Meeting and Notes:
Interactivity such as teleportation and grabbing were completed. The rig has also been predominately fixed, and animation has begun in full swing. Music for minigames is complete and scripts on the VR side are going well.
Personal Goals:
.Create Shot List
. Animate Interaction 2
Considering the animation required for this project and also considering time efficiency, we collectively agreed that the best method of animation would be minimal, which gives the overall emotional impression without extensive detail. Despite my best efforts to adjust and fix the rig, time constraints no longer allow us time to keep adjusting the rig, so facial animation will also be kept to a minimum. This, however, appears to suit the process, as conversion from MB into FBX proves to compress and readjust the model until it displays in lower poly/ rather different to Maya in the aspects of mesh presentation.
Animation Development
Developing from last week’s ideas, we began to structure the animation files and rigs into different layers to help us animate in a more organised and structured manner. This will also assist us if we need to make any changes fast without directly affecting the rest of the animation. Reflecting further on best industry practices in this respect, the use of layers is a fantastic way to explore alternate versions of your animation without heavy commitment. Roy expands on how the “weight ” of an animation layer can be adjusted in a similar way to opacity and layer groups found in Adobe Photoshop (2014, P.284)
Shot Lists and Planning
I thought an imperative first step to the animation process was creating a shot list in order to evenly distribute the work into clear, distinguishable sequences based on dialogue. This in itself proved a challenge due to my prior experiences with scenes and shots =, it was difficult to pin down how to separate the different aspects of animation due to its non-linear narrative and structural form. In this sense, I broke it down into the key different environments and key interactions between characters in the order that they were storyboarded. Following on from this I assigned the shots between myself and Marianna, prioritising those on the beach scene due to that being our main goal for the project.
I felt it important to also add the idle animations such as walking and ‘breathing’ due to the constant nature of real-time rendering, and these animations will be used in cycles to help the flow of gameplay.
Animation
Thinking about the stylistic interpretation of the speech bubbles, the integration of how they move in relation to the bird models and also considering player POV when adjusting motion will be something that will have to be relatively controlled within unity’s camera. Due to this, the way in which the interactions will potentially be structured in unity is by ‘ teleporting’ to different squares in which visibility is relatively controlled to a confined space within the games. Beginning the animation process for this VR experience, I had to adapt a different mindset to the one I had harboured for past projects as the animation itself depends on player interactivity, as different sequences are ‘triggered’ by gameplay elements. Animation is also created with the intention of being viewed from multiple angles with lesser regard to cinematography than an animated film.
Baring in mind player interactivity, in theory, the interaction should ‘Cycle’ until the player has clicked or progressed through the narrative in order to trigger the next. But in the event of that not happening the seagulls need to participate in continuous movement to allow for a level of realism and believability of the character. If the character remained static after every interaction it would ruin world-building believability and bring to attention flaws in our immersive experience.
Reflecting on my finished shot, I feel I was able to produce a character-driven performance that is suitable for the lower poly models imported within unity, however, there are several aspects I would improve on for future considerations if given the opportunity to fine-tune our project at a later date. The first would be the lack of ‘finger’ and wing movement detail, as it adds a flatness to the characters that makes them appear more like inanimate figurines than anthropomorphized seagulls. I also feel more follow-through, offset and secondary action could have been included during this animated interaction, especially in Seagull B as he sways to the music, where weight could be distributed in the offset of his head to his body. This would also add to the accentuation of ‘birdlike’ flexibility between the head and neck, as the bird contains more vertebrae which allow for sudden neck and head movements.
The facial expressions are also lacking in blinks and well-developed eye darts, however, the limitations of the detail within these expressions are predominately due to rigging issues experienced with the eyelids, which continue to be offset from the rig despite revisions to the mesh hierarchies. With these limitations and lack of contingency time to fix it, I think the monotonous, lack of expression in its own way suits the characters in their blunt emotional depth and only adds exemplification to Seagull B’s ‘Stupidity’. In association with facial animation studies, the lack of upper facial animation (brows, eyes, eyelids) can create an uncanny effect that strips the naturalistic element of movement and creates viewer discomfort (Tinwell, 2015). However, due to the simplistic design of the seagulls, which do not strive to achieve photorealism, a lack of expression is passable in expression portrayal, as less animation is required to sell the character’s performance inherently and avoids falling into the realms of the Uncanny Valley on aesthetic design.
Animation Exported into Unity
With the previous issues of last week’s animation import issues resolved, the sections myself and Marianna animated over the past week seem to function well in unity. The major issue at hand that still needs to be tackled is the mesh exporting issues. While there are ways to improve the polygonal interception, the overall smoothing seems to be lost, specifically on seagull A, and the wings of seagull B. In spite of this, I feel the ruggedness of the birds adds a rough element that is replicant of childlike drawings that suggest a more ‘undeveloped conscious’ contrasting visually with the conversations at hand. In spite of this, I intend to look more into solutions surrounding unity’s polygonal processing in the following week.
Potential Video Guidance for Next Week
(51) How to Actually optimize your game in Unity – Complete Game Optimization Guide – YouTube
(51) Unity Probuilder : Smoothing Tool – YouTube
Animation Interaction (with vice over audio included)
References
.Roy, K., 2014. How to cheat in Maya 2014. Abingdon: Focal Press.
.Tinwell, A. 2015. The Uncanny Valley In Games and Animation. Florida: CRC Press.
.B. Tyr Fothergill and C Flick. 2016. The Ethics of Human-Chicken Relationships in Video Games: The Origins of the Digital Chicken. SIGCAS Comput. Soc. 45, 3 (September 2015), 100-108. DOI: hht://doi.org./10.1145/2874239.2874254