Response to Feedback

This is a post that will respond to the feedback I got for my proposal for what i want to do for my dissertation project.

The main thing that was criticized about my proposal was that the timetable was too generic, in the sense that it wasn't really scoped properly and was too vague. It was originally going to be that I read everything that I have to know in the first semester and then spend the entire second semester rigging, skinning and animating. This of course wasn't going to be sufficient and one of the things I was told to do was look into animation pipelines, to which then allowed me to create my own pipeline and then refine my timetable.

My pipeline is as followed:

When it comes to starting the final product, I want to have some primary reference/s of the actions so I will record the actions on a camera. I will then next analysis the footage - look out for key poses: the contact, the recoil, the high point and the passing.

Once that is all done, I would then start to build the skeleton (or Rig as it is known as) - this will involve knowing where certain parts of the rig will involve using Forward Kinematics and Inverse Kinematics and I will need to add limiters to the joints also - which won't be too difficult as I can easily use myself as reference to know how far certain joints can move. The next step is skinning which is combining the skeleton to the mesh I will be animating. Then the animating itself - which I have allocated the most time too as it will be the most time consuming of everything else.

The final process will be the rendering which will involve adding a light in the scene, a camera following the movement and then batch rendering the animation. Batch Rendering is when the software renders every frame as an image and then put that into a video editing software.

Week	Date	Product
	23rd Sept – 27th Sept	Read up on the following material: animation tips, rigging, skinning,
1	30th Sept – 4th Oct
2	7th Oct – 11th Oct
3	14th Oct – 18th Oct
4	21st Oct – 25th Oct
5	28th Oct – 1st Nov
6	4th Nov – 8th Nov	Dissertation Proposal Submission
7	11th Nov – 15th Nov	Still reading, blogging and researching, will also start messing with the software (i.e. experimentation using Graph Editor for small animations, practice rigging)
8	18th Nov – 22nd Nov
9	25th Nov – 28th Nov
10	2nd Dec – 6th Dec
11	9th Dec – 13th Dec
12	16th Dec – 20th Dec
Christmas Break	23rd Dec – 27th Dec	Use this time to focus more on experimenting with the software a little bit more.
	30th Dec – 3rd Jan 2014
	6th Jan – 10th Jan
13	13th Jan – 17th Jan
14	20th Jan – 24th Jan	Video Storyboard: I will record the actions of what I want animate for my character.
15	27th Jan – 31st Jan	Analyse: look out for the key poses. Look at the contact, the recoil, the high point, and the passing.
16	3rd Feb – 7th Feb	Rigging: build the skeleton for the character. Add the IK handles where they’d need to be. Adding the limitations to how far joints move.
17	10th Feb – 14th Feb	Skinning: binding the deformable objects to the skeleton.
18	17th Feb – 21st Feb	Animate: animate the character doing a kip up, a run and then coming to a stop.
19	24th Feb – 28th Feb
20	3rd March – 7th March
21	10th March – 14th March
22	17th March – 21st March
23	24th March – 28th March
Easter Break	31st March – 4th April	Render: Use a camera to follow the movement. Add a light to the scene. Then start to batch render the animation then put it into a movie file.
	7th April – 11th April	This time is used for insurance – if something takes a little longer than it is supposed too, these spare weeks are for making sure that everything is done before the hand in.
	14th April – 18th April
24	21st April – 25th April
25	28th April – 2nd May
26	5th May – 9th May
	12th May – 16th May
	19th May – 23rd May
	26th May – 30th May

This is the updated timetable, the main concern that has now been addressed. I have given myself six weeks to animate as this will be combination of what I want as a final product and will therefore need a lot of time and effort put into it. Rigging and Skinning have been given a week for - while both important and they are two out of the three I will be marked on (the animation is the third) they shouldn't take as long in comparison to animating. The other tasks that I won't get marked on are also one week. 

The aim is to get this all done by the first week into the Easter break - however, in case tasks take longer than expected, I have decided that anything from the 7th April onwards is used as a sort of insurance - meaning if something takes longer than it should I can take a week out of the five there as a way of making sure I can get everything done on time.

Experimentation Set Up

For the purpose of getting to grips with using Maya 2014 - I thought it would be best to get started on looking for copyright free characters so I can attempt rigging them, skin them and then finally animate. This way I can learn how to do it and not to mention see just how long it takes.The link to the page is: http://www.3dmodelfree.com/models/26741-0.htm

The first image I came across was one of a mech (see the image below):

 
 



(the mech model I found from a copyright free website)











The reason why I won't be going with this for my experimenting is that the poly count on this model is dramatically high - too much detail in places where it's not needed, this cause the lab computers and my laptop to slow down using the software.

I looked on for another and found a another model, this one of a female character, and the poly count isn't so high it would not slow down the computer or the software too much. I hope to start experimenting with the software using this character soon, the software is running on my laptop which means that this should be happening sooner rather than later. The link to the original model can accessed via this link: http://animium.com/2012/09/cartoon-character-3d-model/

(screenshot of the character model imported into Maya)