16/05/2011 - Finished animation

Today I worked on and finished my animation and environment. I simply rendered out images and tweaked little parts in my environment and my animation and I am really happy with the outcome.

How I created my animation:

I used the program Cryptic AR which is an plug-in to the 3d Studio Max software. Cryptic AR has the same user interface as 3D Studio Max and simply when you open up Cryptic AR there is a fully rigged character who has movable joints that can be moved to create simple animations.

 This is the start view when you open up Cryptic AR. As you can see the character starts in a fairly weird position and for the start I just moved certain limbs to get used to moving the character. I figured out fairly slowly how to move the character and it took me several ideas before I found an idea that I would be able to create within the time limit.

My basic animation that I aimed to do was to have my character fall from the sky, land in an iron man action and have it look like the character hits the floor. The character will then go to a stand up position and have a standard standing pose. Then the character will prepare to fly again by leaning down to the ground. The character will then fly off screen to save the day.

 In this screen shot is when my character begins to fall. I wanted my character to land in an iron man fashion (link below to what I mean). I moved various joints such as his arms and legs so that it looked like the character was preparing to land.
Iron Man Landing Reference Video
This video is my reference image for the first part of my animation (the landing). I researched into interesting ways of landing, including a flip once landing such as in free running videos.
Park our landing reference video
Here is another idea i had for my animation. In this video as you can see the person falls and then rolls to not break their bones and damage themselves . I decided not to do this mainly because the roll would be awkward to make in cryptic AR and mainly because I wanted the iron man landing.

In this screen shot i am showing him landing on the ground. As you can see from the screen shot the left foot is going through the floor however this is because I added the floor after I created the animation and therefore the character would not fit perfectly onto the floor.

After my character has landed I made my character go back to the standard/standing position. I simply moved the pelvis up wards to make the character's legs almost straight. I then moved the feet to the standing position. I also moved the shoulder and elbow joint to make the arms straight and moved the wrist joint to make the arm seem like a normal standing character and not having a broken wrist. I also moved the arm outwards to add more realism to my character.

I then decided to make my character fly away from the scene and therefore the character needed to prepare himself to fly. How I did this was use similar frames from when the character landed to make the character look like he is preparing to jump away. I did this by slightly rotating the pelvis and lowering the pelvis to make the character go lower. I then moved the left foot forward to make the character read to jump off the group with his left foot forward. I then moved his right foot really far back so that when he jumped he would have propulsion from his right foot. I also moved his right arm forward and made the arm straight to simulate the character is about to jump or lift up. I also moved his left arm back to again make the character have more propulsion when jumping from the ground.

After making him ready to jump i moved the pelvis back to make him have some movement before the jump, to add more propulsion when moving.

At this point in the animation my character has just lifted off the ground and is moving into his flying stance. The pelvis is still rotated slightly and the feet have been moved closer together. Also the toes have been rotated as his feet will be straight and pointed for a more fluent and realistic flying state (if there is one). As well as this the arms are both bent and are moving towards the side of his chest for a more aerodynamic stance whilst flying.

Here is my character once he is in his flying stance and is flying. As you can see his arms are down by his side and his feet are pointed down to give the character a more realistic and aerodynamic look.

This is at the end of my animation and is one of the final frames in my animation. In this screenshot you can see that the character is flying away from the scene and to save the day! the character is in the same position as the screenshot before this one except that I simply moved the character higher and off the scene.