Facial Expressions
Oblig 3 - Student Noroff Institute 3D Movie production- Second Year
Alf Inge Moseid, Kristiansand 2010
Okay!
I have finish project 3, facial animation. We get 4 weeks to do this project. I have this time working out several different facial expressions on the face to my 3D cartoon character I named Professor Geekenstein, and show it true a animation 46 seconds length with sound on and some screen prints and explanations in text
.
Facial expressions- four principles
In this animation movie I have animated this four basic principles based on this actually scene-situation:
1: His message to the audience
2: Facial expression based on the situation (what he say, how he say it, how he feel/his mode/emotions, the environments around him (do he freeze.., feel hot..?)
3: His body language based on the facts I have written in the two other basic principles I wrote upon here consider that body language up against that he is just awake and normally we don’t move much before we awake properly and the facts that this project is about facial expressions and not body language. Too much body language here would be disturbing for this focus on the facial expressions I like to show here.
4: Plan and timing when he should say and acting what he say and what he should say and acting + totally length of this movie to not let it be to short and not to long
.You can see the animation movie here.
Plan for the animation movie
My plan is to let the professor stand in front of the mirror in the bathroom just awake. Camera is in mirror position and we can then see first the sleepy guy with heavy eyelid and closed mouth. Then he open the mouth big, head back, turned the head to one side and eyes closed, eyebrow down. After that he look in the mirror with open eyes and start talking to himself in the mirror, doing some funny facial expressions to get awake...
I made the decision suddenly when getting this project to make up my own character from near scratch to show the facial expressions I liked to show the audience and sensors of this project. I also needed this new character to a near future animation project soo the decision was very clear to me about that. But I also know it would be needed very hard and fast working the next 4 weeks to be finish with make up a new character and also do a good enough facial animation to send away to the sensors inside the given deadline...
Plan in general how the movie should be and what I needed to do to get it like this to the deadlines was clear, so I now needed to make a timeline for my work progress and that’s not easy for sure to make. I did plan to use 2 weeks building up the character and last 2 week to animate the movie finish and send it to the school inside the deadline.
The movie I planned to animate so it should be first half where character should talking and drop eyelids as normally every seconds, little sleepy and not so fast up/down eyelids. Last 50% of the movie character should do different shape with his face as he say: "Time for some facial training". Here I don’t have drop down of eyelids because that scene is around 20 seconds and after trey this self in front of the mirror its no need for dropdown of eyelids on this short time when starring and do so hard facial "rubber face". More then 20 seconds like this we needed to blink with eyes...
Reveal of the process
To say this in the beginning..., my plan did not get exactly like I plan from the beginning. But I delivered and that’s the most important many times...
What get wrong
Many things get wrong on this project and I can take it from the first happening come up:
First of all, I lose time for the animation because it took longer time then planned to make finish the character. The day before deadline to send away this project I had still not start to animate, I just finish then make up the character for this project...!
Sooo, I then speeded up the animation and did it inside 15 hours nonstop hard work. I used 13 hours animate first half of the movie, then 1 hour to set keys for dropdown of the eyes and some smaller movements on the head and eyes, then the last hour to animate the different facial expressions on the last 50% of the movie. I cud see I should have using some hours extra to sit with the lip-sync in one part of the first part of the movie make it more smooth and maybe more sync, but time for deadline was there short time in front of me and I have respect for deadlines, sooo....
I had already loosed also many hours of the limit time I had because of an error in 3D max come up when animate, it was that good tool to do some fast "make preview" of the animation. That tool stop working and I get only some error-messages up all the time...? and then I needed to rendered out the test of lip-sync using ordinary low-solution rendering-method...:-(
Next of several problems started when rendered out the finish movie.
I had taken some test of the rendering time before in this project and had the timeline for rendering in front of me and started then the 3D max to work out this movie rendering it so it should be finish one hour before the deadline given to us. Then when start rendering I cud see my computer used 30 seconds rendering each frame now comparing with 20 seconds as I tested before...? It was strange...? but I cud not do anything with it, if I did it would be lesser quality on the movie and that’s not fun...
Sooo..., results of that 10 seconds more rendering time each frame is a longer renderings time then I planed. 10 sec times 1380 frames = 230 minutes lost time
And its typical when it starts to be errors it will come many up in a line.....
I started rendering out the whole movie with high quality sound included as an avi file, but when 3dmax had worked for more then 10 hours with that suddenly the whole 3dmax collapsed and shut down....!!
Ohhhh..., and then I cud not open the avi file also 3dmax had already rendered...! I get very stressed then because it was close before deadline. If I had not been so stupid to rendering out to avi file, and more rendered out to single Targafiles, I would not have loosed more then max one minute of the limit time I had left to deadline...
