2011年12月9日星期五
2011年12月5日星期一
2011年12月4日星期日
First failure on IKFK switch.
I am going to solve it, and use it for one of the L4 film "Time Machine". Here are some tips I concluded by doing the two different rigs:
1.For spine, the spline Ik tool is easy to control for basic movement, but need to be careful about the Hierarchy. FK is used for taking full control of it.
2.Head applies to mainly FK, the only place for IK on head is when the head move left to right like it is in the india dance.
3.Arms need both IK and FK controls, for creating unlimited movement more easily.
4.Legs is mainly IK with knees on FK. For example, Kicking.
General Basic Rigging
2011年12月2日星期五
Research Direction
Basically, it is an outcome of the rapidly developing computer technology. 3D software allow people to create a simulated world in computer; in this world, people can build character and scene, put them together with a right scale; then according to the physics motion trajectory, using simulated tools to bring the characters into life; at last, put the textures on the characters and bring the light into the scene. Eventually, the sequence of images that computer generated is what we call 3D animation. Now it is mainly applying in PC/video games, commercials, feature films and etc.
It is a well-known fact that “Toy Story” is the first fully computer animated feature film of Pixar and the 3D animation history. Its dramatic appearance indicated that the era of CGI technique begins. The development of 3D Animation film can be seeing as three periods: First period is the end of last century when the Disney and Pixar first introduce this advanced technology to the world with Toy Story. However, in 2001, another Animation magnate “DreamWorks Animation SKG” has get back on his feet from the failure of the “Insect’s war” in 1998 (According to the data from boxofficemojo.com, the gross of “Antz” By DreamWorks SKG is much lower than “A Bug’s Life”). “Shrek” has become the second entirely computer animated series film, and this time, on the box office, “Shrek” has surmounted “Monsters, Inc.” by Pixar. From this point of time, 3D animation film industry moved into a period of rapidly developing. More and more audiences were affected by many 3D animation films, one of the most popular ones is “Ice Age”, another series 3D animation film by Blue Sky. The third period started in 2004, 3D animation film industry get in the golden age. 3D animation is no longer the exclusive product of Pixar, 3D animation films appear in everywhere of the world in different format with different contexts and narratives, people start wondering what is the limit of 3D animation. When “The Polar Express” first applied Motion Capture technique into 3D Animation film, which combines human acting and CGI, with the vivid and very realistic movement, “The Polar express” brought a huge impact to the industry. However, surprisingly the box office of “The Polar express” did not reach the expectation of the audiences. In the same year, another 3D animation film named “Appleseed” released in Japan, ended up with also unpleasant box office. Three years later, in 2007, “Beowulf” released with a huge amount of budget, however, its Domestic total gross is just over the half of the budget. At this point, the question is obvious: why the fully computer animated film is much more popular than the ones using Motion Capture technique? How to find the boundary between “so realistic” and “too realistic”?
To make sure the research covers all aspects in full-scale and more thoughtful, I set up a basic system which includes four parts: Physical and Facial, fast and slow. An ordinary character mainly has two kind of movement which are physical movement and facial expressions, and both of them can be fast or slow. I hope I can find out the boundary between the two kind of 3D animation which is fully computer animated and is using motion capture.
2011年11月27日星期日
Toy Story.
After the comparison, we can see it is not only the texture, the model, the lighting become much better, the movement of the characters, both toys and humans, has become much more casual. If we say the movement of Toy story 1 is quite realstic and very smooth, then Toy story 3 is reasonable convincing and is humanlike vivid movement.
2011年11月23日星期三
2011年11月9日星期三
Marshall Mcluhan
Understanding Media: The Extension of Man.
Context & Review
According to Wikipedia, he was a Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar—a professor of English literature, a literary critic, a rhetorician, and a communication theorist. Althought the media theories which he brought out is quite controvertible, they are all worth to be refered into our present work.
His first published book named "The Mechanical Bride" in 1951, analyzed the popular culture at that time and the effect it would bring to the society. 11 years later, in 1962, his second book named "The Gutenberg Galaxy: The making of Typographic man" had been published. In this book, he analyzed the effects of mass media, especially printing press, and the word "Global Village" presented Mcluhan's different thought about this rapidly developing world.
The one we all should look up to is the third book from him, which is "Understanding Media: The Extension of Man." in 1964. The most famous phrase from him had been brought out: The medium is the message. "The media themselves should be the focus of study, not content they carry". In another word, campare to the content itself, the way or the path in which peiple review the content is more important. It means that: the reaction would be totally different when a joke were told by comic drawings or on the radio. Therefore, the term, "cool" and "hot" media appeared. "Any hot medium allows of less participation than a cool one, as a lecture makes for less participation than a seminar, and a book for less than a dialogue." Based on this theory, the phenomena of the films based on the comics nowadays is more reasonable and acceptable.
