There is so much one can talk about that is really hard to decide, I came to this course with the intention of trully learning animation and character movement but, one thing that I always admired was Hair.
Personally, I was never someone who would care much about my hair, it never looked bad and I never really did nothing unlike most girls, until teenagehood struck and my world changed and as soon as I felt good about that change and who I was, I leaned on hair. It’s weird, but it is a huge part of someone’s identity. For me it changed everything, I was a very unsure and misunderstood person, so I did what everyone always hoped I never did – I had dreadlocks made in my full head. Not as a way to go against anyone, but as a way to do something I wanted for so long and was affraid of, because of what would people think about, what would they say… As a teenager, that ussually matters, but that identity crisis made me realise that other people’s thoughts will never help me, in any way, reach my goals or even discover who I am, and what that meant to me.
So, for my research I got to a point where it made sense to try out hair and learn about it. I had an idea of a “movie of my own”, something I wrote in my college years and the main thing of that story was it’s main character and his dreadlocks. He would use them like a spider man web, but the dreadlocks would have some sort of life or will… Like an octopus. Never ever in my life I saw an animation movie character with dreadlocks and with that much importance in hair. The thing about this “movie” is that I always imagined it in a certain way, and now, more than ever I’m certain it is impossible to do an animation movie on my own. I wanted to model the character and hair, rig it, paint it, animate it, do the environments, everything! … it’s impossible, I have to be realistic and face it. So, now I face the difficulty… Where can I find a dreadlocked character to animate…? no one has one. That won’t stop me for sure.
Right now the main focus is to just talk about it, look at my options and what has been made with it. On the Pixar studios website, in the publications tab there are a few articles about hair explored in Tangled and in Moana, the hair in these movies is just more perfect than real life it’s extremelly appealing and I believe that gives so much to a character, like to a real person, hair is 50% of what you see in yourself, the rest is the face. When you check in a mirror how you look, the first thing you’ll want good is the head part, hair and face, only then you look at the rest. No one will check how they look by checking their knees first..
Also I believe, with the technology evolving so fast, hair will become something with a lot more to say. When talking about our research topic in class, Luke suggested a few tools in MAYA:
nHair
XGen
shaveandahaircut
And to search about rigging vs simulating hair, as of course, if I want accurate movements in hair I will certainly have to rig it and perhaps mix that technique with simulating hair, like in Tangled where they used both to animate hair that long and good looking.
This topic begins with character growth, a character must start with a problem deep within and in the end the audience expects the character to actually grow, even if he didn’t accomplish his goal there needs to be an improvement and change throughout the course of action that he goes through.
Weakness
The concept of weakness is the main focus, as it is the best way to experience change and growth. As humans, when we are born we are the weakest animal, most animals when born immediatly start walking, or eating or actually doing something for their survival. A baby horse as soon as it’s out of his mother’s womb starts walking and running. They need it or they die. But as humans we are born extremelly vulnerable and need a lot of help, as well as a looooooot of time to grow. The result of that growth is to be less vulnerable and weak, less sensible maybe.
There are two types of weakness:
Psycological – is a weakness that only affects the hero and no one else
Moral – is a weakness that imorrally affects the characters surrounding the hero
A psycological weakness can evolve to be also a moral weakness, the two combined are what makes up for good character development.
A good story, a well developed story needs to meet a few topics:
Make me care!
Don’t give the answer to the audience, make them believe they are getting to a solution, when in fact, as a story teller, you are doing it for them
Can you evoque wonder?
Story telling is made of guidelines, not hard, strict rules
In this task we were asked to chose three movies that we enjoyed and break them down for story and character development, analyse how the main characters evolve, how the characters drive the story and to identify it’s similarities.
How to train your dragon
This is one of my favourite movies of all time, in the village of Berk in a remote island live vikings who are ofter attacked by dragons, who steal their food, burn the village and endanger people’s lives. They hunt the dragons and fight them off and that makes them stronger and proud of being viking, but Hiccup, the son of the village chief is a very awkward kid and too sensible, not strong enough to fight the dragons, so he uses his other abilities to build mechanical devices to help him do what he cannot do with his very little strength. His projects ussually backfire.
One day, in one of the dragon attacks in the village, Hiccup uses one of those devices to shoot down a Night Fury – one of the most dangerous and rarest dragons, there was very little information about him. So Hiccup shoots him down but no one believes him, so he searches for him on his own and finds him still tied with his net and is uncapable to kill the dragon, so he releases him.
