Preface: This was part of a personal project I've been working on and off for the past decade. I figured posting about it would be good way to keep motivated. It didn't work. :P
Original Post: May '12
I mentioned a while back that was a professional animator, using the traditional definition of professional to mean, “I got paid to do it.”. But I don’t know if I mentioned that said animation was computer animation, i.e. not drawn by hand. If ya ever ventured to my website, you might have a better idea of what I do. Well, I’m currently developing a person project of mine which involves original characters I’ve created.
I’ve been working on these characters on and off for almost tens years now, but I haven’t gotten very far due to my own innate laziness. Well I’m at again, and in an attempt to keep my creative momentum up, I’ll make a series of posts here about what I’m doing. But first I’ll need to get you caught up…
This is Charlie:
Charlie was the core character of many I developed while learning my craft at school. I didn’t just learn how to animate computer characters, but how to create them from the ground up and Charlie was the character I chose to create. Since I was learning everything for the first time, he went through a lot of revisions. For example, the first time I made him, it was without a shirt because I assumed the school would teach us how to use the fancy cloth tools 3d programs used…which it turns out they didn’t. :P The version up there was the last, created after I’d graduated and learned a few more things about the program I use.* It was not easy.
Unlike hand-drawn animation where you can just…well, draw a character by hand, simply getting to the point where you can animate a computer character takes a lot of technical know how I wasn’t prepared for…and I’m still not. Looking back now, it seems to me computer animation really has it’s roots all the different forms of animation. To wit:
In order to animate a 3d computer character, you of course first had to make them in the computer. The method’s called ‘modelling’ and is most comparable to something like sculpting such as for claymation. While there were many different methods, it all basically amounts to moving around a lot of points and flat surfaces in a virtual 3d space in order to create an object shaped like whatever you want. In my case, this:
There’s a reason I shaped him to into that position, but it comes after the next step: making this person-shaped object look like an actual person.
Stay tuned!
*Maya, for those who are curious.
2nd Post:
The only thing - the only thing - a computer understands is numbers. Everything it does is based on this simple truth, so on a fundamental level a computer does not understand color. I say this to point out why this next part is bit…middleman-ish.
See, after you’ve created the shape of whatever it is you were making, there are two things you have to apply to make it actually look like what you were intending. First are shaders, which are the computers way of making anything look like…well something else based on how light reflects of it. It’s the tech-y stuph a computer does to make an object look like wood/velvet/glass/skin/etc and since it’s tech-y I know next to nothing about it and rarely deal with it. I typically make the a simple default shader applied to my characters and then texture them instead.
Ah textures! Texturing is using an image to make a computer object like whatever it is your trying to get it to look like. Why make something look real through calculus level mathematics when you can just paint it to look like ya want? ‘Specially when you don’t know anything more complicated than algebra. The problem is that you can’t just ‘paint’ over a 3d object, first you have to ‘map’ it.
Imagine you’re making a ball out of a metric ass-ton of flat triangles, with each triangle having a piece of paper on top of it. The triangles are all different sizes and shapes, but after a lot of hard work, you’re able to put them all together to look like a ball, but you had to…do things. Things like cut some of the larger triangles into smaller ones. Move some triangles around, and twist others at unexpected angles. Just a whole buttload of tweaking of these freaking triangles…which means all that paper that was attached to them got all scrunched up, twisted around and messed up all to hell and back. Well now let’s say you’re trying to make this ball look like the earth. Well the only way to do that for this particular ball is to take those pieces of paper and paint the earth on it all, then wrap it around the ball to make it look like the earth, but now they’re all screwed up after all that work you did, so you have to unscrunch and untwist and flatten ‘em all out again, then paint them earth on them, then wrap them around the ball you made.
It’s called ‘UV mapping’. It’s convoluted in concept, but the actual execution isn’t difficult…just tedious. It basically amounts to pushing points around on a 2d plane instead of 3d until you have place a square image and make it look like it naturally wraps around a 3d object. It’s annoying, but I’ll take it over trying to figure out shaders any day of the week.
3rd Post:
The OC I’ve been working on for the past week or so…well, okay maybe more like two. :P
She’s still not fully ‘rigged’ for animation yet since it’s been years since I last attempted it and there’s been some hurdles that I’m not sure how to overcome.
Rigging is the process of preparing a computer generated 3d model so that it can be animated. In professional circles, it’s called ‘Technical Direction’. It’s rather a bit like a digital version of stop motion animation, (not claymation mind you) which requires the stop-motion puppets to be rigged with wire-frame skeletons so the animators can move them easily in the poses they require. It’s extremely difficult because it’s highly technical and so I absolutely hate it. However since I lack the funds (or firepower) to obtain the services of an expert, I’m left with no option but to make a rig for my characters my own damn self. So far I’ve rigged a little under a dozen characters and not one has been without bugs. Such is the same for this character and I haven’t even finished the rig yet!
Ah well. I think it’s time for a break…maybe try another character on for size…
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