Liz's 3D Animation Blog

Author: Elizaveta Kuznetsova

Categories
Design for Animation, Narrative Structures & Film Language

Week 2: Visual Culture and Film Language

Animation was starting to become popular among the modernist movements who believed that cartoons represented a different reality ‘of transformation, overturning and provisionally’. The development happened in the midst of polemic arguments. Animation was something that could have been widespreaded by the high and mass forms of culture. From the outset animation was seen as a multi cultural, multi functional medium fuelled by technological change. 

If we are talking about elements of art which were incorporated in animation, that would be the visual components of color, form, line, shape, space, texture, and value. Also, apart from elements, principles of art such as Balance, emphasis, movement, proportion, rhythm, unity, and variety are also present in animations and films.

Categories
Design for Animation, Narrative Structures & Film Language

Week 1: Introduction

First session was about basic concepts of what research is and how we are supposed to write our critical report. proposal.

Scientific research:

  1. looking for expanding the human knowledge
  2. find something new for humanity
  3. should have a base to prove the arguments on the question
  4. experiments
  5. structure
  6. expected to make some results (long-term)

Proposal Structure:

1. Relevance

2. Literature review

3.  Research gap

  You need to show that nobody has studied this topic from your particular scientific perspective (time frame, side, etc.).

4. Research Question

Shows what the research is about; must show the end point of the research – research in itself is not an objective.

5. Hypothesis

Supposed explanation to the research question; it can be wrong (research result may contradict some conventional positions in science, which may lead to scientific revolution).

6. Methodology

  1. a very long part
  2. theoretical framework (tells us about the things we will look at)
  3. method – a tool to work with data to find some causalities, correlation, etc.
  4. methodology – plan of using methods
  5. what data will be used in the research
  6. limitations
  7. sequence of methods
Categories
3D Animation Fundamentals Maya Unreal Engine

Week 12: Showreel, Project, and Summary

This module was extremely interesiting and challenging. I started learning how to work in two new programms: Maya and Unreal Engine 5. Despite the fact that I worked with similar softwares such as Blender, 3Ds Max, and Unity, it was still hard to learn how to use Maya and Unreal Engine 5. Nevertheless, I have always enjoyed challenges, thus, it was a very plesant experience for me.

First assignments were clear and basic, which made it simplier to adjust for using new tools. We started gradually from easy shapes and movements and how twelve principles of animations are used in practice. On every principle we had a task which was focused on it. Then we moved to the more complex stuff such as weight shift, walking cycle, and body mechanics.

In Unreal Engine 5 we learned how to use the program and which functions exist in it. I enjoyed studying principles of wordbuilding, materials, and dynamic lighting.

My project is called “Illusion of sanity”. I took one of my old ideas which was on my mind for several years. I like thinking about illusions and hallucinations because they imply absraction. You can use practically any technique and it will suite because such things do not have any common physical manifestation. 

Categories
Unreal Engine

Week 11: Evaluation of the progress

I must say that I am moving slower than I hoped. Sometimes there appear issues which I thought were already resolved or I did not know even exist. There were a lot of problems with textures on models. At some point the lighting started to glich on render which I had to fix by rearrenging the light sources. Then there were some problems while I was transfering models and lights in UE5 and from It.

Once there were problems with the blur effects because I missed some keys and camera was constantly showing everything blurred and I could not understand why. The last one was even funny when I noticed where the problem was. This is how it looked like when I confused the value of the focus length and forgot about it…

Wrong Blur
Categories
Unreal Engine

Week 10: Post – Processing

Here are some bluring effects that I used.

Firstly, I wanted to create them after I collecting the cinematic in After Effects. However, then I decided that it will be easier and more logical to apply this effect to camera simply by changing focus distance.

This effect is intended as a clouding of consciousness from which the character must snip out.

Bar
Glass and Pills
Categories
Unreal Engine

Week 9: Rendering

Here are some rendered images from the project.

This one is from the very beginning. I added walls instead of light in order to focus on character’s figure.

This image I personally like as she is in contrast with the blue wall and blue glass which are glowing. In the end I created a glowing mterial for the wall and deleted lights.

Categories
Unreal Engine

Week 8: Dynamic Lighting (Part 2)

I finally found the character which I liked. Though there we a lot of problemes with textures on her, I managed to fix it and make it look correct. As I stated before, due to the character’s color palette previous scene was too dark, so I had to change it. I also added some tints of pink in order for scene to match her.

Still I decided to leave the sun outside of the bar to be bloody red from the beginning as I enjoy the contrast.

Categories
Unreal Engine

Week 7: Dynamic Lighting

I started to build a scene in UE5. I imported bar model succesfully. There were problems with texture and missing objects but I managed to fix these issues.

Then I started playing with lights. For now, I like how this looks like. However, I still do not have a main character model, so it is early to approve this as a final result. It seems to be too dark, which may affect the quality of the render.

Bar (Beginning)

Categories
Unreal Engine

Week 6: Control Rig

For this week I created storyboard for the project.

Illusion of Sanity Storyboard
Categories
Unreal Engine

Week 5: Physics

I created a moodboard for the project.