His father Stoik is determined to find the dragons nest and enrrols Hiccup in a dragon fighting class where there are other kids including the girl he has a crush on, Astrid. Later on, Hiccup returns to the place where he found the dragon and finds him there, he couldn’t fly as the net had tore of part of his tail fin. Hiccup and the dragon become closer and he names him Toothless because of his retractable teeth and as he felt bad for hurting him he designs a prosthetic tail fin which allows the dragon to fly when he rides him, controling the prosthetic.
He learns a lot about dragon behavior and finds a way to dominate them without any harm and earns the class respect, but in his final exam he will have to kill a dragon. All his sudden success in the class makes Astrid jealous and suspicious and follows him to the forest and discovers his secret. Hiccup takes Astrid for a ride to show her that dragons are not so dangerous and she reminds him of his final exam. Right after this, Toothless enters some sort of hypnosis and takes them to the dragons nest where they discover that the dragons steal food for a superior and giant dragon called Red Death, who kills them if they don’t bring enough food.
With this discovery, Astrid wants to tell the people what they just found out and that the dragons steal food because their lives are in danger, but Hiccup decides that it is too dangerous for Toothless so they keep it a secret.
The next day, Hiccup has his final exam and tries to dominate the dragon with his abilities and knowledge about dragons but Stoik, Hiccup’s father angers the dragon into attacking, Toothless arrives to protect Hiccup and is captured by the vikings. Accidentally hiccup reveals to his father that Toothless took them to the nest and Stoik disowns him and takes toothless in the main ship to lead them to the nest. Hiccup is devastated and Astrid helps him regain his confidence, which then leads to his search for Hiccup along with the other kids from the class.
The vikings find the nest and break it open, causing the dragons to fly away but also awakening the Red Death that soon attacks the vikings, which they did not expect nor were prepared for. Right after this Hiccup and his friends show up riding the captive dragons of the village and distract Red Death, while Hiccup releases Toothless, almost drowning, but Stoik runs to their rescue, saving them and reconciling with his son. Hiccup and Toothless are able to kill the Red Death by shooting a fireball while he prepares to spit fire, but Hiccup gets injured, losing his lower left leg, when he wakes up, now in the village, Gobber the blacksmith designs him a prothetics and he is admired by everyone in Berk. Astrid kisses him and a new era begins, where dragons live among humans.
Character Breakdown
Hiccup
In the beggining of the movie he is a very shy kid, doesn’t really trust his abilities and feels that his father looks at him with disapointment, he tries to prove his worth but always ends up failling.
Hiccup starts evolving with the friendship with toothless and discovers a lot about dragons and that his people are wrong about them
He aquires the respect of the viking people for suddendly being so good at dominating dragons
Hiccup is pressured into killing a dragon and make his father proud but his secret is revealed when toothless comes to his rescue – toothless is jailed
Hiccup is desowned by his father and no one believes him anymore
Hiccup is devastated but Astrid helps him get his self confidence back and strength to save Toothless and the viking people
Stoik saves Hiccup and Toothless from drowning
Father and son make amends
Toothless saves Hiccup from dying after defeating Red Death
Hiccup loses his lower leg
The viking people change their behavior towards dragons and accept them in their daily life – Hiccup has the respect of the people
Who drives the story?
This story is driven by Hiccup, as he begins as someone shy and disregarded, no one really believes him and he is affraid of most things. Trying to prove himself he is able to hit a Night Fury and cannot kill him, so they become friends. He improves his knowledge with dragons and sees them like no one else. When pressured to kill a dragon he tries to prove to everyone they’re not bad and the dragon attacks him, leading toothless to come to his rescue, and eventually jailed by vikings. He looses the people’s respect and is disowned by his father who then takes toothless to lead him to the dragons nest. Hiccup goes after them and almost drowns when saving toothless, his father saves them both and they reconcile.
In the end, they’re able to kill the giant dragon and hiccup loses his lower leg, when he wakes up, everyone had a dragon and had changed their minds about them. A new era begins and dragons and humans live together. Hiccup’s way of viewing the world changed the world around him and he never gave up proving everyone he didn’t have to be the same as everyone else, everyone has a skill and it doesn’t necessarilly mean is better or worse.
