As I wanted to be able to evaluate and compare my work as I went along as well as show my progress to others for feedback, I have been rendering out my animations as playblasts as I make changes. I’ve chosen to make around 3-5 playblasts for each animation depending on the changes I make and the complexity of the changes.
I’ve continued to work on the “Standing up from a Chair” animation (not very creative name, I know) and have slowed down the pace of the scene to allow the character to react to seeing his friend.
Since the first playblast, I have raised the head back a bit more and given the character a smile (and jaw open) as if mouthing “hey” to his friend he has just spotted across the room. I’ve also made him keep eye contact for a little bit longer and kept the moment before he turns his head back in anticipating for sitting up.
As for the standing up part, I’ve altered the posture he rests at and smoothed out the rotation and translation in his hip joint for a smoother rise and rest.
I would normally give a playblast its own post but I thought I’d try including two here since they the changes were made within a short time of each other and I’d like to compare them as well.
The third and last (for the time being) playblast adds in the remaining motion on the arms. The character now rests his hands on his knees and pushes against them to stand up. At the moment his hands touch his knees I changed the arms to IKs so that they remain on the knees until I lift them off again (where they go back to FK controllers).
At the start of the scene, I added in a waiting “idle” pose for the character. His knees move together and back again, he also taps his fingers on the side of his leg. I also put some small head movements in as if he is listening to his own thoughts. I wanted the idle state to be as if he was just waiting in a train station for someone.
He slowly glances to the left, then continues quicker to the left once he spots someone off-screen. To accompany the smile and head movement I added in the last playblast, I also add in a small friendly wave to acknowledge his friend. The feet move back in anticipation and the character stands up, returning his sight to his friend in anticipation that they’d be walking over and can greet.
As per my reflective brief, I will evaluate this final animation in a following blog post identifying parts I believe were done well, and parts I can improve upon. While this animation could still be worked on, I will start on another animation as per my plan for this semester. There is nothing stopping me from coming back to this though.