hair of my character was based on this character. Ichigo has a tendency to rush into things recklessly. Also, the idea of my sword being black came from this character too. I also adopted some personality traits and different sword styles from this character.

Demon Eyes Kyo from Samurai Deeper Kyo

The golden hilt idea came from this character, who's kodachi (type of sword) has a golden hilt. Also, Kyo's personality, in the sense that he's a demon that kills all who stands in his way but is still a good guy as he cares for his comrades, can be similar to my character, without the maniac killer part though.

Reflection:

By completing this exercise, i have learnt the many concepts of character design. Yeah, sure, anyone can just come up with a character within an hour or so, but to make a character with actual significant background and personality that other people can relate to is hard. It requires a lot of brainstorming and drafts to create just one character. Failed designs would just be refined until I am satisfied with it. To be truthful, I had started planning out this story, which I was eventually going to pen it out about 3 years ago. However, over time, I had undergone many changes in my character design and refined it. Now, I have learnt even more tips on how to refine my character design.

Also, on a minor note, this exercise also taught me tips on human analogy, on how to get body proportions correct in drawing and how to draw different male and female figures.

Overall, I think this is a very fun and interesting exercise as it let's me do what I like to do - drawing, even though I'm not that good at it. It also gives me great insight on character design, which I would like to learn even more about in the future.

3D Visualization and Animation - Moving On!

In my Semester 2.2, I have this subject called 3D Visualization and Animation (3DVA) for short.

Henceforth, all posts from here onward will be related to 3DVA. I will be reusing this blog for 3DVA since I hate creating multiple blogs for the same purpose and I like my blog URL. Therefore, any arguements against my idea of keeping this blog is invalid.

For your reference, the posts below are all related to IN3D. Those are my old works. You can refer to them if you want.

Hope my 3DVA work will be as good as my IN3D work and after looking at the several topics and the different portfolios, I have deduced that this subject is my kind of subject and it should be fun (Manga drawing and animation and stuffs like that).

Well, that's all.

Assignment 2: Self Critique

Self Critique

In my opinion, I think my final animation turns out to be the exact same thing as my storyboard. However, I think that my animation is not very good. There were basic principles of animation introduced, such as squash & stretch ( the squash & stretch of the magnetic part of the arm ), anticipation ( the robotic arm anticipating its picking up of the box ) and ease in ease out ( the robotic arm picking up the boxes ). However, there were some cases where the principles could be introduced, but I didn't introduce them.

For instance, the boxes moving along the conveyor belt. I should have made them ease in and ease out, making the animation more natural instead of an abrupt stop.

Next, when I applied squash, there was a gap in between the joint of the arm end and the arm end itself. Naturally, when I applied stretch, part of the joint was also overridden by the arm end. This caused the animation too look abit more flimsy.

Also, when I was moving the boxes, I noticed that the first cargo box moves slightly. This might be an err on my part, since at one point of time I was having trouble with the parent constraints of my box object. I did not change the offsets properly.

There is also one part where when the robotic arm examines the cargo box, the arm end itself squashes a little. This is due to the squash that I have input in the next frame.

Assignment 2: Scenario 2

This is how I created my Robotic Arm animation.

Process

Using the rigged scene I have gotten from the previous exercise, I have started on my animation.

I then start with my first clip from my storyboard. The robot is busy stacking boxes.

The second clip of my storyboard. The robot goes on to pick up the box. I added a squash deformer so that it would fulfill the basic principle of animation - squash & stretch. The magnetic end of the arm will squash when it touches the box. It will then stretch after a few frames.

The third clip of my storyboard. The robot puts down the box that it picked up. I set the blend parent to 1 so that the box will move along with the arm. When the box is settled, I set the bledn parent back to 0 so that the arm would let go of the box.

The fourth clip of my storyboard. The robot first examines the box. It then gets suprised and then shakes its head in disapproval. I have made the swivel base move when the robot nodded so that it would look more natural and that the robot would look more alive.

The fifth clip of my storyboard. The robot goes on to pick up the box. I also added squash and stretch for this part. However, the squash and stretch is more vigorous now, since the robot pressed onto the box with more force.

The sixth clip of my storyboard. I then made the robot throw the box, by setting the blend parent of the box to 0 when the arm is near the edge. Then, I rotated and move the box, set keyframes so that the box would look like it was thrown.

The seventh clip of my storyboard. The robot will then spin around and around due to the force of the throw. I then set the swivel base to rotate a few times.

The last clip in my storyboard. I then made the robot look at the screen.

I then used the graph editor to make the animation more natural.

A few times that I had used graph editor include:

Making the ease in and ease out motion when the arm goes on to pick a box up.

Making the suprise motion after the arm examines the box.

Making the swing more natural by making it lose velocity the longer it spins.

After smoothing my animation, I playblasted it, using a resolution of 640 x 360.

This is the result of my Robotic Arm Animation:

Week 13 - IK Rigging

This is how I rigged my models so that I can prepare it for animation.

Process

First, I opened the Maya scene file that was provided to me. This scene would be used to do rigging and then be used for Assignment 2, which is the animation of my own robot arm.

First, I created joints at several points of the machine. I then opened the hypergraph and laid the layout stacked so that I can see the hypergraph and my animation at the same time.

I then added an IK Handle and then set the hierarchy for the skeleton. As you can see here, all the joints and parts of the machine are now grouped together.

I then added an Arm Control locator so that it would be easier to move my machine around using that locator. I added an annotation to show what does the locator do.

I then set the rest position for the magnet part of the arm so that the magnet part of the arm would pick up the box properly.

I then parented the swivel base with the upper part of the mechanical arm. This is so that when my swivel base rotates, the mechanical arm moves together with it too, thus acting as a real swivel base.

I then set the limitations of the mechanical arm so that there is a maximum in which the arm can stretch and retract. Then, I collapsed all the elements in the hypergraph.

Next, I set parent constraints to the box so that when the mechanical arm moves, the box moves along with it. This can be adjusted by setting the blend parent of the box to either 1 or 0 to enable and disable the sticking.

This is the end result of my IK Rigging:

Techniques

This lab has prepared me for my upcoming assignment.

It also helps familiarize me with dealing with skeleton hierarchies, IK Handles and constraints.

Reflection

Overall, I think this exercise helped me alot and I learned alot.

However, One thing I like to note is how this is taught step by step. Since this is taught step by step, I might be familiar with this certain scene, but other scenes I have to figure them out for myself, which is quite hard.

However, If i just plainly followed what the instructions said, I would have never learnt anything. This gave me a lot of insight on what's to come for future animations.

References

Maya Autodesk Tutorials - Animation

Assignment 2: Storyboard

Scenario 2

Robot Name: Co-troller

Story: Co-troller is a robot built by a packaging factory to stack boxes for shipping. One day, Co-troller got fed up with his job and decide to rebel. He started to throw tantrums.

1) The robot is stacking boxes.

2) The robot bends down and starts to lift the box.

3) The robot then takes the box and puts it at its side. The next box moves forward.

4) The robot turns to the front. However, it shakes its head in disapproval.

5) The robot then picks up the next box. The boxes moves forward.

6) The robot then throws the box away.

7) The robot then turns around 360 degrees.

8) The robot comes to a stop and looks at the camera.