Onward
In a world once filled with mystical creatures, technology evolved and those creatures began to find magic obsolete and almost no one practised it anymore. In the city of New Mushroomton, nowadays, live two elf brothers, Ian and Barley Lightfoot, Ian being a very sensitive and shy younger brother and Barley being the confident and impulsive older brother, they live with their mother and their father died shortly after Ian was born. Laurel, their mother has a new boyfriend, a half centaur policeman whom the brothers dislike.
On Ian’s sixteenth birthday, Laurel gives her sons a present that their father left to open on Ian’s birthday: a magical staff, a rare Phoenix gem and a letter with a visitation spell which allowed them to ressurect their father for one day and give them the opportunity to meet him for a full day. Ian succeeds in casting the spell but the gem desintegrates and the spell isn’t finished which results in them having only the lower half of his father’s body.
The brothers go on an adventure to search for another gem to complete the spell on Barley’s van which he called guinevere. When their mother discovers their children went on a dangerous adventure she leaves to look for them.
Ian and Barley visit the Manticore’s tavern, that has become a family restaurant managed by a manticore with the name of Corey, while fighting over a map which lead them there Corey realises how boring her life is and drives the costumers away and accidentally sets the map on fire as well as the restaurant. Ian and Barley are left with one more clue to find the gem, a childrens menu map that points them to the Raven’s Point (a nearby mountain). When Laurel arrives to the restaurant, the children have departed and she befriends Corey which warns Laurel that the brothers search can trigger the awakening of a curse that can only be defeated by her sword, which they steal from a pawn shop.
When arriving at the mountain, Ian and Barley are followed by the police and a group of pixie motards but can luckely get away and follow the lead of ravens point – to follow the direction in which various raven statues point. Colt, Laurel’s boyfriend goes after them, calling reinforcements and when he is almost catching the brothers, Barley sacrifices Guinevere to stall the policeman. While following the ravens path they enter a cave and fight various threats during which Barley reveals to Ian that he refused to say goodbye to their father before he died. On the last obstacle from the cave they appear to be back at Ian’s highschool and he lashes out on Barley, leaving with his father’s lower body.
Ian rereads the list of things he wanted to do with his father and realises that his brother has always been his father figure and returns to make amends with his brother. Barley discovers that the gem they’ve been looking for is in a fountain across the street from the highschool and when he picks it up the curse Corey talked about is activated, a dragon made of pieces from the school and everything around it emerges and tries to recover the gem. The staff Ian needs to fight the dragon is away and he retrieves it though magic from a splint of magic wood stuck in his hand to continue the fight. Corey and Laurel arrive and defeat the dragon with Cprey’s sword , buying Ian time to to cast the visitation spell and fully reform his father’s body, Ian sends Barley to go and say a proper goodbye to his father. Laurel, with the help of Ian is able to kill the dragon and destroy it. When their father dissolves, Barley tells Ian that their father is proud of him and they hug.
Later on, Ian surprises Barley by painting his new van with his new abilities with magic, calling the van “Guinevere the second”. Corey reopens the restaurant now telling stories about past adventures, Corey and Laurel become friends and Ian and Barley develop a better relationship with Colt, who started to chase bad guys with his own foot. The world becomes more aware of magic and it is introduced in the modern society.
Character Breakdown
Ian
Ian is a very shy and awkward kid who never met his father as he died shortly after he was born
His brother is the complete oposite from him, enthusiasatic, impulsive and a fanatic for role playing games
When they recieve the present their father left for when they were both 16 Ian has finally the chance to meet his father and spend one day with him. His hope rises
He accidentally succeeds in casting the spell but the gem dissolves and his father is only half full
Ian and Barley go on an adventure to find another gem and have their father back
They meet Corey who then sends them to ravens point
Colt arrives to take them home but they are able to run away
They go through numerous threats and Barley reveals he refused to say goodbye to his father before he died
They end up at Ian’s highschool and he gets really mad at Barley but soon realises he is the father he never had
They discover the magic gem and are able to have their whole father back
Ian sends Barley to say goodbye to their father while Ian holds off the curse
Barley is the only one to be with his father and tells Ian how proud their father was of him
Ian is different as he now has an answer he was looking for his whole life – who was he and who was his father – he had it all the whole time
Who drives the story?
