CAGD Blog

      Over the past four week's I've gone through numerous changes with my "Axe2 Swing" shot. I finally got it to a spot that I'm happy with, and that I'm comfortable leaving it at this point to move onto another shot. It took a while for me to get through this because originally I wanted to adhere to my peer's critiques but It wasn't going to be fully feasible. There were a lot of good idea's, such as adding a second attack with my rewinding-arch but to be frank, I wanted to move on to another scene so I can practice other motions.       My "Axe1 Swing" is now put on the back-burner, but on a positive note, I fixed a pretty big issue I was running into with it! For a quick reminder, my "Axe1" involved a character picking up and swinging an axe, and the issue I ran into (after learning how to properly constrain items to hands) was that once I did constrain my item to the character's hand, I couldn't "undo" it w...

 To start off, Sprint Two was way livelier then my first sprint, and I got a lot "heavier" work done. We started off kickoff talking about the different creatures that would need to be modeled and get reference videos for, and what was the most important thing that had to get done first. My designer and I decided that our main character, DuckBob, would be the most important since that's what the player will see most.      Although my official position on the team is under "Animator" I've also taken up the title of Character Modeler and Rigger since I have the most experience in those fields on our team. To start off the Sprint, I compiled references of Bob, the Trucker our character is actually based off and polymodeled him in Maya.  The most difficult part I had with the modeling was getting the topology right. I'm more inclined to build up my models in Zbrush then transferring them to Maya to retopologies, but since this was a low-poly model I figured ...

    During this sprint, I didn't have a lot of things to do, mostly because my position within the team is animator, rigger, and character modeler. All I was assigned and able to do involved compiling the references needed for the animators to use when we are able to. It wasn't anything new or difficult, I either looked through footage on YouTube to find angles and shots of what we needed, or I filmed them myself.      For example, what I turned in for one of my assigned cards.  For the next sprint, luckily, I'll be getting into character modeling. I had to originally wait for the concept artist and designer to decide on the final design, but now I'm able to start on the game's main character, Bob. Although he will be low poly, and faceless, I still have to build out his body, texture and rig it.  End of Sprint 1. 

       And there passes week 2. I've decided to work on 2 animations at the same time due to them being simple movements, from point A --> B. I've named them Axe Swing #1 and #2 due to being similar and variations of one another. This week I got through the blocking stages of both shot's, and although it looks rough I'm happy with the key poses. An issue I did run into however, is constraint-parenting my locator for my Axe obj to the character rig's hand. After a lot of online research I've decided to ask my peers and professor for help as well to figure out the issue, and in the meantime have blocked out the rest of the body.   Above is my "Axe Swing 1"  Below is my "Axe Swing 2"   Next week I aim to finish my blocking plus stage and get feedback from my peers so I can fix as much as I need to as possible before going into spline. I also aim to add in my Axe.    Edit: Videos of Swing 2