Unit 2.1 Advanced and Experimental 3D Computer Animation Techniques – Project 1, week 10.
I decided to collect more references for the visuals dog poses and behaviours when feeling certain emotions. This will help me understand how I should animate the dog better.
Research /References
A good source of research was this book (Abrantes, 1997). Real world examples can be found at this reference (Woods, 2018).
Play Blast and Animation Progress
I applied the arc principle where appropriate, to enhance the visual quality of the animation. I positioned the poses, then changed the tangents to spline and smoothed out the curves so that they were not flat. This resulted in a more natural movement, where the character never stops moving. Even slightly, unless it was on purpose.
Ear Animation
Blink Animation
Tail Animation
For details about these animation stages, please see the link below (figure 8). Since I used the same character for both projects, the animation tests were the same for these body parts in the Premise Project also.
Jump from Cement Block Animation
Although the height of the jump/fall is different, I can still analyse the way the dog positions its paws before and after the jump. Within my animation, I wanted to add a little hop off the cement block, under the dog house. This will reference will suffice. When in slow-motion, I can see that the back legs hop towards the edge of the surface. I also noticed that the front legs stretch into position before the landing, then bend down to take the impact of the fall.
The head lowers just before the fall, then rises afterwards. The body extends/ stretches at the start of the fall, then contracts on the landing. I made sure to continue the centre of gravity through curved motions before and after the jump to show momentum and a transfer of weight. I made sure to include most of these elements into my animation. I also used figure 9 as a reference, as this video helped me to see the dogs movements more clearly with motion capture. See figure 10 for the play blast of this animation.
Play Blast
Stomp/ The First Step
Walk Out of Dog House and Shocked by the Noise.
Parts of the video that were used: 0.40-0.58secs. I noticed how the legs were staggered as the front legs came off the ground, and when the back legs landed. However the back legs come off the ground at the same time. I believe that this is key to making my animation look more lifelike, I will add these details.
Scared by the Noise Animation
I applied certain animation principle techniques that I could perceive from the reference video in figure 14. For example, I added anticipation to the ‘shocked by loud noise’ animation. This meant that the character moved forwards before jumping back. In doing this, there is a small wind-up of energy to the larger to come movement.
I found the jump more tricky than the walking animations. I followed generic steps and thought about details of the body’s movement, direction and momentum. Just like with a walk-cycle, I followed the method of adding poses first. The contact pose, passing position and then the up and down in-betweens. I implemented the editable motion trail to see direction of movement.
Shocked Jump/ Scared Poses Play Blasts
Run-Cycle Animation
I applied the follow through animation principle to the ear animation. In my initial run-cycle animation which I made in preparation for the major production stage, the animations were unrefined. Especially the ear animation, the timing seamed to be off. Taking considering my animation process for the tail animation, I found a way to improve the timing. Firstly, the ears should not be symmetrical but should have similar follow-through momentum that is offset from the hear and chest vertical animation. In addition to this, the momentum of the run moves the ears forward down in a diagonal movement. The opposite goes for the up position. Like so:
I would like to correct this, I have realised that this animation technique (in the diagram above) is wrong, after looking through more references. The ears should be back/ to the side and moving up and down with the momentum of the body. Reference: Boxer Dog Running Faster Than A Speeding Truck – YouTube
The intensity of the ear follow-through animation correlates, with an offset to the height, momentum and speed of the body.
Run-Cycle Incorrections and Corrections:
- I used the Global control instead of COG and foot controls in my first animation. This caused sliding. I had to Counter animate to correct this (see figure 17). Then I transferred to not using the global control with the jump.
- The paws were hidden by the grass, this helped with hiding the incorrections, however, I managed to fix most of them.
- Other than the improvement I have already made, I can also do some special effects editing to made the speed of the animation feel faster (motion blur or other blur effects).
Run Cycle Play Blasts
References
Abrantes, R., 1997. Dog language. Dogwise Publishing.
Animation References, 2020. Small Dog Jumping Down/Off of Ledge ~ Animation Reference. Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6aKQcrcYzU> [Accessed 16 May 2022].
Counsell, A., 2016. University of Portsmouth – Dog Motion Capture. Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYh0jBDjNf4> [Accessed 16 May 2022].
Valdez, J., 2014. Scared Animation. Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbJF3GAivLw> [Accessed 17 May 2022].
Woods, J., 2018. 7 Real World Examples of Dog Body Language. [online] All Things Dogs. Available at: <https://www.allthingsdogs.com/dog-body-language/> [Accessed 31 April 2022].