This story is driven by Ian and Barley father, Willem, he is the key and purpose thoughout the whole plot. As soon as the brothers discover that they have the chance to meet their father one more time everything evolves around it. Ian having so little confidence in himself and not knowing who he is and Barley having the sour feeling of refusing to say goodbye to his father before he died. In the end, Ian realises that his father figure is his brother and gives up his only chance to meet his father just so Barley could have the chance to say goodbye. He realises the answers he was looking for his whole life were right in front of him – Ian turns to magic after the whole thing and the world starts vewing it not as an obsolete practice, but something that’s part of their culture.
Despicable Me
A supervilain named Gru is extremelly angry when an unknown supervilain steals the Great Pyramid of Giza, with the help of Dr. Nefario, his scientist partner in crime and his minions Gru decides to steal the moon by shrinking it. Ofcourse, this being an expensive procedure Gru requests to The Bank of Evil for a loan, that is immeadiatly denied unless he had the shrinking ray as a guaranty of his success in the mission. When Gru discovers who his rival is, he openly declares “war”.
Gru and the minions steal the shrink ray but are soon surprised by Vector who steals it from them. In an attempt to recover the shrink ray Gru tries to enter Vector’s fort but is unsuccessfull and notices three orfan girls who can enter easily as they are selling cookies. Gru disguises and adopts the girls, Margo, Edith and Agnes, planning to use them to infiltrate Vector’s base. The girls are stubborn and Gru strugles to nurture them, as he doesn’t know how to do it.
Eventually, Gru is able to steal back the shrink ray and plans to abandon the girls at a theme park, where instead of abandoning them he starts bonding with them. When Gru contacts The Bank of Evil, mr. Perkins refuses to give him the loan and the girls offer him their little amount of money from their piggy banks, inspired, Gru and the minions start selling some things gru stole over the years and are able to build a spacecraft without the need of any loan. The plan is to steal the moon on the day it is closer to earth which is the same day as the girls ballet recital, but Dr. Nefario, affraid that it would ruin the plan calls the orphanage and the girls are taken back. Mr. Perkins tips of Vector of Gru’s possession of the shrik ray and pressures him to take action.
Gru succeeds in his mission to steal the moon and rushes back to earth to the recital and soon realises that Vector took them captive and wants the moon in exchange for the girls. Gru gives up the moon, but Vector doesn’t fullfill his part of the deal and runs away with the girls and the moon. Meanwhile, Dr. Nefario discovers that the shrink ray has a side effect, the bigger the shrinked object is the faster it goes back to it’s original form. With this, Gru, the minions and Dr. Nefario rescue the girls in the middle of a air trip and soon the moon starts growing and orbits back to it’s place taking vector with it.
Later on, Gru readopts the girls, writting them a bedtime story based on his own experience with them, the girls perform the recital to Gru, Dr. Nefario, the minions and Gru’s mother until a minion changes the music to a modern dance party.
Character Breakdown
Gru
Gru is a very selfish man and only cares about himself and in being the best vilain that ever lived
He is very upset that a better vilain stole the Great Pyramid of Giza
He wants to steal the moon, but needs the shrink ray gun to get the loan from The Bank of Evil
He cannot enter Vector’s fort and comes up with a plan – to adopt 3 girls who sell cookies, use them to enter the fort and steal the shrink ray
He disguises and adopts the girls and is able to steal the shrink ray gun
He has trouble nursing the girls
The Bank of Evil refuses to loan him the money for his evil plan, and everyone around him wants to help, which inspires him and the minions to gather materials and sell some thing in order to build a spacecraft to go to the moon
The day he has to steal the moon is the same day of the girls ballet recital and Dr. Nefario sends the girls back to the orphanage to avoid any distractions
Gru steals the moon and rushes back to earth to the recital
When he gets there, it had already finished and discovers Vector has them
He trades the moon for the girls but vector runs away with both
He discovers the shrink ray is only temporary and the bigger the shrinked object the faster it is to get back to it’s original size, so they go and rescue the girls
The moon gets back to it’s original size and place and Vector goes with it
Gru readopts the girls and now reads them bedtime stories created by him
Who drives the story?
This story is driven by the girls, as everything Gru does from the moment he adopts them is whether to do things against them, as he didn’t like them nor want them, but as soon as Gru started to spend more time with them, they drive the story. Gru starts having a purpose and changes his way with everything around him.
Body mechanics, as the name suggests, is the way your body moves, it’s unique mechanics to allow you to move and do everything a human (in this case) does, everytime we move, a lot of movements are done, no movement is done by one muscle or member.
