Robot training final video

Planet surface animation

I decided to model and animate the planets surface to add to the animation and add to the storyline of the robot landing and starting the invasion, I wanted to keep it a little more basic than my other models as I was fast running out of time but I also wanted it to look part of the animation and be very good visually so I already had a plan on what I wanted it to look like as a finished piece.

First off I made just a plane but added a large number of divisions so I could get a varied look to the surface when I edited it with a soft deformer, I wanted smooth hills and craters and the larger the divisions the better it will turn out and the smoother it will look while the ground would have more variety like an actual rocky surface.

I kept it quite simple and just made some hills and craters and added a directional light to add shadows so the craters and mountains would look like they actually belonged and the light would affect the other 3D models in the scene also.

I wanted the planets surface to look like the cel shaded planet in the previous scene so I used toon outlines and cel shaders with the same kind of colors and added a granite/rock texture as a bump map and edited the properties till i got the feel i wanted, I wanted it to look desolate perhaps like a nuclear blast had affected the area. Or a moody atmospheric alien world.

I wanted to add a sky also I wanted it to look like a clear sky but with a red atmosphere like in the previous scene, so I made two spheres one red but with a lot of transparency then added a space background file I had made previously on the outside sphere to give it a galactic atmosphere to the planet. I felt this fit the previous planet animation nicely and gave a very nice effect to the scene.

I added a 3D model of a skull I had modelled previously and rendered it with toon shaders, in the animation scene the robot lands and steps on the skull and forces it into the ground to add atmosphere and a story to the planet. I had to animate and batch render the planets surface separately as the robot model wouldn't fit into the scene and I didn't have enough time to figure out why. But I felt that as a finished product the planet looked very nice and had an original kind of visual look to it.

To put the robot in I calculated how many frames I wanted for each animation and added a green background to the robot part so I could key that colour out in the final animation scene. I worked out how many frames I needed for each scene to correlate with each other and I ended up very happy with the resulting final effect of the scene.

I did the green screen keylight effect in after effects I decided I wanted the robot to land then the camera to go up showing off the entire model before panning out for a full view

Unfortunately something went wrong keying it out and I wasn't too sure what, ended up that a black border appeared so I masked it out with opacity masks set to subtract

I also had to move animate the position and scale to make it fit just perfect, in the end I was very happy with how the scene went, and felt it was really fortunate I had looked into how to virtually green screen objects into animation in after effects previously as it allowed the animation to actually happen.

New planet end scene

I decided the ending was not good enough so created a new space ending planet in Maya with cel shaders so it fit in with the rest of the animation. I wanted to add a planet to add to the story of the robot about to start an invasion.

In order to give this planet a lot of detail I gave it a large number or divisions so when I added a animated 3D texture it would have a lot of dynamic movement. And I could simply add keyframe animation differences to time to animate the animated textures.

I added a directional light to mimic the sun.. I used a directional light because they are easy to animate and don't light up too much of the object. They are also very easy to move around I feel they are the best light at mimicking the light of the sun in a galactic atmosphere but I a larger light would suit a scene within a planets atmosphere.

To add atmosphere to the planet I added a spherical shader and made it slightly bigger than the object so it would look like the planet had a glow

I made this shader a tint red and changed the colour levels so the atmosphere would only appear on one side with the other side (the side not being hit by the directional light) covered in shadow. I wanted the planet to appear red as it would feel like a alien planet and obviously the closest foreign planet to earth is Mars so instantly the colour red for me just springs to mind.

I then moved the spherical shader so it would be directly on the sunlight, I changed the transparency and contrast to give off the look it was coming off the planet itself.

To add a atmosphere closer to the surface I used a fluid shader attached to another spherical shader and gave it a animated 3D texture,

I made it closer to the objects surface and animated keys to the time differences so it would move along the timeline.

As you can see now the planet had more feel of depth and volume, plus the shading looked more realistic and attached to the object. The object seemed to have more life. Whilst changing the values I made it so that the part of the render around the planet would constantly update so I'd see what the change in values would look like in real time.

I added cel shading and a toon outline so it would fit with the rest of the animation, after adding the cel shading I realized the red atmosphere no longer was noticeable so I changed it to a dark purple, I felt this gave of a much nicer and clearer contrast, I was very happy with the result.

Needs improving

This is what I've done so far, put all the pieces together but gonna go back on it and improve some parts.

Final robot test room scene

For the final scene of the test room I wanted to do a over the shoulder animation of the robot shooting at a inanimate silhouette and it exploding into a number of particles using after effects particle effects to give off this animation style.  

