Learning Outcomes
This module has taught me a lot in many different areas and
stages. I have enjoyed using Character studio but would hope if I were to do
something like this again the time would stretch over 2 semesters so for
example characters can have more detail added to them and time is given to
learn new programs.
Skinning proved the most difficult aspect and stage of this
project, it requires a lot of time and patients to be able to stress test a
model and get the bone and envelope structures correct. Skinning did take me a
few full weeks to get the hang of with a lot of tutorials to help explain the
stress test process. This element alone of the project should be linked in with
the creation of the characters as a 1-semester job.
Animation was difficult but not so much of a problem, I
didn’t get to animate as far or as much as I would of liked to. This is because
the amount of time taken skinning. If I had knew that skinning was that stressful
I would have created simpler models and not added layers on top of them.
The part in which I enjoyed the most would have been the
character modelling at the beginning of the semester. This allowed me to create
a character to my own imagination and I think my final models really fit my
story line. A couple of things that went wrong with my models were the head, no
swords and the legs. The head problem occurred when I applied a turbo smooth to
the nose that I had created before attaching it to my head. This is a problem
because I then had to increase the amount of polygons to the previously created
head so that the nose could be target welded to the head.
No swords was an issue because my models where supposed to
have a sword fight but there was not enough time due to falling behind from
trying to add detail in mudbox which also went terribly wrong. So swords had to
be aborted which also meant that my models couldn’t do what was intended in the
first place. The legs was the last issue to do with modelling the characters
because of the rush to finish them they were just created from imagination and
no real research or thinking process took place in the making of the legs and
this would be something I would definitely re-do if I could do this module again.
A lot of things went wrong for me during this project some
were expected and some very unexpected. I think that not enough time was
appointed for certain requirements for this project and seeing as a lot has
been expected of us and we have been given very little time to deliver.
My time management could have been better which may have
reduced some of the problems that I encountered.
I would say overall I didn’t have a good experience of this
module and it proved to be more stressful than intended. This would be all
round because there was not enough time and if we had to complete this in 1
semester, we should have been given models to preform stress tests and also
this was not just about character animation because this project also required
us to make an environment to show the heroic journey which made more work which
ultimately took time away from skinning, stress testing and animating.
After this I had a slight problem rendering my files in
premier pro that proved to be an issue because it made editing my rendered raw
clips much harder. Also while putting the files together I saw that one scene
is missing the sky but did not have enough time to re render the scene that was
even more frustrating.
The reason for my poor time management skills is that I underestimated
Character studio and for my final 3D project I thought I could tell a story. Obviously
this didn’t go very well and I could only tell a very minor part of the story. But
I hope that it makes sense why I created this animation from the post about “final
animation”.
As a conclusion to my learning experience I would say I have
learnt many knew skills but in a very short amount of time. I have learnt from
my mistakes and will take them on board when creating something like this and I
would also hope that sufficient time was allocated to creating something like
this.
