Final Project--A Character Animation

My final project for my Advanced 3D class at UMBC was to animate the character rig that I've been working on for the semester.  Above is the final, fully rendered, result.

 Steps for creating it:

1) I extracted audio from the film Born In Flames (1983) for the soundclip.

Here is the portion I used.

2) I imported the audio and used my character's blendshapes to lip synch with the audio.

3) Once all of my lip synching has been completed, I modeled a simple microphone to use as a prop and for eye-tracking purposes.

4) I then animated the character's torso, head (head, neck, eyes), lower body, and arms.







 5) My next step was to create a scene and render it. I created the radio station using Photoshop and bumpmapped it using Crazybump.

6) I added lighting and arranged the wall textures for the final scene.

7) Lastly, I batch rendered the scene as .PNG files and then composited the images with the audio in After Effects.

Satellites at the IRC

So as I mentioned in this post, I acquired a 3D modeling internship at the UMBC Imaging Research Center (IRC). The project that I participated in was a joint effort between IRC and NASA (the Goddard Space Flight Center facility in particular). I made low-poly previsualizations based on the satellites from the NASA Global Precipitation Meausurement (GPM) mission.

I modeled them in Maya and in the next few months they will be textured and rendered by my supervisor, Ryan Zuber.

By the end of the summer they will be part of a short animation on display at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD.

For scale and detail references, I used publicly available art renderings, schematics, and photographs such as the ones below:

https://directory.eoportal.org/image/image_gallery?img_id=189545&t=1338557852321

http://www.spaceflight101.com/uploads/6/4/0/6/6406961/2481265.jpg?455

http://www.spacemankind.com/images/ms/20091019-dmsp-hr.jpg

Finished Game Assets

Here are some new screenshots from "Detached". During the second phase of development, I was tasked with a large redesigning of the level (compare to the old level from before) . I had to remodeled some of the gravestones and walls and I then textured them using photographed images and bump maps.

Some of my assets were:
-Rocks
-A tree
-graves
-Mausoleum
-walls

I was also tasked with building the level in unity by laying out the assets and assigning colliders to them.

The ground, lighting, and rendered grass were created by Stephanie Ruff.

3D Character Walk Cycle

Here is my attempt at a basic walk cycle with the character rig I created. I used the basic 24-frame cycle and I animated it in the "layered" fashion as opposed to "straight-ahead".

Blendshapes--Human Character Project

For my Advanced 3D Animation class I have been building a human character throughout the semester. One past project was to create the blendshapes for the character and to animate to lip synch the animations to an audio clip.

The clip I used was from the Harley Quinn character from an episode of Batman: The Animated Series.






I created the blendshapes by duplicating and extracting the head and then moving the vertices of each duplicated head in order to replicate common phonemes and facial expressions.

When animating the character, I tried to match her facial animations to the character from the audio. Harley Quinn is a villain that is known for her madness. I tried to keep that quality in my animations by creating some exaggerated smirks and odd grins.

New Projects and Internships

Wow! Quite a bit has happened since I last updated:

1) Unfortunately, my game "Conduit" was not chosen to be continued past its prototyping. Despite this, working on the prototype was an excellent experience that provided me with the opportunity to learn level design/editing in Maya and arranging level assets in the Unity game engine.

Instead...I will now be an 3D artist/level designer for the game "Detached", a third-person, action role playing game. "Detached" follows a zombie that awakens in a post-apocalyptic world in which mythical creatures run amok. As your body parts rot off, you must replace them with the appendages of your enemies!

2) Since mid-February, I have been hired as a part-time 3D Artist Intern for UMBC's Imaging Research Center. I am very excited about the work I am doing with them and I am looking forward towards the final product; an informative animation that I will elaborate on once the project is complete.

3) The World War II special effects project, that was a collaboration with a Cinematic Arts student, has been canceled due to the student had problems with acquiring the props and locations for their film and the time constraints that were placed on their project.

4) Due to conflicting commitments, I can no longer continue to be a game artist for KleptoClockers in the Game Developers Club.

 
Here is some of the work-in-progress from "Detached"

"Conduit" was picked!

Just an update from my last post: my game pitch for "Conduit" was picked for my game development class! There were approximately 30 pitches in total and out of those 30, 12 were picked for prototyping by professor Marc Olano.

Hopefully my prototype will go well and will be among those prototypes selected for the final round of development.