Category Archives: Personal Project with Nick
Personal Project Review
Through this personal project, I wasted a lot of time entangled in the pre-design phase, and thus realized my lack of knowledge in design. In the future, I will be more inclined to complete an overall project through cooperation with someone more professional in pre-production.
However, I also learned a lot of knowledge that I didn’t know before, such as color and painting. At the same time, I also tried some functions in Maya, such as dynamic curves, blendshape, rigging and skinning, etc. It is important to understand the connections between the nodes of Maya and keep them organized. I still tried some new functions in maya using their examples, and I will explore more next term.
For non-photorealistic rendering, I learned about the performance of lighting and shading and some methods to achieve non-photorealistic rendering in Maya. But these are just the beginning. Next, I will learn more fundamental knowledge of non-photorealistic rendering, learn and compare examples of creating non-realistic rendering in different 3D software or engines, such as Unreal Engine, Blender and Houdini.
NPR settings
Art direction
Based on previous research, I decided to use a more cartoonish and hand-painted style for the project. I want to keep the roughness of the canvas at a low level but visible, and include outlines.
I would not use too much irregular watercolor gradient effects, especially on characters. I would use 3 types of shading: highlight, halftone and shadows, but I will blur the boundaries between them. It will be more like alcohol-based marker than traditional watercolor.
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Hence I chose to use Fra、yed stylization and amended some attributes here.
https://artineering.io/styles/frayed/#style-attributes
WIthout frayed Frayed
Canvas
There are many canvas texture to choose. To prevent shower door effect, we can enable canvas advection with vfx control in sfx material settings. Since I used minimum canvas scale, shower door effects could be ignored without canvas advection.
low scale texture large scale texture
Shadows
Ambient Occlusion
Ambient Occlusion (AO) darkens the image in areas that are hard to reach for the ambient light due to the local shape of the geometry (e.g. concavities, crevices, holes). Note that this effect depends only on the geometry (and the viewpoint, to a lesser extent), and not on the lights present in the scene.
With the Watercolor and Frayed style, the AO term modulates the pigment density, resulting in darker colors in occluded areas. It just affect the contrast of the whole scene generally.
NPR material settings
For this cake I just enabled highlight and specularity to make it look better.
Painterly shading
Light color and shade color can be changed for different materials, so it is better to separate materials for different parts. I tend to choose purple as shade color for yellow objects, choosing black as shade color might look a little boring.
Outlines
Outlines can be created by using a larger mesh with reversed normals.(single sided)
It also can be created directly in Maya Software renderer by assigning outlines under toon menu. Attributes can be adjusted to achieve different results.
However, with MNPRX plugin, outlines can be created automatically and can be customised to certain areas and darkened or lightened using paint tools. It is better to paint vertices before skinning. Once the skinning is completed and then use paint tools, the vertex color node will be retained in the history, resulting in slower real-time rendering. Keying paint effects will also lead to slow rendering.
Hair simulation in maya
For character’s hair animation, I tried to use nHair system in maya to automatically generate the movements and collisions. It can be used in many applications, not just for hair.
input curves output curves
We have two types of curves here: input and output. Input curves simply defines the original shape, output controls the dynamics.
Firstly I rigged the hair and parent it to the head joint. Draw an EP curve along the skeleton.
Then delete the history and bind skin in hierarchy mode. Paint the weight if necessary. Hide the mesh.
Make the curve dynamic under nHair. The follicles and output curves would be created. Make the follicle and the corresponding output curve under the same hierarchy. Create the IK bone.
In the follicleShape, set Point Lock to Base.
To play the simulation, select nSolver > Interactive Playback.
To stabilize the dynamic curve’s behavior, adjust the Bend Resistance attribute value in the Dynamic Properties section of the hairSystemShape of the Attribute Editor.
To make the collision between any mesh, just create passive collider under nCloth.
In order to keep hair shape not change too much, I set start curve attract here to help.
