Rigged animation test

Ok so i have now rigged my Jigglypuff and here are the test animations, the rig is rather basic as my character doesn't seem to do too much on screen, also i have included a video of how the jigglypuff moves in the cartoon..



The position of the feet vary as when jp is standing still the feet point out, when modeling i decided to model the feet separate.




















Ear Wiggle Test



Feet and hands Test



Being rusty on my rigging and short on time, i realized i haven't added a maing body controller so i can't stand and tilt JP on one leg. Also i would like to add attributes to the toes so that i can have him tippy toeing up. The feet are not easily controlled in that i can't swizzle them from side to side, so i will have these checked over before i animate in the scene.

Also when i import my JP in a maya live scene, my JP is huge and i'm not sure how to resize him so that may be to do with how i have rigged it.

I'm annoyed i cannot find my book which helped me rig last term, and this is meant to be such a simple rig!

A little velvet..

Just for a nicer look i have applied a plush velvet shader onto the model of my Jigglypuff.













I had to set up the ramp shader in the different shades of pink to depict the different shades.











and here is the outcome!

Another Schedule

This is a clearer version of the schedule. The different colour sections act as the dependencies, so i wouldn't be able to continue without completing one colour first.

problems and solutions

Just to note some difficulties when tracking are that i have had my sphere bobbing on the scene i figured that if i wanted to keep the Jigglypuff still on the scene i can simply key frame frame 1 and key frame the last frame the position i wish for JP to stay. This worked really well.

Also on one of the shots where Bella is walking up to the desk from the door, the camera spins around and i wanted to have JP already sat on the table as the camera swings round. Though when i tried this the table where JP was sat, the table and microscope are coming into focus and you don't get a good track on out of focus shots as the track point bounces about.

Also for the shot where the teacher puts his hand on the desk, because the teacher walks back and forth on the scene i had to cut the clip into two so that i could set clean track points which don't get cut off by the body or hand of the teacher.

Work Schedule

This below is basically a chart showing the amount of weeks to work with and what i needed to do in this project. I have forgotten to add updating the journal to this but that is ongoing all the time. But as you can see that the colour represents how long i will spend on that section in my 9 weeks, some overlap so i can work on more than one thing at a time.

Correction on Clip004

That big wobble we had on the last playblast on clip which we can fix by selecting the camera in the scene>animation editor>Graph Editor.












In this first shot we can see the wobble about 140 frames in, this is in the rotation and translate axis.













Here i have simply just deleted the key frames and created a smoother curve in the graph editor of the camera.

But then after talking with Steve i realized i've ben over complicating the tracking and tracking points when using MayaLive.

So here is a screenshot showing only a few tracking points placed sparsely on the screen. I have added a sphere to represent the Jigglypuff to see how effective the tracking has been.












When i went in to solve i got all green which is a first! so in the screenshot below we can also see the camera movement graph editor on the bottom left is in a clean line and slight curve.













Here is the end result which has worked really well so i will need to go back and re do my other scenes so that i can get a cleaner and smoother camera movements.



Also i am able to snap the sphere onto the origin of the tracking point,










This keeps the sphere locked onto that point which i could use if i have Jigglypuff sat on the desk. However for this clip i wanted JP getting ready for jumping up in front of Bella's face

storyboard

1.










First sign we have JP in the scene it is sat on the table and we have 3 seconds on screen, just looking around and towards Bella.

2.










The camera goes back to a close up of Bella and on the swing round as she walks to the desk, JP is again watching Bella.

3.










JP follows Bella with eyes.

4.










Camera cuts to a behind the table shot and JP is turning around.

5.










JP Turned around curious.

6.












Between Edward and Bella talking JP jumps up in the shot with Bella trying to get Edwards attention.

7.










JP jumping higher

8.











We do have some table shot time where JP will be looking at Bella walking backwards until JP becomes aware of the teachers hand about to squish JP on the desk.

9.











So JP see's this and has jumped to the side out of the way.

10.










We next have the clip about winning the golden onion for the class, JP is then really excited and jiggling side to side.

i have worked out that there's roughly 27-30 seconds of on screen animation for JP.

What i have left to do now is;
- to complete the JP rig/blendshapes
- to sort tracking and get help for wobble shot
- lighting in the scene.