Question 1
Does a blendshape require the base mesh and the target mesh to have the same number of vertices? Explain your answer, with reference to how blendshapes actually work.
Answer: Yes. During an animation, if the base and target mesh are not selected with the same number of vertices, deformation of the model may happen during an animation. Furthermore, blendshapes can work in layers, which means that by creating more blendshapes deformers, allows you to make very complex shapes that could be animated as well.
References: Mastering Autodesk Maya 2012, by Eric Keller and Todd Palamar, Chapter 6: Animating with Deformers, Page 314 - 322.
Question 2
Can blendshapes only be used for facial animation? If not, prove it! Animate something and post in on your blog.
Answer: No. It can be used on arms, legs or even the entire body as well, especially when showing logical bends without deforming the model into a very bad state.
Visual Reference of Blendshapes being used in arms.
To prove this, I looked back into my 3DVA models and picked out Spidey to show this example. Through blendshapes, this can be achieved for Spidey's arms.
Spidey Rotating his entire arm forward
References: Using Corrective Blendshapes to Improve deformation - http://www.mixamo.com/c/articles/using-corrective-blend-shapes-to-improve-deformation
Question 3
If you want a character to look angry, you might decide to create a target mesh of the character's head and then modify it to have an angry expression. This is NOT how it should be done. Why not? And what would be a better approach? (Hint: you want to give the animator as much freedom as possible.)
Answer: This is definitely a bad approach. The reason behind it is because when you're animating a model, the animation may feel angry at that moment, but what happens when he starts talking and doing some other stuffs that would require the animator to move the character's head back to the original way of how it looks like in the first place? And also, the animator would take a very long time as this is a very tedious process of moving parts and parts of the mesh to and fro to create just a few seconds of animation. By using blendshape editor, the animator can move the target mesh in a very detailed manner, including addition of values so that if any parts of the animation requires the face to be made back to original, it could be done so easily through the editor.
References: What is mesh - http://blog.slinkstyle.com/what-is-mesh-and-how-will-it-affect-sl-some-faq-ive-seen-and-can-answer-here/
Conclusion
Didn't really have a requirement to write a conclusion of the lesson for the 1st week, but I just want to say some thoughts about the subject. Going through 3D Visualization and Animation (3DVA) was really tough, maybe because many basic fundamentals were learnt through this subject, parts such as rigging and modelling. But coming into 3D Production and Foundation (3DPF), has been one enjoyable subject. Having to do facial expressions through the different tools provided in Maya has been really fun, as I had interest in animating game characters or making 3D movies. I know I'm not the best out there, but I'm willing to try and give my best out of myself. My greatest enemy is myself.
Something that has really made me thought over about is one of the lectures that Mr. Douglas had given my class about Facebook and social networking sites. I remembered clearly, he said that Facebook makes people think positively about themselves, only VIRTUALLY. A really clear example that he explained was, when you make a comment about something that makes a few people online laugh over it, may make you feel that, "I'm a humorous person". Well, in reality that doesn't really show that you're humorous. When the same joke is used when talking to people in reality, others may think that, "It's a really bad joke." And in the end, you make a fool out of yourself.
Furthermore, he explained that Facebook takes away our concentration from work once we first looked at it. Facebook continues to show people's post and lets you scroll down non-stop reading almost anything that catches your attention. Personally, yes it's true. Having in mind of only wanting to look at Facebook for 5 minutes, brought me to the reality of 30 minutes being wasted instead without me even knowing it. Well, just wanting to thank him for letting most of us notice this, as this is for our own good.
In conclusion, I really look forward into the future exercises of 3DPF, especially the one on blocking/videoing, activities that reminded me of the really fun subject, Motion and Sound (MOS).
No comments:
Post a Comment