First I rendered the robot moving into position in Maya, making sure it had a dynamic camera angle for the viewer, I wanted it to look as if the viewer was perhaps playing a video game in this scene and was controlling the robot character.

In After effects I added a HUD display I created to further this feel I tried to keep it the same palette as the rest of the animation so it wasn't an eyesore.

After the shot is fired I added particles effects from after effects into the animation to give off a feel of a small explosion after the shot is fired.

I then added a shatter effect to the silhouette and put the particle effects into the middle to show that it is the image displayed that explodes during this action sequence.

Fixing up the rig joints

In my previous animations of my robot character I found that the joints were quite rigged and didn't move the way that I wanted them to so I went back onto Maya today and changed them and made the movement of character far more fluid and more flexible. So I did an animation test to see how well they had responded to my tweaking.

I had to change a lot of the hierachy and joint weight but eventually I got the model moving the way I wanted it to, I feel very pleased that I have been able to fix the joints and will carry that information I have learned into future animation projects. 

Cel Shading

I decided to research several books to have some research into cel shading. The first book I read was.

Cel-shaded Animation:

Frederic P. Miller, Agnes F. Vandome, John McBrewster

"Cel-shaded animation (also called cel-shading or toon shading) is a type of non-photorealistic rendering designed to make computer graphics appear to be hand-drawn. Cel-shading is often used to mimic the style of a comic book or cartoon. It is a somewhat recent addition to computer graphics, most commonly turning up in console video games. Though the end result of cel-shading has a very simplistic feel like that of hand-drawn animation, the process is complex. The name comes from the clear sheets of acetate, called cels, which are painted on for use in traditional 2D animation, such as Disney classics."

 I also researched the book

 

Lightwave 3D 8 Texturing

 By Leigh Van der Byl

It states that cel shading is a process of rendering 3D objects so they appear flat or 2D as if part of a cartoon. Cel  is a term given to individual frames of drawn animation. A lot of television shows use subtle cel shading in their animation such as Futurama for example where it's used to integrate parts that are done in 3D into the 2D animation of the show itself. 
The cel shader works by altering the algorithm so that the surface no longer has smooth transitions between colours, turning them instead into flat bands of colour.
To use cel shading to its full potential, any objects being used with this shader should also be used with silhouette edges, unshared edges, sharp creases and surface borders.


And I also researched the book.

Manga Clip Art:

By Hayden Scott-Baron

It states that cel shading can be seen as a digital form of manga and that it refers to the style of using flat block colours to represent areas of light and shadow on a picture. This relates to the use of animation cels in Japanese anime. And the way that colours are used to define depth. The use of darker and lighter tones to define shape and shadow was so unique it says that it became intrinsically associated with Japanese animation. Western studios have also now adopted the technique; it is still something that helps to make authentic looking and aesthetically pleasing anime characters.

The appearance of cel shading is also very easy to emulate using photoshop by making the most of layers; it is possible to achieve a high quality look very quickly. The time can be spent focusing on the details rather than getting the overall cel look to work effectively.

It goes on to the say that cel shading is often the basis for many other visual styles, such as airbrush or natural media, and acts as the basis of lighting for most images. Time spent on the cel shading process will improve the look of a lot of images it says, whatever look you hope of achieving in the final piece.

 

Here are some screen captures of the book with an example and the importance of things such as shading, highlights and shadows in cel shaded animation.

 

 The pig has no shading, just simple base colors. The most important aspect of cel shading is understanding how light falls and how the shape of an object will affect the shading. 

 

The lightest parts of an object are those that face the light source and the darkest parts are those that face away from the light. Unless the light source is very small and weak the light will affects the object equally. In other words, about the same amount of light falls on all the areas that point toward the light.
The light source on this pig is originating from the top left, so any areas facing away from there have been shaded more darkly.

Effective definition of shadows can make all the difference to how solid your object looks. Firstly the pig casts a shadow onto the floor so the shape of its body has been defined. Secondly the pig is also casting a shadow onto itself you can see how some features of the pig are blocking the light onto the rest of its body. Sometimes you may wish to further define the shadows. Giving some areas heavier shadows can help define the shape of the object more vividly.

Highlights are only necessary on shiny materials and can be used a lot or a little depending on how you want the image to look and what effects is desired. In this image the main light source has been used as the main source of the highlights. However additional highlights have been added to imply another light source nearby. This can be used to give the object more volume.