The bald man and the fly fable - Evaluation

This is my final animation. For some reason, the size is a bit small, however, i am not sure how to resize it. It may be a short animation but i have put a lot of effort into this.

Over the past 12 weeks, i have learned a lot of interesting things that i didn't know i could do before. When i started this module, i felt very motivated, however, i took did not take advantage of the time i had. I have wasted some time, although i have attended my class regularly and tried to make progress each week. The problem i had was i had other commitments which stopped me from doing more work during weekdays and out of tutorials. Because i work before the class, as soon as i get there, i am too tired to do anything. This was something i could have changed. I cannot control other things but i could have been more attentive in the class. I did however put as much effort as i possibly can. I have stayed behind after classes to do my work but this was still not enough. I really didn't get started until it was over  6 weeks, so i only really had 6 weeks to complete my work.

The quality of my animation could be improved. I have learned that it is very important not to waste time as time pass by so quickly. before you know it, the module is not finished. A problem i had to face was rushing my work in the last week. I could not get any help, however, there are resources that were available. I have taken books out from the library to teach my self how the work needed to be done.
My main problem with my animation was skinning. I have tried changing the weights of vertices, however, the outcome did not seem to change much. Also, the fly could have been more animated in a way so that it moves its wings or rolls its eyes. This was something i originally planed to do, but because of the short time I had left, i was unable to achieve all that i planned from the beginning. As you will see back in week 5, I made my storyboard. But I was only able to complete few scenes.

Overall, I am pleased with my work as i made something myself. With the lecturer's help. But from this project. Time management is very important and it is something I will always remember to get a better quality work.

Video editing

Light and Camera

This is the top view, showing the lighting. I  have used a target light. the reason for this is because i could not get the omni light to look natural on my scene. I was not sure of the other light settings such as mr sky portal or free light, so i decided to stick to what i know. I could not get a good lighting for my scene as to be very honest, it did not really need light, cause now, the scene is a little too bright. I changed the light from a cylinder to a rectangle, as a cylinder is not really appropriate in this scene.

This was the first time i used the camera settings. I enjoyed using it, it makes the animation more realistic when a camera had been used. I also used a target camera. From my point of view, i could have made my camera work much better, however, i was limited the the amount of time i had left. but in the future, this is something i would like to work on and improve.

Environment/ Surroundings

This is the jpeg image i used for the ground. I used the material editor to apply this on to a plane. 

This is the plane with the material applied to it. I used diffuse and bump on the material editor to give the surface a rougher look. Also, I made the plane bumpy so that it is not too plain. I used editable poly and moved the vertices up and down.

This is another image i used for the background, using exactly the same method as the ground as shown above.

I chose this image because I think it blends in well with my model.

Animating

After an unsuccessful skinning, i had to move on to animating as it was getting closer to deadline. 

I decided to use 500 keyframes for my animation. the reason for this is because i don't have much action happening on my scene, except the fly flying around. 

Every 25th keyframe, the fly moves from one place to another. 

Skinning

After the biped, i had to start skinning in order to animate my model. This is the part i found most difficult and i was taking a long time to get this right. 

Under skin modifier list is an envelope, here you set the weights for the right areas of the body. the weight tool was used to modify it. I also had to animate my model to see what i needed to skin. However, this is where i had a big problem. I did not seem to progress at all. I carried on with this for a few days but my model looked pretty much the same as when it was not skinned.  I felt that i was going wrong because i was unable to move the vertices. But this was  not the case, as vertices were not supposed to move. I was stuck at this point and was running out of time. So, i had to make a decision of leaving it behind and carry on with the rest of work that i still had to do.

I know that this is something that could have been fixed, but it was my fault so leaving it till it was too late. 

Biped

I created the biped my going on to create > systems > biped. I dragged the skeleton starting from the feet to the head. The size of the biped had to fit inside my model, as long as the biped does not stick out of the body. I resized some body parts such as the legs and arms. The joints had to be at the right places otherwise it will not be in proportion. 

This is the bit where it started to get more harder. It took some time for the biped to fit in perfectly. 

the arms and leg seemed straight forward, however, it was the hand that was more complicated as it was slightly rotated to an angle. So i also had t rotate the biped hands. Bearing in mind that there are only 4 fingers to work with instead of 5. The reason for this is because when i decided to create the hand, i was unsure with how to extrude and bevel the 5 fingers, i only seemed to have enough space for 4, but it turn out okay in the end. I was happy with the end result.

Once the biped was in the right shape, i attached the biped to the model i created, so when the arm moves up, the arm and the bipeds arm also moves, so the biped now acts as the skeleton for my model.