Character run cycle

I have finally started to animate my character using the walk cycle, he moves well and all his features work perfectly. Running cycle is one of my weaknesses which I struggle work with mainly for the reason of my characters always jumping steps or in other words jittering which refers to the missing points of action in an animation resulting incomplete and jumpy movement.

So far I have coped with the key-framing and am finding it fun to do so, my movements for my character are very simple because his run cycle is just one cycle in one place repeating itself because my character does not move any where else apart from being on a treadmill so my animated role is simple. I have enjoyed working on running cycles have been easy so far because maya functions simply with key-framing, I originally thought the process of key-framing was going to be hard based on Maya being a complex package. Referencing has been very useful and I have understood thoroughly how to animate a run cycle stage for stage.  

To make sure my character moves properly for the animation I will need to focus on the stages of the movements to make sure my characters move right and in the correct and precise angle or points. my main points I will need to focus on based on my use of Maya would have to be steps of my run cycles because I never seem to get the stages of a walks cycle right, will need to keep to reference guide in order to get my run cycle right.

Finished model

Finally finished my model, it was simple and straight forward to add the finishing touches of today because all I needed to do was was group the master control to the body and add rescale values to my character in relation to the master control which has been very simple with the use of the outliner.

Not really any improvement needed because the steps for this stage have been very simple. Still not yet animated but our characters are very simple, so we are not too worried because all we need for movements is a continuous run cycle in on in one place to demonstrate both characters interaction with a tread mill which will only involved a constantly reused cycle just repeating over in one area of our scenery.

Treadmill

For our animation we needed a treadmill, so I created one based on my imagination and built one stage by stage . It went well because of my previous experience with modelling on the practice model, having  done modelling before has now helped me to create a model from scratch because I now understand how modelling with polygons work and the tools I was required to use for modelling, working with 3D forms is now a lot easier thanks to my tutor Matt's Maya tutorials because his step by step guided has made me understand thoroughly how information 3D shapes work in Maya as a 3D package and the requirements needed in order to make a good decent model. Based on my inexperience with my previously I feel, with out these tutorials I would have struggled to model anything because I would  have now have any understanding of the layout of tools. I say this because the tutorials Matt provides talks me through the not jeu the steps of making but the dangers you can face if you use the wrong setting of model in correctly which I have experienced in the past.

I would say that I need to work on modelling better figures, because when I develop a model of an object it always looks very basic. with this model for example, has now had to be re-modelled because it happened to be very hard to recreate because there were too many faces to work with  so my partner Robin decided to create a more smooth looking,  sleek and more realistic treadmill that was obvious in its representation.

Before 

After

    

Problems with my character

To day so far there have been too many problems relating to my character and I feel, my perception of weight painting has changed, it has been non progressive because I struggle to identify problems and work out solutions relating to the functions of the character because I don't fully understand the tools to know how to solve any problems relating to certain tools when they malfunction.

I have mainly been having problems with connecting my joints and weight painting. I feel the main problem of all has been the weight painting because I struggle to know where to paint it because I don't physical understand where the weight influences on my character should be in order to bend certain parts of the body e.g. the legs and elbows. Personally my model is not bad over all but the movement and joints need serious work in order to look good moving, so far I think that most of my time has been wasted modelling, I personally want to move on but I feel that my understanding of Maya it's self is holding me back, I find it unreliable sometimes in relation to other packages like photoshop because if you make one small mistake everything collapses and I always have to face a problem that results me to making major errors with my characters which most likely they always need my character having to go back to the beginning to start again. This has been happening regularly and I feel this is what has been taking up a lot of my time.

Connecting controls to the skeleton and painting weights is something I need to work on for the future through watching more tutorials and learning the package properly to help solve these problems.

Binding and weight painting

Worked with binding skin to skeleton and control, found it very simple along with the weight painting it went well and was easily understood step by step thanks to the tutorials which allowed be to focus on each individual step at a steady pace allowing me to connect everything up. The only problem I have with my character is the movements of the characters knees because his legs do not has a real pivot point so the characters legs from the ankle of the skin  along with the skeleton and i have no idea why, am still am trying to come up with solution and still can't find one, I am guessing I should have designed the character with better knee's for the skin but not entirely sure what has gone wrong could be just the movement settings, will need to check.

I the future makes sure that every design is developed according to the function of its area to avoid problems and any mistakes.

Control and skeleton linking for character

I spent to day developing my characters skeleton and controls, it  went very well and I had no problems, I have enjoyed working on this part of my model this time around, I would say this is because I took the time to watch the tutorial videos to give me a better understanding where as before I skipped parts due to impatience with the videos which later resulted in my test characters joints not turning out correct. I have managed to focus and work on my character properly step by step thanks to my tutor Matts guides, I don't really know what I would do with out the videos because i still feel that i do not have a full grapes of them and need practice, that is why I believe the videos are helping me improve more and more overtime I use Maya because I am begging understand its tools and functions the more I work with the package and its display. Every thing went well building the skeleton and controls, the on the problem is my understanding when to freeze my character in parts because I always make the mistake of freezing a group when I am not supposed to which resulted in me having to redo group every party of my characters skeleton, in the future I must not group everything stage by stage and not at the very end because it confuses with characters joints and orients.

   

Character for animation

To day I have worked on creating my maya model for my animation character step by step building the body of my model, it has been going well and I am thoroughly enjoying the process, I previously struggled with the practice model before but I think this was because I did not read the instructions very well even though they were right in front of me. I have miss-read the instructions very early in the stages of making my parts of the video, skipping specific vital information is what caused my model to come out faulty with its movements, connected joints and features for the body. To day I have taken on the advice of my tutor Matt regard my use of Maya and the way he has explained how it should be done to avoid error, Plus I have reflected on my mistakes based on my viewing of the tutorials and have taken time to understand the settings to ensure the success to do with the creation of my character which has gone very well so far as I have finished the modelling stage of my character, now I am looking to add colour the netting/mapping of my character.