So, in animation, we have to know how body mechanics work and be aware of every tiny movement, they are the key to make a character unique and alive. Movement is part of the personality of a character, no one moves the same way, as no one has the same body mechanics, orelse we would just be robots, repeated and standard movements all equal. It’s just not appealing nor realistic.
When animating, the things we need to be aware of are the secondary actions and overlaping movements of the body, for example, when a character jumps from a high place to the floor the arms go up and follow the path of the body, and go down a bit after the body hits the floor as a way to give some balance when landing. Also, in a jump the body doesn’t just go and falls, it needs preparation, so it usually bends to boost the jump. All these actions are part of body mechanics, it’s instint, nothing moves without a force either driving or pulling it.
A very good example of body mechanics are sports, parkour, challenges like Wipeout, Ninja Warrior, World’s Largest, etc. Things that take effort and require some skills and training.
In this exercise, we were asked to do, ofcourse, a body mechanics animation. Look for reference, choose a character and animate it. I chose parkour, every teenager had once the dream to do those jumps and behave like a super hero. Ofcourse in reality we do fall more than we actually look cool.
At first I wanted to make my character do something like a circuit with some obstacles and walls for it to jump. So i downloaded some videos and got them together as reference and decided to do just the first clip, as it was more complex and had more than one jump.
My set up was inspired in the first reference clip and I modeled it directly on MAYA. At first it was much more complex as I wanted to do 2 of the clips, so I extended my circuit, only to later discover that I didn’t have time to do so many jumps and things.
first setupfinal setup
In the end I reduced it to just the first part and this was the final setup.
Reference
In the reference video the man is very quick to jump the wall, so I decided to make my character run 3 steps before the jump, I used The animators survival kit reference for the run and then used both the image and the video for reference, as the video is filmed from the back view it’s easier to make your own movement with both. I chose Sam as my character, I saw a parkour spirit in him.
On the first jump I noticed the feet were not synchronized with the reference, but honestly I just thought that it would be good to do that brain exercise, to actually have to understand body mechanics and not just copy reference. Ofcourse, the next jump I had the same problem, so I changed the way he made the second jump after climbing the wall.
With this animation i really understood the value of the hips, not that I didn’t know it’s importance before, but I believe that it clicked. It’s really the key to every movement, its like the second brain of it all. The final jump was so much about the hips that if I didn’t knew it before it had to be then or the animation would never be finished.
It was much longer that I expected or wanted it to be, and just for blocking… Polishing can take longer because I want everything to be at it’s best, but blocking has to be fast. Spent too much time just for the run, then I took a break and really focused on the blocking meaning! So it was faster, seeing Pixar blocking clips was a relief because I realized that it really doesn’t have to be perfect, it’s just a rough preview of what it is going to be (not just when studying, in real life too).
The first playblast was terrible and he was just running, not even jumping and super fast. So thankful playblasts exist. So I changed the keyframes a bit further and things started looking better and I started the jump.
First playblast – super fast Sam!
Timing correction!
After this, my workflow improved and I finally got faster. Had a few problems when climbing the wall as the arms were not being cooperative and they do a very weird turn in an in-between frame as well as the feet in the final twisted jump. At some point I decided I needed to animate the knees but then that began to be a really big problem and I deleted the keyframes, I realized that the rotation of the feet where enough for the pose I wanted. Up until now my feet only have animation on the rotation x. Body mechanics forbids such thing. Everything moves.
Despite all that needs correcting I was pretty happy with the final result and can’t wait to finish the polish.
Final blocking playblast
Polish/Spline
I seriously never took so much time to finish polishing an animation, but I’m happy with the final result although some things need to be fixed. The part that really took more time were the hands as they move if I touch the spine controls, so I had a small cube near them to keep track of their position.
On the building I also added some breaks so the character could have its fingers grab it when climbing the wall and look more realistic, or else he would be just pushing his hands against the wall.
The wall part was the most difficult as I didn’t copy exactly all the movements from the reference footage and had to make a few changes, so I ended up just imagining the movements and occasionally watching the footage for movement reference.
With this work I realised I need to improve my hand animation, and that I really should have a keyframe on every frame as it slows down the workflow – learnt it the worst way. Hopefully I will not repeat that.
We had the amazing opportunity to be learning matchmove and a bit of rotomation with a pro from the industry, Dom Maldlow a 3D Generalist.