Dynasty Warriors 7 - Official Debut Trailer | HD
Compare to the one below, this is the trailer for the lastest version of the new game, which is not statisfied me, movements are quite rush and not very clear, some camera works are not working, the editing is not good, because of too many characters with different environment back and forth. that is the problem I need to watch out.
真三國無雙5 OP
Very good martial art animation, smooth and realistic movement, exactly what I am looking for. Also, I can learn from the editing: Smooth in with a quiet scene, like a weather breeder, start fighting with fancy moves, change to another piece of quiet background, bring out the big boss, finally leave a suspense. For me, start with a peaceful background, voiceover introduce the background story, bring out the relationship between two characters, finally the fight scene.
Animation Reference - Athletic Male Standard Walk
Every steps are slightly different. SHOULDER-ELBOW-WRIST, HIP-KNEE-ANKLE.
Ninja running cycle
Good timing, step rhythm.
Hint: Head and arm's follow through, shoulder and chest's movement keep the same direction.
Shortage: too robot like, every step is the same, and the swing of arm and leg is same. upper body should bend more to bring the povet point forward.
Realistic Walking cycle
Perfect walking cycle for muscly model, muscle squashing and straching.
Hint: shoulder's movement is forward and backward with slightly swing. Because of the biceps, forearm is not moving follow through, forward movement only with a conditional angle of elbow. Chest movement is heavier than I thought, it is moving as a sector. Don't forget the second buffer crouch on the knee. Hip is mainly moving up and down.
2011年10月14日星期五
3D May's expressions
I was incredibly fascinated in Ghibli Studio's works, especially the Hayao Miyazaki's ones. I am attracted not only because the story, but also the drawing style and the way the characters merge into a background with colourful stylized tone. But, the most interesting thing to me is that how does he come up with such brilliant, unique and wonderful ideas. I keep asking myself the same questino until I saw the documentary named "The secret of creation". It is about the film "ponyo", how does it be created from ground. From this documentary, I learned:
1. Love what are you doing/your job. Only if you are interested in the job, then the job is no longer working but a hobby that you can have fun from. Then, you can discover the things you never realized before.
2. Love your life. Enjoy your daily life, nothing happens exactly the same to the same guy, try to explore something around you everyday, that is how you get your creative ideas.
3. There is no formula of inspiration. There are so many ways to get inspiration, the expression is are a sealed box, you cannot get any creativity from it. Try something new everyday.
4. Follow your heart. Your heart is the fountain of theinspiration. Something amazing will happen when your will sets free.
2011年10月12日星期三
Script
Final Script of Revenge
Page 1
Fade in from logo
(High angle, C/U puddle)
Moon and bamboos mirror the image in a puddle, a foot steps on it and breaks the silence, few seconds later, another foot steps on it as well.(Foot steps in water S.F.X)
(Low angle, below the waist)
The 1st man (Lee) jumps over a rock, after a few seconds, the 2nd man (Loung) jumps over.(camera pans with the 2nd man) (Footsteps from far to close S.F.X)
(Camera pans)
Two shadows (silhouette) are running in the bamboo forest, one is chasing the other.
(C/U Lee’s face)
Without any panic, Lee is running and turning his head slightly back irregularly peeking at Loung (reserve shot over shoulder and zoom in fast to the eyes of Loung) Loung’s eyes are stuck on Lee, burning with enormous anger. Suddenly, Lightning flashback.(fade to white) (Footsteps S.F.X)
Flash back into Loung’s memory
(kid Loung’s POV, L/S)
(camera shakes showing the kid’s frightened) Loung stares at the window with his nervous breath and irregular sobbing, Loung (gently)
“ah..ah…woo…”
there’s shadow reflecting on the window: a man raises a knife and kills someone,
Victim
“oha…a…”
the blood splash on the window and the scream make him even more scared.
He starts looking around (Camera pans fast to show the tensity) and then stops on a box about his size beside the door.
(kid Loung’s POV, L/S)
Page 2
looks out the door through the gap. Suddenly, a hand breaks the window and fumbles for the latch,(breaking paper-window S.F.X.) the blood on the hand make the hand-tattoo more obviously. Loung closes the box lid.(lid closed S.F.X.)
(C/U Loung’s eyes)
Loung opens his eyes, which is bloodshot and the pupil extend widely. Suddenly he shoots a glance.(O.S.)
(Loung’s POV)
Zoom in first to a small rock, then to a couple of bamboos far away.
(C/U Loung’s eyes) Loung’s eyes turned back, and he runs to the side of the road slightly. (camera pulls back to the other side to take full-size shot of Loung) Loung kicks the small rock, (camera crash zooms in and track in the rock) the rock flies toward the bamboos, hits and breaks them. Bamboos fall and will block the path.(Stone flying and bamboos break down S.F.X.)
