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12. Motion capture part 4 - Final

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  When i finish editing the animation, i decided to add a background to the characters. When i downloaded the characters i chose their suit for the fact that i already worked on a sci-fi scene and this would suit it. I imported my assets and positioned them in a way that would work with the animation. As this became a very heavy scene, the render times increased too much for me to spend many hours rendering, so i made one single export of the background and then exported the animation separately. To finish i took it into After effects and made a short edit so they look more like they belong in the scene. The process of recording motion capture data was very fun to do, i enjoyed seeing the character move as we moved as well. Adding the data and skinning the character were the most difficult parts as this is the first time that i do it. It was a little hard to understand why some things were not working, however once i had a general understanding it started to become easier to do....
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11. Motion capture part 3

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 When i finished skinning the body i had to go back to  creating a character definition and assigning the character's joints to the definition panel and changing the source to the mocap data so the character can follow the animation. The character will immediately move to the position of the mocap skeleton and when i hit play it would follow. Ideally you would want the joints of the skeleton to match the character's, in this case it worked fine for me not having it 100% correct.    Although it wasn't correct, the animation worked fine and there weren't any errors. I continued to bake the animation from the mocap to the control rig i created previously. This allowed me to work without the mocap data as the animation was baked onto the rig. The next step was to edit the parts were there is mesh intercepting other parts. For example the character's hands were going through the head, so i had to edit this. By selecting the joint that had the mesh intercepting the other,...
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10. Motion capture part 2

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The next step was to skin the character so the mesh follows the controllers. I did this in the quick rig tab, and then i edited it making sure the joints move and rotate properly without distorting the body too much.  By using the paint skin tool i was able to dictate how much mesh distorts when moving by painting white what should stay solid and grey to black what can move. As seen in the image below, i selected the joint and edited using the paint and smooth brush. When i tested the rotation i came across this mesh going throught the face, this is because the inside of the mouth has geometry that isnt skinned properly, so i went back to the paint brush tool and painted it white. Another issue was the eyes not following the movement of the head. To fix this i selected the eyes, and moved the pivot point to the head joint. I then selected the head joint again and the eyes and parented them.   I continued to skin the rest of the body, moving joints to see how much i had to fix....
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9. Motion capture part 1

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Motion Capture In this part of the module we had to record motion capture data that we could use to animate a character. I had to find a short clip of actors performing so that we can use it as reference while we wore the motion capture suits.  For my shot i decided to go for a scene from the film El Dorado, in which the characters talk about how they could scape the ship were they're being held. Using Motive to record was very straight forwards and easy to do, we mainly had to make sure the person wearing the suit had the right amount of motion tracking markers and that the cameras could see them all.  Adding recorded motion capture data to a character, at first was very stressful, until i started understanding it a little more, then i was amazed at the characters moving like how we moved in the studio.  To start, i imported the data i recorded, it was 2 of us so 2 skeletons appeared. After this i opened the Human IK tab, and created a character definition in which i use...
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8. Character - Final

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  This assignment was fun to do, i really enjoyed the process of creating a realistic portrait of an actor.  This being my first time i am happy with the result considering it was a long prosses with multiple stages and i couldnt focus on a specific area due to the time i had to create it.  If i was to do this again i would work on the eyes a little more, as the gap between the bottom and the top in the corners is big, considering that the actor's corner top of the eye is lower. I would also like to work on the hair if only my computer allowed me to do so. I would add more modifiers and work with the noise to breakdown the clump effect and also increase the density.
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7. Set up and final composition

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I brought everything into one scene and i didnt have to move things around as i never moved them out of place, except from the clothes.  For the head mesh i had to add the displacement. By going on arnold, subdivisions and changing it to catclark and increasing the iterations i was able to see the displaced texture and all the details without using a high poly mesh. An issue that i encountered was that the displacement was showing too strong even if i reduced the amount. I also re-exported it and even colour corrected it in photoshop to see if it would change anything. In the end for some reason it started working properly.  For the eyes i used an image material with a realistic look, then i assigned it to the meshes assigning the same material to the subsurface scattering and editing the roughness to give it that realistic look.  I was also able to edid how red the eyes were by using ramps and coloring the red to white. i then imported it to the scene where i was setting...
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6. Xgen hair

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In Maya, i used xgen to create the hair. This was done by creating a collection in which each description would be each part or area that i worked on. For example the collection was JD and the first description was eyebrows and then selecting the working on guides option. By using the add tool i was able to add individually the guides, which will basically guide the direction of the hair and the area where they appear. By using the sculpt tool i was able to move where the guides where pointing and their curvature. By switching to the scale mode i was able to make them bigger and sculpt the curvature, which was also made easier by rebuilding them and adding more ''joints'' or subdivisions. Using a mask on the density i was able to dictate how much hair grows where. I went ahead and placed my guides following the references, i also edited the shape of the hair, and how they interact with others by adding modifiers, such as a clumping which will create groups. i was able t...
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