I was pretty excited and a bit nervous, I was affraid I would get lost and well…. I guess that’s normal. It went well, and yes I got a bit lost in the middle of the session but Dom helped me so I didn’t fall behind. The session began with a small presentation of Dom about his path to where he is now professionally. It is inspiring to learn how people who have the job you want got there, it sort of makes things a bit more possible in our minds. After the presentation, we jumped to 3DEqualizer – a software that is usually learned on the job and very scary when I looked at it for the first time.
I admit I was expecting something a bit more like MAYA, it’s clear that it is a new thing, the interface is not made to be pretty or appealling, it’s made to work and the tools are great. Ofcourse having this session online makes it harder for everyone, the teacher and the student, the teacher can’t really see our screens when we have a problem so, we students have to find a way to explain whats up even if we don’t know what went wrong.
The first step was to import footage provided by Dom and track the camera so it could be “read” by the software. After importing the footage, we have to create a new camera and set up the gamma to 1.000 and the softclip to 2.000, then export the buffer compression file and only then we can start setting up the points. It is important that we find points in the different depths of the footage and on high contrast spots and be aware that the points might move when we track them. If that happens we have to put them back in their place and in some situations we have to track each frame individually.
Some points might need to be ended and then restarted if, for example a person walks in front of them or the camera moves and the point is out of the frame for a while. The first place where we found the points was the grafitti, it’s wall and the floor. Then, in the back, on the gate. The wall near the gate and finally the buildings in the back. It is important to find points in all the different depths of the footage so the software recognizes the paralax.
After all the points were found this is what it should look like:
After this we have to go to the deviation graphics and smooth the green curve, the deviation value must be under 2.00, so the curves with higher spikes must be deactivated to then calc from scratch. In the deviation browser inicially looks like this:
Each blue curve represents a point we created in the footage. After smoothing the green curve, that represents the calculation of all the blue curves. The smooth green curve must look like this:
In this process I fell a bit behind because I deactivated too many points so my curves were completely messed up. And when I hit the Calc from scratch button my footage was equally bad.
The footage was completelly distorted so I asked for help and the way to solve this was to activate every point again and recalculate that from scratch and start over in order to decrease the deviation value to below 2.00. Under the menu Point and select Timeline Weight Blending, hit calc from sractch again and everything looked so much better, I was out of trouble.
This is what it should look like. When these are good, we hit use result and every curve looks good and is below the desired value – 2.00 and thankfully no distorted footage.
When this is complete we need to go to the Parameter adjustment window, hit brute force a few times and hit Adjust, which will then look like the image below in the 3D space. A window will show up to transfer the calculations that were just made to the project.
After this we have to go to environments-orientation, select all the points and set up the locators
All set to export to maya, but as we were using the Personal Learning edition of 3DEqualizer we were not able to complete that. After the session I installed 3DEqualizer Enterprise and redid the exercise and exported the footage to maya, a .mel file, ready for the next session.
Matchmove Session 2!!
The next week we had a second session with Dom. This time the task was quite different, the footage was from a man on the street looking at his phone. The beggining was similiar to the previous session, we had to create a new camera, create a polygroup and find points in the different depths of the video and track them.
we learned a different method to track points, by pattern which means that the software will calculate the point not by its contrast but by its shape and pattern. The previous points were all tracked in marker tracking mode, which is the most used. It always usefull to know the diverse tools we have to do the same thing, sometimes a different method can be better than the most used.
Right after this, we calc from scratch, use result and save project. The next step was to create a new object inside the camera and the task was to find points in the man’s face so it could be tracked. The best places to get points in the face is in the eyebrows, forehead, between the eyes and in the hair. We had a few minutes to find the face points and in the end, mine, looked like this:
Same process, calc from scratch, use result and go to the Parameter Adjustment Window, brute force all and adjust. On this part I had a problem and the parameters i got were wrong
The problem was the focal length of the camera so I changed it and recalculated the paramenters and all looked good again
After this we had to download and import a iron man helmet .obj to place it on the man’s head.
As we can see in the image above, the blue arrow is pointing for the iron man helmet and the black arrow is pointing to the points we tracked in the beggining of the session, in the background. Now we had to open a new window of 3DEqualizer and having one in F5 environment (lineup) and another in F6 environment (orientation) we had to select the points in the mans face and assign them to the vertices of the helmet.
