Wednesday, 28 July 2010

Pretty much finished the animation test for George. I had some trouble matching the mouth movements to the sound file, but this was due to lack of experience rather than any problem with the UI or morphs. The only problem I had with the rig was the use of cloth on the earphone wire,. No matter what I tried I couldn’t get it to compute therefore opted for some controllers linked to the wire at different lengths using linked xform, to move them wire slightly where necessary. It doesn’t have that dynamic I wanted, but the effect is not worth the amount of time it would take and problems caused with the cloth modifier. The renders will take another 16 hours, for the 30 seconds, which is not that bad time wise. This experience has given me more confidence on working on the On the Line Animation and Lip Sync, and am quite happy with the progress. Comet Cartoons 3d help on animation (a case study) and his lip sync tutorial greatly guided me through this first animation test. There were some tweaks in the process also, such as making the inner sleeve ends black rather than the same texture as the jacket. But apart from that the morphs seem to work well, and I am happy with the degree of emotion the character reflects. Anyways here’s a render from the scene.