Old version hair simulation dynamics tutorials :
http://k9port.blogspot.com/2013/11/dynamic-hair-tutorial-part-1-setting-it.html
nHair system introduction:
https://www.linkedin.com/learning/maya-nhair/controlling-collisions?u=57077561
Character creation
Design
For this project I want to design a cute character, so I used chibi’s body shape (2 heads).
Original sketch Final result
Color palette
For the colorof this character, I want to keep saturation and value(brightness) at lower level. I choose purple pink and yellow, which give peaceful, tender and innocent feelings.
Modelling and Texturing
Since I couldn’t find suitable resources (most of the body proportions were incorrect), I referred to the three views in 2D to model the character.
The lighting effects under default setting looks horrible, it need to be set the light used and shadows to observe the desired result. Also, depth map shadows should be enabled to see the shadows.
I unwraped UV for face and painted it in Sai2(digital painting software).
Rigging and skinning
I used Mixamo to rig the character so that I can use the animation from mixamo directly. However, the imported character should be cleaned and without strange shapes. Because my character is too small, the result was not as expected, I need to paint it again to fix bugs in Maya.
When skinning is completed, it is best to export it for future use, or save in another script to copy from.
Blendshape and face animation
I used blendshape here to make face animation, it also can be applied in game engine.
When making eye animation, I grouped(ctrl+G) eyes, eyelashes and face to create blend shape.
When making mouth animation, I grouped face,teeth and tongue to create blend shapes.
They can be moved out of the group (or moved into another group)after finishing current morph deformation.
However, the base mesh(group and its hierarchy) is fixed for each blend shape.
When creating blendshape, I set to world because local will ignore transformation, I need translation infomation here so I keep it.
The blend shape target can be rebuild so the mesh could be created in case we need it again.
The deformation order should be pre-deformation (before skinning),because it is has binded skin.
I drawed some images with alpha channel to create 2D appearances here.
It is better to separate two meshes with the same number of vertices (eyelashes) when making blend shapes, because it will exchange the their targets sometimes.
In order to animate eyes, I rigged a bone to control both eyes, the joint should be on the intersection of their vertical bisectors so that the eyes can rotate in the correct region. I also limited the translation here.
Non-photorealistic rendering research
Shading
In traditional painting, there are six shaded regions.
Outlines are the one of the most important features in cel painting. And shading is simplified to 2 types: halftone and shadow. Hence the boundary between the light and shadow is another feature of cel painting. Nowadays, highlight is always used in cel animation through adding special effects.
In digital(modern) paintings, different techniques for shading are used together for artists to create diverse art styles.
For non-photorealistic rendering, the performance of lighting is the most important feature, and it is also inseparable from the topology of the 3D mesh.
Another thing worth noting is that the 2D animation will show omitted topology details (such as the highlights on the hair) through light and shadow, but the highlights rendered by toon shading renderer will expose the real structure of the 3D topology. When applied to real-time toon shading, artists often fix the highlight on the material by texturing. This method solves the problem to some extent, but it seems strange when the light changes in the scene.
Painting media
Some details should be reduced or altered depending on strokes and techniques.
Watercolor
Watercolor gradients are mostly used in the creation of shadows.
Gouache（opaque watercolor）
Gouache is similar to watercolor in that it can be re-wetted and dries to a matte finish, and the paint can become infused into its paper support. It is similar to acrylic or oil paints in that it is normally used in an opaque painting style and it can form a superficial layer.
Opaque watercolors look thick(strong coverage), wheras watercolors are more transparent(fluidity).
Watercolor is more suitable for illustrations or still scene(background). Opaque watercolor is more suitable for animated character and front scene. Opaque watercolor and watercolor are usually mixed, where watercolor used as background and opaque watercolor for the details.
Alcohol-based markers
Alcohol markers are different because the ink is permanent. However, you can still layer the colors to create striking overlays. For example, gray overlays will dull colors down while yellow will brighten them up.
https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1mJ411k7qT?from=search&seid=12035595433229581903
alcohol-based marker traditional watercolor
To me, markers style reminds me of childhood, and traditional watercolors look more romantic.
