Acting Up - Production - Animation Progress

Whew, it's been awhile since I wrote about any progress for this animation, but rest assured, I have indeed been working on it since I got back from my Christmas break. I know I haven't written all that many entries for the Production stage (Since I was way more focused on figuring out and familiarising myself with this incredibly complicated piece of software which I am still really new to...), so I will try to make these few posts count and make these as lengthy and as informative as possible.

One of the biggest issues I had faced was attempting to figure out how to properly constrain the prop to both of his hands. And at first, I thought I could actually survive my way through by simply parenting it to one hand... but that soon enough proved to be futile, especially when I needed him to drop the prop near the end.

If it wasn't for my lecturer, I wouldn't have figured out how to properly add in the constraints, it is still a little tricky, but I made sure to write it down for future reference (Yup, I started a notebook dedicated completely to my Maya notes). 

First off, so that the prop wouldn't suddenly float away in random frames, make sure you add in a locator to each hand, I made sure to pose Moom holding the prop with both hands before constraining the locators to the prop. 

1. Prop <-> Locator

2. Locator <-> Wrists

If you can't figure out which one should be selected first, don't worry, Maya will tell you which is the right one to select first and which is the wrong one.... you will know what I mean once you try it out yourself.

Another issue was the fact that my prop was composed of many little pieces, and so it was really difficult when I attempted to select the whole thing after selecting another item (This was when I was trying to constraint it the first time)... one method shared with me by my lecturer was to simply combine it into a single item:

1. Make sure you switch from Animation to Surface mode first.

2. Then select the entire prop.

3. Hold down the space bar to enter that huge menu, and select Mesh.

4. Then finally select Combine.

While that did the trick for me, I think that it might have warped the shape of the prop a little... I will look into that in the future, but seeing that it is not too noticeable, I decided to just leave it alone and just move on.

When it was time to drop the prop, key in two key frames next to one another, and as you do, you will notice something called the Blend Parent pop up in the menu on the right. Much like how you adjust the values for the constraints to make one active and the other inactive, this will work the same way for the Blend Parent, with 0 for Inactive (The prop is free) and 1 for Active (The prop is still stuck to whichever constraint).

There's nothing much to say about the lip syncing... whist I tried my best follow my dope sheet, it's still really difficult creating effective phonemes without bottom teeth and a tongue... if I have time, I will try to go back to it and fix it up a little.

I was pretty worried over how much effort I needed to fix the inbetweeners once the blocking was completed, and frankly, I still am... especially when it comes to readjusting his unconstrained hand and feet. But I was presently surprised to see that it didn't look too bad once I added in the auto tangents in the  graph editor. I have also gotten comfortable enough to know how to switch between the auto and step tangents, so that I can easily go back to alter anything in the blocked version!

In the end, it came down to a lot of trial and error, it might sound crazy but I did end up redoing the entire thing numerous times over the past week... Especially when I couldn't figure out the various issues that would suddenly come out now and then, no matter how hard I tried to look into it.

When I wasn't able to figure out how to fix this.

... or this, and no, it wasn't just a momentary visual glitch.

Initially, as crazy as it sounds, I was planning to redo my entire animation, I wanted to improve (Or pretty much redo it too) the present choreography before its submission (As I disliked the fact that Moom pretty much stays in just one place, and as I began to better understand how the constraint tool worked, it drove me up the wall each time I saw how weirdly he handled the prop whenever I played the animation). 

But I felt that I shouldn't waste anymore time and just see this project through until the end, also, it would also be a waste of time to draft up another storyboard (And probably another animatic since it is harder to figure out the timing when animating in 3D as compared to 2D) when there are so many other things that I need to get done as well, the least I could do is to at least adjust the constraints a little... it's going to be a little messy fixing that bit up, but I'm sure it will be worth it.

Stay tuned for more progress before the final critique session next week.