Final Presentation: Howl's Moving Castle

For this last turn in, I worked on implementing animations that Marshall created using my castle rig. At first I attempted to incorporate them into an anim blueprint, then just a spline actor blueprint, and eventually ended up just hand keying the transforms and using a fade between the walking and sitting animations to get the timing and blends we wanted. 

Overall, I'm very proud of myself and my teammates for how this project turned out!

Heres the keyframes in the sequence with the animations.

The castle on a transform path.

The old BP Spline.

Link to our last presentation:

Final Presentation: Ghibli

 Sprint #5 Delivery: Howl's Moving Castle

For this sprint, I did a lot of waiting, fixed a lot of bugs, and finally got the castle fully skinned and  into engine with a skeleton that works for its moving parts.

I created a Full Body IK rig for the castle in unreal engine, but it gave me unwanted results since I did not want the body to translate with the movement of the legs,

so I also created IK for the legs only.

Here he is with his IK feet displayed.

In the end, I ended up using the Full Body IK since I was no longer doing a walk cycle animation because of a lack of time. I added his animation blueprint into the sequencer and troubleshooted it with Amritha. There was an issue getting the animation to sync up, but we fixed that in the end.

I added Physics volumes to the upper parts of the castle to simulate with the castle subtle movements, but because of the delays we had in the middle of the week, I couldn't get the results I wanted with the time I had. 

With the weeks we have left, I plan to transfer the skin weights from the newest geo to my maya rig, and animate the sitting sequence in maya. That way I have full control of the rig and can finesse things in engine with a control rig skeleton. 

 Sprint #4 Delivery: Howl's Moving Castle

For this delivery, I worked on the third pass of the Castle rig, and reviewed the placement of the pipes/building/pieces etc, moving pieces to match the castle as I saw fit. I used the same skeleton with a few extra bones for the top pieces, and fixed the IK legs so that the feet are sticky, and stay in place when his knees bend. 

Rig Demo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7HwzorgCv8

I also created the PowerPoint presentation here: 

https://docs.google.com/presentation

We may no longer have a reliable animator, so I will be skinning this beast and then going into engine to procedurally animate him doing his walk cycle.

 Sprint #3 Delivery: Howl's Moving Castle

This delivery, I worked on a second pass of the Castle rig, using the most up to date geometry from last sprint. I used the same skeleton with a few adjustments, and decided with feedback from others to make the legs IK instead of using the FK setup I had originally since we'll only be creating a walk cycle.

The IK leg setup will also remedy the issue with the legs not being long enough because the body can be raised and exaggerated a bit with the IK suspension system. I updated the controls to fit with IK legs, and created some more custom controllers for the base, eyes, and some extras for use while setting driven keys.

Here is a screen shot of the rig so far.

And a video of the controls I have working so far.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipOQavh-9PM

These are some references that I used to create my custom controllers. I plan to add more next sprint as well.

These are the controllers I created. 

I also set up our newest Presentation linked below: 

https://docs.google.com/presentation

 

 Sprint #2 Delivery: Howl's Moving Castle

This delivery, I worked on a first pass of the Castle rig, focusing on the base as I wait for the final models from my teammates. I created a system so that the castles legs and base can all move independently of each other, and locked attributes to ensure proper movement of body and legs. I also created custom controllers for the legs of the castle.

Next, I referenced the rig into another maya file and began posing the rig for a first pass at animation. This helped me get a feel for any changes I would need to make to the rig/skeleton, and give feedback to the 3D artists. I want to either create stretchy limbs, or have the 3D artists lengthen the legs.

Then I set up the PowerPoint presentation for this sprint and made final touches once everyone's information was in.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1P5nZBh3XFGB4UrGvfDa2vlTaLMQVwAuAUvvAfcizoIo/edit#slide=id.g1e3c39f62a1_0_0 

Sprint #1 Delivery: Howls Moving Castle 

For this first delivery, I established myself as a Production Manager of sorts and worked with everyone on the team to create a schedule to fit their needs. I then made a Trello so we can all keep track of our tasks.

As far as ownership on this project, I will be in charge of rigging and animation solutions. I laid out a PureRef for a Castle ROM and compiled some examples of rigs that have parts similar to that of the castle.

I did a lot of research on how the creates of the Movie created the rig for the castle, and how they animated it. In the video below, it shows a simple 3D model for the castles base and 2D planes for the castles upper parts. 

This video gives insight into the entire process for rigging and animating the castle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_pYR20MAY0. I plan to create animation layers and break the geometry into three sections as the animators did for the castle in the film. 

Our team has decided to stick with a fully 3D castle, simply because we want to have an amazing portfolio piece, but also because we want to be able to change the direction our character is moving without worrying about if the pieces will look correct if we change the angle of the camera. 

As far as rigging research goes, I found and followed a very useful LinkedIn tutorial for rigging mechanical objects that will help me immensely when trying to quickly animate the top parts of the castle. I took a screenshot of the course description below and show the rig that has a total of 4 joints and 15 moving parts. It animates depending on how the rest of the system behaves. 

My PureRef for rigging:

I couldn't add gifs/videos to a PureRef, so I will post my animation reference here: 

I drew out a simple animatic to get a sense of timing and create a loop so that when we add the castle animation to engine we can modify the scene and camera without any issues.

This is an extra I made to show the castle moving across the screen in a loop, the timing isn't accurate, it was meant to be an example of the shot we want to achieve and the looping walk cycle.

Finally, I created the template for the slideshow presentation, added my work and distributed it to my teammates to contribute, which I've linked here:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1LxfaJHhQvMkISFIMZfd2K8URYbdUURWikM9qNpBjJqI/edit?usp=sharing

Figure Drawing Portfolio

 Drawing Portfolio - Common Art 2023

Starting Collage

These renderings were made at the beginning of our drawing class, I was getting the hang of drawing on paper again.

Final Collage

These are the best rendering I made during class, I had time to do more shading and lighting on them than the other poses.