I burned my fingers properly here and get me a learning to rendering in single targa-files in future when have important deadline to follow.
Okay ...I had already been in contact with my teacher in the school about problems with the renderings and asked for a push out little with the deadline because of that so good I get it so not 1 month hard work would be destroyed.
Next time I will have the project finish the day before deadline, incase some problems will come up again...:-)
Conclusion
I have that feeling that the animation is function as my beginning plan. It is something I will look at and work little more with to make it smoother in curve editor and maybe change one of the morph targets making his upon-lip little thicker when have moth fully open. Maybe little body movement at least one time in the movie, maybe make it 5 seconds longer in both ends of the movie with breaks there...? This is something I will work with after I send the project in to the school, and before I will render it out again in planned high solution HD 1920x1080 in blue ray.
STOREY BOARD AND SOUNDTRACK
I have published different posing as screen prints here I will use most of them as storey board posing in my 46 seconds animation movie that is a requirement from the school, to make this animation movie. Plan for the movie is like written upon here, the character will stand in front of a mirror in the bathroom in the morning, sleepy after just awake and he will do some facial exercise and talking some small words to the audience behind the mirror.
I will not publish drawings as storyboards this time since all the posing is published here as renderings and the soundtrack is attached in 3D max and I animate after the voice there. Movements and facial expressions are locked to the character to the timeline true the soundtrack.
Mouth Shapes
I have modeling 9 basic mouth shapes as morph target this time, it should be enough to have fun with the professor when animate him :-)
I show them here with not any movements on eyelid and eyebrows, they will be adding in separate chapter below here.
In this animation movie I have animated this four basic principles based on this actually scene-situation:
1: His message to the audience
2: Facial expression based on the situation (what he say, how he say it, how he feel/his mode/emotions, the environments around him (do he freeze.., feel hot..?)
3: His body language based on the facts I have written in the two other basic principles I wrote upon here consider that body language up against that he is just awake and normally we don’t move much before we awake properly and the facts that this project is about facial expressions and not body language. Too much body language here would be disturbing for this focus on the facial expressions I like to show here.
4: Plan and timing when he should say and acting what he say and what he should say and acting + totally length of this movie to not let it be to short and not to long
.You can see the animation movie here.
Plan for the animation movie
My plan is to let the professor stand in front of the mirror in the bathroom just awake. Camera is in mirror position and we can then see first the sleepy guy with heavy eyelid and closed mouth. Then he open the mouth big, head back, turned the head to one side and eyes closed, eyebrow down. After that he look in the mirror with open eyes and start talking to himself in the mirror, doing some funny facial expressions to get awake...
I made the decision suddenly when getting this project to make up my own character from near scratch to show the facial expressions I liked to show the audience and sensors of this project. I also needed this new character to a near future animation project soo the decision was very clear to me about that. But I also know it would be needed very hard and fast working the next 4 weeks to be finish with make up a new character and also do a good enough facial animation to send away to the sensors inside the given deadline...
Plan in general how the movie should be and what I needed to do to get it like this to the deadlines was clear, so I now needed to make a timeline for my work progress and that’s not easy for sure to make. I did plan to use 2 weeks building up the character and last 2 week to animate the movie finish and send it to the school inside the deadline.
The movie I planned to animate so it should be first half where character should talking and drop eyelids as normally every seconds, little sleepy and not so fast up/down eyelids. Last 50% of the movie character should do different shape with his face as he say: "Time for some facial training". Here I don’t have drop down of eyelids because that scene is around 20 seconds and after trey this self in front of the mirror its no need for dropdown of eyelids on this short time when starring and do so hard facial "rubber face". More then 20 seconds like this we needed to blink with eyes...
Reveal of the process
To say this in the beginning..., my plan did not get exactly like I plan from the beginning. But I delivered and that’s the most important many times...
What get wrong
Many things get wrong on this project and I can take it from the first happening come up:
First of all, I lose time for the animation because it took longer time then planned to make finish the character. The day before deadline to send away this project I had still not start to animate, I just finish then make up the character for this project...!
Sooo, I then speeded up the animation and did it inside 15 hours nonstop hard work. I used 13 hours animate first half of the movie, then 1 hour to set keys for dropdown of the eyes and some smaller movements on the head and eyes, then the last hour to animate the different facial expressions on the last 50% of the movie. I cud see I should have using some hours extra to sit with the lip-sync in one part of the first part of the movie make it more smooth and maybe more sync, but time for deadline was there short time in front of me and I have respect for deadlines, sooo....