Crayon
https://blendernpr.org/crayon-charcoal-bge-test-train-face-boy/
Cel shading(toon shading)
Cel shading, as a 3D animation and rendering techniques, have regularly been used by Ghibli since the production of Princess Mononoke (1997) – the first feature to benefit from the distribution deal – to achieve complex effects that would be impossible using traditional pen-and-ink methods. Those CG shots were seamlessly blended with the hand-drawn images in production.
Some paintings of other styles that usually appear in the form of still frames can also be made into animation, but the cost would be high, such as this fully painted feature film which took six years to produce: Loving Vincent.
Motion design and frame rate
I think one of the problems when using non-photorealistic rendering is that the animation looks too fluid and realistic than it should be, especailly for the use in limited animation. Fully animated films are animated at 24 frames per second, wheras limited animation uses 8-12 drawings per second, thereby limiting the fluidity of the animation.
For those who are used to watching limited 2D animation, watching the 3D animation of toon shading will give them some strange feelings, because the movement of the characters is too realistic, leading to the movement of non-photorealistic shadow look too realistic . The human eye is usually very sensitive, such a realistic movement reveals the topology used in 3D animation.
Scripts and storyboard (Version.2)
The script and storyline have been redesigned, the theme is about an elf’s adventure in the dessert theme park.
Scripts
Various fruit decorations slowly move forward on the food shaft, being picked up one by one by the food pincers. The elf (nibbing fruit) appeared on the food reel, and then was picked up by the food pincers, and came to the top of the oven. After the oven was turned on, the tart came out of the oven, and the elf was placed on the tart. The elves and egg tarts were placed on Tilt-A-Whirl and then rotated and swiped down. The elf jumped off the egg tarts and came to the Log Rides made of cream, riding on the donuts, avoiding the puffs in the cream torrent. Suddenly the elf was involved in the cream whirlpool, rushed out of the other end of the whirlpool after spinning many times, landed on the cream waterfall ski resort, and rushed all the way down. In the end the elf fell on the big cake, and standing beside him was a fondant elf.
These images are not the storyboard, just the illustration for storyline. I plan to use one-shot for this short movie.
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Props reference
watercolor style
Character design
Introduction
Summary
This semester I am going to try to use non-photorealistic rendering to make a music video for my song.
The music duration is 1:13, and the video should be a bit longer than this, which will be divided into two parts by the verse(~0:41) and the chorus (0:41~). The verse part will be the story of the girl’s adventure at home, and the chorus part will be the story of the girl entering the wonderland.
Animation characters
The girl
The toys
The background
Moodboard, art direction
The verse
The chorus
piano roll flying book piano roll
The end
Script, storyboard
0:00-0:12 Early in the morning, the little girl is still sleeping in bed, the hour hand is already pointing to ten o’clock.
0:12-0:14 Suddenly, the doorbell rang and the little girl was awakened.
0:14-0:24 The little girl tiptoed her head out to see what happened, she looked at the door thoughtfully, remembering that mother said there was a big bad wolf outside.
0:24-0:35 The little girl moved the table and stool and wanted to see what happened through the cat’s eye.
0:35-0:41 The little girl was stunned and found that the house was flying in the air.
0:41-0:56 {the first part of the chorus}
The little girl opened the door and the house was flying in the air, and the little girl was looking around in excitement. Below is the road connected by stars. In the distance is a rainbow, reflected in the girl’s eyes
0:56-1:07 {the second part of the chorus}
The little girl is running on the rainbow, jumped up and slid down, then fell on a large cloud. The little girl lies on the clouds with her eyes closed.
1:07-1:13 At the end, the little girl fell on the “cotton”, the camera flipped 90° then zoom out, the little girl is sleeping soundly on the bed in the room.
Summary
This semester I am going to try to use non-photorealistic rendering to make a music video for my music.
Part 1: Animation roles.
Part 2: Painting, backgrounds, CG, general composite roles.
Part 3: Script, storyboard, direction.