When all the points are in the approximate right place, on the lineup environment we should have something like this
The points dont have to be perfectly positioned as this can be adjusted later. Now, the orientation environment window can be closed and we can calc from scratch, use result.
To adjust the helmet to the mans face a bit more preciselly we can reopen the second 3DE window and on lineup environment, select translate or rotate to adjust the helmet to its right place in the orientation env.
After this is all set, we have to export for nuke and MAYA. That was the part that I really fell behind and couldn’t really solve my problem. When I tried to export for nuke, I got an error saying that “only selected cameras can be exported” and nothing really happened when I hit ok. So I just watched the rest of the session and try it later.
When we imported the project to MAYA, we also had to import the .fbx iron man helmet and use the .mel file with the data from 3DE along with the footage to now render the model of the helmet with the correct shaders and render settings to then export and have a small animation of a man with an iron man helmet.
This was the part that I got really lost and have to redo and improve. I was not catching up with the MAYA task because my 3DE was not being very helpfull. This was a great session and I really hope we do more things like this, to me it’s always a step closer to know and learn from the industry and to have the opportunity to do something that is so new and needed nowadays was great to open our horizons and professional possibilities.
Personally I had never heard of 3DEqualizer or matchmove and rotomation until the start of the masters and it’s a field that really interested me in every way.
The theory behind story arcs began with Joseph Campbell’s book The Hero With A Thousand Faces and he concluded that there are characteristics of an effective story and they are consistent regardless of race, time, ethinity or background. Dan Harmon simplified that theory and created the story circle, that is divided in 8 stages of the story.
He believes that there are 3 dualities that make it possible to maintain the rhythm of the story:
So, the 8 stages of the story circle are:
A character is in a zone of comfort
They want something
They enter an unfamiliar situation
Adapt to it
Get what they wanted
Pay a heavy price for it
Then return to their familiar situation
Having changed
Types of Characters
Protagonist or Antagonist
Dynamic or Static
Round or Flat
Protagonist – is the main character
Antagonist – is the other main character, usually bad and an immediate threat to the main character (like cinderella evil stepmother)
Dynamic – is a character that grows throughout the story, it’s behavior has an important change of behavior, teaches a lesson.
Static – the opposite of a dynamic character, doesn’t change much and it’s ideas are fixed, like vilans
Round – are well developed characters, they are realistic in emotions, thoughts or even feelings
Flat – the opposite of a round character, a lack of depth in it’s development and personality can be seen, they’re not very important but they’re needed as secondary actions in the background
Breakdown a Story Arc of a movie that we like and enjoyed!
Based on this we had to choose a movie and breakdown it’s story arc and characters, so I chose the movie Avatar by James Cameron. One of my favourite movies of all time, and despite it being released in 2009 it is still a movie that blows my mind away. Every. Single. Time.
(SPOILER ALERT!!!)
The movie takes place in 2154 and humans had exhausted earth’s natural resources and found an habitable moon orbiting Polyphemus, called Pandora. It’s atmosphere is poisonous to humans and is inhabited by the Na’vi, blue skinned 3 meter humanoids that live in harmony with nature and worship a goddess called Eywa. Humans use Na’vi hybrids called avatars who have the same looks as the human who operates them through a machine that transfers them to the avatar body, making them look exactly like the Na’vi people in order to explore pandora’s biology.
Jake Sully, a former marine who lost his ability to walk in battle, is asked to replace his bother Tommy who died to be an operator of an avatar and finish his bother’s mission. Jake is considered an outsider due to his ignorance to the Na’vi people and pandora and Dr. Grace, the head of the Avatar Program, doesn’t really like him at the beggining but accepts his entrance in the program. On their first mission jake is attacked by an animal and disappears into the deep forest and is recued by Neytiri, a female Na’vi who then takes him to the head of the people and Neytiri is ordered to teach jake and iniciate him to their society.
Jake is promised that when the mission is over he will have his ability to walk again and his lifestyle will improve as a motivation to convince the Na’vi to leave their home so the humans could mine an extremelly profitable mineral who’s richest mines lay under the Hometree (their sacred place and home. When Dr. Grace learns about this she takes Jake and Norm to a hidden place and in the following 3 months Jake falls in love with Neytiri and the Na’vi people, Neytiri and Jake mate and the humans soon discover that he has changed his side of the war. Humans destroy a sacred site and the general orders that the home tree is destroyed.
