Rigging & Animations

Issues and Fixes

This week, I was trying my best to follow the new production sheet to ensure I get my tasks on time, but that didn't work out too well! Issues came along the way and we (as a team) are trying to resolve them based on order of priority. Here's what happened and how we are working to fix them...

Issue #1

The rig I was working on needed some extra changes to modelling due to the functionality of some areas like the aperture lens and fingers claws. I consulted with Rashed and he informed me that I need to work on these fixes asap and approach the rig accordingly. I did that.

At the time of 'skinning', the mesh wasn't working well, so I consulted with him once again. The biggest issue was that the objects were all separate and I had to attach them in order for it to work as 100 percent skinning on the bones and joints. That would mean I have to restart the rig from scratch. I didn't have that much time to waste.

Thankfully, he came up with a solution that can follow industry standard protocols (by using bones instead of just controllers - which can be considered a rig). He said that if I link the objects to the bone, it technically works as 100 percent skinning. And that's what I did after a week worth of stress on this rig.

Below is a video of the rig and its controllers. I added some extra controllers for the ears and muffler to give it an extra flare to the model when animating. This way, I can add some personality to the character.

Rig test preview animation on 3ds Max.

Issue #2

I was facing a lot of issues with Twixtor - a plug-in created by RevisionFX that allows for smooth slow motion, used widely in the industry (Ward, 2014, para.3). I ensured that I set the frame rate to 60fps before editing but After effects always read the video as 30fps. Interpreting the footage to 60fps didn't fix the issue. So I brought this problem forth to my lecturer.

After assessing the footage, more issues came forth.

These were the issues that needed to be fixed asap:

1. Resolution of ALL shots are shot at 720 pixels - this would mean that our 4K textures would have been degraded to 60x140 pixels (calculations were done) and would be a complete waste of our time and effort

2. The video ISN'T in 60fps - slow motion shots can't work, Twixtor wont work and none of the desired effect would be created for the spinner shots.

3. Plain wall cannot be tracked - in regards to this specific shot, Boujou couldn't track the empty wall so it needed more tracking points. Because I had to rely of my teammate for all the shots, I had to wait until she redid them for me to work on my spinner animations.

After assessing the core of the problem, we found out that the quality degraded because it was Airdropped and then sent over to me. So we tested a shot directly from the DJI app and the resolution and fps were correct. This means things are alright but will need to be redone from scratch (film editing).

Issue #3

My spinner animations had issues. From my first draft (above), here's the feedback I received.

I reworked on it on the same day and sent for another round of feedback. This is what I got.

Animation after feedback. More feedback received (See below).

Hence, I have to wait until I get the new shot.

Fixes - Solutions

The best way to take it on from here is to create tasks with stricter deadlines to get us back on track. Since this week's tasks were sort of a mess (above), I made a new sheet for this week as a temporary update to our production plan (below).

Therefore, newer tasks have been revised. Shots that can be done quickly and easily will be done first and rendered so that we have some shots ready to composite. The shots that require more time to work on such as the slow mo spinner shots and the robot entrance + run shots, they will be worked on simultaneously to be rendered by the following two weeks.

References

Ward, C. (2014, March 25). Simulate Slow Motion Footage Using Twixtor [blog]. Retrieved from https://www.premiumbeat.com/blog/simulate-slow-motion-footage-using-twixtor/