(M/C/U Lee)
Lee realises it is too late to stop, so he jumps and somersaults in the air,(camera in birds-eye looks straight down over the falling bamboos, slow motion) lands and slides in a clearing area surrounding by bamboos, facing backwards in crouching pose.(camera tracks in)(Sound of sliding S.F.X)
(C/U Lee’s hand)
There’s tattoo on Lee’s hand as the same one in Loung’s memory. Lee stands up slowly looking around him,(camera pulls back to M/S in low angle, then cut2 camera pans in bird-eye) (Wind S.F.X)
Fight Scene starts
Suddenly, a bamboo flies towards Lee, Lee dodges and jumps away, at the same moment he lands, Loung is stabbing him from behind with another bamboo, but Lee dodges and rolls forwards,
Page 3
and picks up the first bamboo, then they fight.
(C/U, the faces)
Lee pushs Loung into corner with two bamboo-weapon interlaced, and asks:
“What do you want from me?”
Loung pushs back instead of saying a word. They both lose their weapons in following movements, then they fight with bare hand.
When Loung attacks, Lee is trying to block, suddenly, Lee sees a fragrant bag tying on Loung’s belt,(slow motion) it is so familiar that reminds him something, he hesitates for a flash. With this chance, Loung knocks him down. There’s a bamboo sticking on the ground with sharp cut, Lee falls on it, and the bamboo goes through his body. (lightning and thunder SFX)
(M/C/U, Loung)
Loung is trying to catch his breath after this fight, says:
“You killed my family 10 years ago.”
Then he turns and walks away.(footsteps S.F.X)
(C/U the bloody bamboo, focus shifts From the bamboo and the hand to the view of Loung’s back as he walks away.)
A hand raises with a fragrant bag covered by blood,
Lee (painfully)
“em…woo..”
Loung stops and turns around.(over shoulder shot to M/C/U)
(camera in bird-eye looks down, L/S)
Loung picks up the bag. He opens it and takes out a letter covered by Lee’s blood. He reads the letter(low angle focus through the letter on the face) and suddenly he becomes very nervous, his eyes is moving word by word(C/U,the eyes)
After a white flash, get into the world which the letter tells, with a lady’s voice over.(M/S)
A woman(Liu) is carrying a heavy pail filled with water, there’s a baby swaddle tie up on her back. A man(Gao) walks
Page 4
in with a face of sorriness, he speaks to the woman, the woman suddenly drops the pail and burst into tears. Gao takes t Liu’s hand and walks away. (towards camera fade in black, then fade out) the same couple walks in (from camera, the view of their back)wearing webbing costume, towards house decorated in red.
“Dear husband, I am sorry that I married Gao, it is only because Gao lied to me that you died in the war 1 month after you join in the army. At that time, our boy only 2 month old, I have to find a man to raise us.”
(shot through a door gap, L/S)
One night, Gao walks out of the gate with another woman snuggling by the side. (Camera pulls back, Liu’s face gets in from side) Liu turns her face with tear back, and looks at the baby in her arms. (C/U the sleeping baby)
“but Gao didn’t treat us well after, he got some other women out side, but for our boy’s good, I have to bear on it,”
(M/S, Liu’s back view)
Liu sits by the table writing the letter, soon she finishes. Then she hangs herself. (L/S, camera pans from the beaty body to the sleeping baby on bed with the letter and a fragant bag by the side)
“Now I know you are still alive, I fell so guilty that I have to end my life. No matter how our little boy is going to be in future, that’s his destiny. If you have a chance to see him, his name is loung, I give him the fragrant bag as same as the one I gave to you with his name on it, and that could be the evidence for your meeting. So long, my love.”
after white flash
(C/U Loung’s eyes)
Loung is shocked, suddenly he notices something: he takes out his fragrant bag and compares with the bloody one, (camera pulls back, C/U Loung’s face, lens zoom out to the fragrant bag at the front of his face) they are exactly the same apart from the Chinese characters on them. (C/U, high angle,the fragrant bags)(Lightning S.F.X)
Page 5
(camera H/U with last scene, zoom lens focus on Lee’s raised hand) over the fragrant bags, Loung seea Lee’s raised hand, and he also notice Lee is trying to say something. Loung crouches, takes the hand (C/U the hands) and listens to what Lee says(camera switchs between their faces):
“Boy, I am sorry, I was too angry and lost my mind after I received the letter, I become a murderer. I never thought I would see you again, you have your mother’s eye, be strong to live, my son.”
Then Lee closes his eyes and dies.(C/U Lee’s face)
(C/U Loung’s face)
Because of the dual identities of Lee, Loung cann’t feel any success after killed his enemy who actually is his real father… but the most strange thing is that there’s tear coming out from Loung’s eyes, even though he doesn’t feel any sorrow.(camera focus on the tear, pans with with it) the tear drops on the holding hands mixes with blood, then drops on the ground. (fade in black)
END