The general then gives Dr. Grace and Jake an hour to convince the Na’vi to leave the place orelse they’re killed along with the hometree. Jake confesses he entered their society by being a spy and becomes their captive but is then freed by the head of the Na’vi as a cry for help but they are detached from their avatar bodys and imprisoned by humans. The pilot trudy helps them escape and takes them to a hidden place and jake regains the Na’vi trust by connecting his mind to a dragon-like predator and honoured by the pandora people.
During the war between the Na’vi and the humans, the Na’vi gather every clan of pandora to fight with them and soon the rest of the biology of the planet joins them and overwhelms the humans winning the war. In that period the general is able to escape his falling airplane and finds Jake’s avatar unit where his human body was, shoots it and almost kills jake but Neytiri intervenes, killing the general and recuing jake from sofucating.
After winning the war, the hometree was destroyed and the Na’vi suffered a great lost of their people. The humans were expelled from Pandora and the Na’vi try to transfer Jake to his avatar body definitly. The movie ends with Jake opening his eyes.
Story Arc
YOU – Jake is a former marine, who was hurt in battle and he lives with the dream of getting is legs back, something possible with the worlds technology but he doesn’t have the resources for it.
NEED – his brother dies and he is asked to step into his shoes.
GO – wakes up from his 6 year trip to pandora, is introduced to the team, the program and the mission.
SEARCH – goes for the first time in a mission to get to know the forest and its environment and biology and gets attacked and lost. Saved by Neytiri he is introduced to the Na’vi and gets their first glimpse of trust and starts learning their habits.
FIND – When sent to a remote place to focus on the mission, he gets more and more of the Na’vi trust and starts to really enjoy his time in pandora and with Neytiri. Jake now has their trust and becomes a member of their society. He is pressured to rush the process as the humans want to start mining the product.
TAKE – Jake and Neytiri mate and humans realise that his allegiance has changed and want to attack immediatly. Jake and Grace have an hour to convince the Na’vi to relocate. They confess to be spies in the Na’vi society and loose their trust, humans destroy the Hometree and the people are devastated but fight until the end.
RETURN – Jake connects with a dragon-like predator and regains the Na’vi trust. With the help of the other clans and all the animals from Pandora they win the war and humans are sent back to Earth. Allowing the habitants from pandora to start over and heal from all that destruction.
CHANGE – The Na’vi chooses Jake as their leader and attempt to transfer him to his avatar body definitly and make him part of the clan as one of their own.
Main Character’s Timeline (Jake)
Character Archetypes
Hero – Jake sully is the hero and engages in a dangerous mission in the most hostile place for humans. As an outsider no one believes he is worthy of the mission but he believes he can do it and does it better than anyone. In the end, despite all his conditions and ignorance of Pandora, he is the one who saves them all and is trully commited to the mission (that mission changes thoughout the movie). He had no use and yet, became the most usefull of them all.
Mentor/Threshold Guardian – Despite her misjudgement of Jake when she meets him, she is the one who trully knows Pandora’s biology and the Na’vi people, being the author of a book about it. She is the head of the Avatar Program and provides all the insight the avatar operators need to be in the field. Other than mentor, I see Dr. Grace as the Threshold Guardian as she is the one trying to protect them and to test everyone for their skills to engage the mission. She tests everyone’s commitment and worth.
Herald – When Jake gets into a fight and is kicked out of a bar, lying on the floor, two men in suits appear and break the news to him – his brother had died in an assault. These men are the entity that propose to him to take on the mission in his brothers shoes.
Shapeshifter – Tsu’tey is the one I believe to be the shapshifter due to his evolution of opinion on Jake since the beggining of the movie. At first he does not like him and believes he does not deserve to be among his people but in the end he respects him and supports him as the new leader of the Na’vi. He even learns with Jake, despite the fact that Jake stole the woman he was supposed to mate with.
Shadow – Colonel Miles Quaritch is the opposite of the hero, Jake Sully. He has to complete the mission despite it’s casualties and is willing to go at any length to get what he wants. At the beggining of the movie he is the one who comands everyone to do their jobs, but he never cared about the Na’vi people and has no remorse for killing them and destroying their sacred places and worships.
Allies (sidekicks) – Norm and Trudy are the allies, norm as the one who knows what Jake should know about Pandora and the mission itself, and Trudy as the one who gets them out of difficult situations, helps them escape. She is the cool pilot who has an immeadiate good relationship with Jake and helps them until the end.