I had already loosed also many hours of the limit time I had because of an error in 3D max come up when animate, it was that good tool to do some fast "make preview" of the animation. That tool stop working and I get only some error-messages up all the time...? and then I needed to rendered out the test of lip-sync using ordinary low-solution rendering-method...:-(
Next of several problems started when rendered out the finish movie.
I had taken some test of the rendering time before in this project and had the timeline for rendering in front of me and started then the 3D max to work out this movie rendering it so it should be finish one hour before the deadline given to us. Then when start rendering I cud see my computer used 30 seconds rendering each frame now comparing with 20 seconds as I tested before...? It was strange...? but I cud not do anything with it, if I did it would be lesser quality on the movie and that’s not fun...
Sooo..., results of that 10 seconds more rendering time each frame is a longer renderings time then I planed. 10 sec times 1380 frames = 230 minutes lost time
And its typical when it starts to be errors it will come many up in a line.....
I started rendering out the whole movie with high quality sound included as an avi file, but when 3dmax had worked for more then 10 hours with that suddenly the whole 3dmax collapsed and shut down....!!
Ohhhh..., and then I cud not open the avi file also 3dmax had already rendered...! I get very stressed then because it was close before deadline. If I had not been so stupid to rendering out to avi file, and more rendered out to single Targafiles, I would not have loosed more then max one minute of the limit time I had left to deadline...
I burned my fingers properly here and get me a learning to rendering in single targa-files in future when have important deadline to follow.
Okay ...I had already been in contact with my teacher in the school about problems with the renderings and asked for a push out little with the deadline because of that so good I get it so not 1 month hard work would be destroyed.
Next time I will have the project finish the day before deadline, incase some problems will come up again...:-)
Conclusion
I have that feeling that the animation is function as my beginning plan. It is something I will look at and work little more with to make it smoother in curve editor and maybe change one of the morph targets making his upon-lip little thicker when have moth fully open. Maybe little body movement at least one time in the movie, maybe make it 5 seconds longer in both ends of the movie with breaks there...? This is something I will work with after I send the project in to the school, and before I will render it out again in planned high solution HD 1920x1080 in blue ray.
STOREY BOARD AND SOUNDTRACK
I have published different posing as screen prints here I will use most of them as storey board posing in my 46 seconds animation movie that is a requirement from the school, to make this animation movie. Plan for the movie is like written upon here, the character will stand in front of a mirror in the bathroom in the morning, sleepy after just awake and he will do some facial exercise and talking some small words to the audience behind the mirror.
I will not publish drawings as storyboards this time since all the posing is published here as renderings and the soundtrack is attached in 3D max and I animate after the voice there. Movements and facial expressions are locked to the character to the timeline true the soundtrack.
Mouth Shapes
I have modeling 9 basic mouth shapes as morph target this time, it should be enough to have fun with the professor when animate him :-)
I show them here with not any movements on eyelid and eyebrows, they will be adding in separate chapter below here.
Eyelid movements
I have 3 basic eyelid positions where eyelids are in neutral position in the posing upon here. Then I have made on the morph targets the eyelids closed and wide open.
I have 3 basic eyelid positions where eyelids are in neutral position in the posing upon here. Then I have made on the morph targets the eyelids closed and wide open.
Eyebrow Shapes and Movements
I have made 3 different basic eyebrow shapes and changes on positions on the morph-targets. They will be displayed here in this chapter with a mix of the other morph-targets...(inside some hours they will be here :-)
First posing here is using a mix of eyebrow in high position, eyelids wide open and mouth wide open, then lifting up the hands and turning away and backwards the head like he protect himself from some scaring happenings he have focus on with his eyes. Maybe he can scream on this posing...
Below here he has an angry posing. I have used low eyebrows with a sharp curve higher up and out to the side. Some rankles on the start of nose where the eyebrows near meet. He have small hard mouth, small eyes. He points with finger at you and other hand ready to box you. His head and body is going forward, ready to stand for a fight and your hard boxing hand...
In the posing below he has again high eyebrows, near closed eyes and then big cheeks when small whistling lips...
Okay! here is the last posing for the professor this time before he will acting in the short animation movie. He has here below low eye-brows with angel up to the forehead, a relaxing posing maybe...
Reference to this animation project
I act self in front of my camera and record the voice how I used in this animation. I then used that movie of my face as study for this animation and as reference. I notice after done the animation that I was talking to fast in some parts of the scene, it was difficult to make those fast lip movements as an animation and next time I will talk with more clear difference between the words so it is easier to animate.
I also study animation-books in front of the animation work. Books like “Stop Starring”, “Animators Survival Kit”, and other animation books. I also read and follow the forum we have in the school, other students get advices from the teacher. I should have been more active self in the forum, but had to much work on my shoulders to do that this time…
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