CAGD Blog

 This week I didn't get a lot of significant animation completed and that's because I was at an animation event called Lightbox!      I went to multiple panels talking about animation within the industry, covering the entire pipeline from scriptwriting and storyboarding (Emperor's New Groove) to 2D/3D animation and SFX (Arcane, Alien; Romulus and Zootopia 2).  Zootopia 2 was actually really impressive because the lead art director for environments and the production designer were there to talk about the trailer as well as a Q&A.  We were gifted an exclusive Lightbox 2025 art print as well!  Here are some memorable photos! 

       This sprint was dedicated to finishing up my Wendigo Model in order to be ready for rigging and starting animations for Duck Bob. The retop process took a lot longer than I initially expected because I ran into issues when it came to the fur. The fur was necessary for the model because it's such a defining factor, but since the original sculpt has such a large volume of fur it was a rough process zremeshing it while also keeping it's shape. At the end I managed to get it to a low enough polycount to export out while retaining the shape, and then finished the retop as well as the texturing.    Originally I was supposed to rig it but after talking with my teammate who's the only other animator, we decided to pass him the card so he'd not only have more things to do but also get the opportunity to learn rigging. We then slip up our "DuckBob" animations because we wanted that as a priority.         To be frank, that card is givin...

 This week I continued to work on the dragon. Because of how my previous walk cycle looked (horrid), I got the chance to ask my peers for their advise and got a lot of good feedback. I'm really happy with how the feet look like now, mainly because I fixed a huge issue. Originally my legs were looking very choppy and I couldn't figure out why until one of my peer's told me, "animals, like humans, are super lazy and if they can, they'll pick up their legs as low as possible when they move". So I lowered the height and it made it look 5x smoother.    https://youtu.be/qYCQzTdjZxc --> the youtube link to my playblast    I scrapped the torso and head animations because they weren't turning out as good. Next week I plan to ask my professor on how to go about making that look more natural. 

 This week I spent hours surfing through youtube watching videos of dog walks and animation reels of bipeds in order to understand how to animate my Dragon Walk cycle . It was really difficult at first because It's my first time actually working with a biped cycle using the feet fully. The issues I kept running into was the positioning of the front and back feet during the passing poses , as well as timing.      A few videos that helped me through that process are listed below.   1. https://youtu.be/lru21dCsewQ?si=yeinzixLmMDtR-sw  2. https://youtu.be/tLrRlXxM5Yw?si=aJYSU3lwjrQ56ujc 3.  https://youtu.be/e5mn7WxjMZg?si=NQpUWECrf8HbA0lL I worked a lot with motion trails trying to get the right curvature with each leg but it took a lot of redo's to get it to a place I can live with.  I haven't started on the wings yet, mostly because I'm unsure what to do with them and will most likely look at more videos to see how other people have positio...

     During this sprint I got a lot finished! It started out with the Pedestrian needing to be rigged which was a lot easier than the DuckBob Rig because it was a lot more basic. Aka, no fingers. I actually got the IK feet down this time and made a neck/head controller too. This youtube tutorial really helped with the feet; https://youtu.be/VQ5H0NrNOV4?si=KmNi5vj4129bg9Em. When I first got the rig I had to delete a part of the model since the modeler in charge of it still had the body modeled underneath the clothing and that would have been unnecessary/ harder for me to rig with. The rule of thumb I've been taught when it comes to modeling for rigging is, "If they don't see it, you don't need it".  Here is the walk cycle I animated with the pedestrian rig! It's going to be playing on loop in the game. I also got the model for the Wendigo finished! This one was a bit of a challenge since I've never modeled a quadruped before but because of the amazing refer...

 This week I've worked on making a dragon walk cycle. Now this was definitely a challenge and I've restarted it about 6 times. I used a dog as a reference for the walk because of how similar the bone/leg structure is. I'm still not done with it because I've restarted so many times but I am glad that each time I redo it, it seems to be getting better and better. This is where I'm currently at;  I've finished the first half of the walk cycle, and as I would do for a bipedal rig, will just be mirroring the leg animations.    The dragon isn't all I worked on tho! I also participated in the 24 hour animation jam which was completely and utterly exhausting but so much fun! My team and I decided to mix 2D and 3D, characters and backgrounds respectively. I made all the background props and textured the booth and table, while also doing most of the rotoscoping outline/ all the facial expressions. It was a long 24 hours but we did manage to finish it in the end and I...