Module 4 3D Animation Modelling

Progression and Time Management

Time Plan:

I created a timetable of how long it would take for me to do the drawing of the character and putting it on cinema 4d to animate. I gave myself 4 weeks at most and at least 3-4 hours a day to create the assets, artwork, animation, editing, and stylising. I believe this worked efficiently as when I prepared my timetable I made sure I followed it every day and stuck to it. It has been difficult to manage my time efficiently with the other prior modules I have to catch up with but having a time plan has really worked out well.

Document Daily/Weekly Progress:

I felt like I was behind schedule at first as the drawings were taking a while to do, with all the constant tracing and having to keep doing drafts of the storyboard to make sure the idea works.  However I still managed to complete my storyboard on time so I was always on target but I think in my second year I won’t find this as a problem as I won’t have to catch up on any prior modules. Any lost time I felt I had was because of the amount of concepts I was drawing, however once this was done, it was matter of colouring in the storyboards which didn’t take too long. 

Uploaded Images and Video

This is my character in motion, unfortunately I couldn't loop it when downloaded onto youtube, but hopefully you get the idea.

Strengths and Weaknesses

Throughout the module I have had many errors, some I overcame but others I didn’t. I feel these errors have taught me more about cinema 4d and how complex it is when creating a character. The main errors I came across were when rigging the character. Even though I had a guide to help me, it was still very difficult to follow instructions therefore I made a few mistakes on the way.

 My weight tool simple wasn’t working and made my characters body look out of place. This was simply resolved by moving the body tag in my object manager to a different location. Once this was done my weight tooling began to work as I was able to finally bind all my objects together. I have realised the hierarchy system is very important as when objects/tags are in the wrong places the software can’t handle it. 

The threats I had when trying to animate the character, I wasn’t able to animate the head due to the head flipping to the side even though I’ve set it different. After trying over to fix it, I thought it would be best not to animate it to stop any problems from occurring and focus on other important matters of the module. In the future I will look more into this and hopefully will be able to resolve the problem.

Even though I’ve had many errors, I still created a successful animation. My mistakes taught me more about cinema 4d and I will remember them for the future and take them on board for my next 3d animation.

Progression

My progression though this has been very successful. I was able to follow all the requirements and get everything completed on time. It was very difficult as with me starting late in the course I had a lot of work that needed to be caught up on but I'm very happy with my overall work. I feel I have achieved my goals and aims and done a successful job in building a 3D character in cinema 4d and animated it to move. 

Apply Numeracy to achieve a final outcome

Before I began on creating my 3D model, I practised on basic shapes etc. I tried to build a foot which in the end, ended up a little too flat but was good practise. I had an image on my front view and creating points to join them together to create a 3d model. I had to extrude the foot up as I was creating a new polygon shape each time. I tried to bend the leg at one point to make it look like it had a knee.

I built half the body as to make it easier I used symmetry so that I wouldn’t need to do the other half. To do this I had to but the body object into the symmetry tag then, the other half of the body appeared. While making a body, I had to practise with welding it together. To do this I joined the 2 symmetry’s together to make it a whole body, and then joint the points by right clicking and selecting weld. To edit the shape of my body I have to extrude to in its most basic form.

To begin with I was practising on creating a 3d head and wanted to make the head look exactly like my drawing. It turned out to be too difficult and time-consuming so in the end I used basic shapes to create my head for my character. It was however good practise and I learnt how to dot the points up by using the point tool to create polygons. 

Personal Development Plan

The objectives for week 1 are to make sure my idea is in place and know what I want to do to the character, what type of movement it will do extra. Week 2 I will work on the development of of my project and draw out my character.Week 3 will be creating a 3D character in cinema 4d and make sure it looks how I've drawn it. I also create the bone structure so I can animate it. Week 4 I will animate the character so I can make it move.

Inspirational Work

To help me create my 3d model in cinema 4D, I thought using a technique such as Claymation would be a good way to start. Claymation is a traditional technique which is a model created that can be moved by a frame to create an animation. By moving the model it was easier to see how I wanted to animate this character. This is the first time I’ve ever done this so it was difficult, and I didn’t manage to get my tools on time so I had to use my hands, but I think it’s a good start to practising. It is a time consuming process and moving parts can be tricky but it’s a good way to show a 3D effect.

Reflection and Evaluation

Overall I found the project manageable but hard as I have other modules to do as well as this one but I felt that I have managed my time appropriately and therefore got the work done on schedule. I’ve had a lot more pressure with having more modules to do by I think having the pressure has helped me to do better and made me prepared if I get that amount of work all at one time.

I believe I did achieve my overall aims and objectives as I was set out to do as much hard work as possible. I put a lot of effort into my research so my end project would look as good as it could. My main aim was to make sure my character did was fully animated and made sure its bone structure was in the right place so it could move its legs and arms and I know by looking at the video I succeeded  My animation was fit for purpose as I did exactly what the assignment told me to do and made my character do animated on cinema 4D.