Royalty and it’s Army

So, two blogs back I mentioned that I’d talk about skinning and the royal family for Daughter of God, well it’s that time! Also (bonus!!!), I’ll be talking more about animating the soldiers in a sequence where they drive their army vehicles to take on the rebels

So, the obvious design for the royal family is to make them look important (hence royalty), wearing god-like-dresses, crowns, layers, etc. Of course we created their clothing based in the era it’s set in. For the wife’s clothing I used a mix of Japanese and Chinese culture. Although the kids wear something less resembling clothes from these cultures - basic shirt and pants attire. An important thing to remember about modeling children is to deform their bodies, the young have larger heads compared to their bodies and their limbs tend to be chunkier.

When I think of skinning, the quote; “Being prepared is half the battle…” (some guy said that before being eaten by an ostrich) comes to mind. It’s vital for skinning. It is critical to plan the setup of the bones so they’re in the best possible position for animating. Also take note the number of bones needed, it’s influences if any, the pivots and default position. Pivots are important, like for example the eye lids, I’ve pivoted the bones at the tip of each lid, animating it’s position to get the character to blink, but thanks to Trent I found you could position the pivot of the bone so it’s centered to the eyeball, instead of animating its position I just rotate it instead, simple and quick. To figure out which vertexes are influenced by which bone I used myself as a reference, looking in the mirror and constantly making amazing ninja faces to help understand how to create that face using the available bones.

I could talk about skinning, but most of the characters aren’t heavily skinned, I’ll leave that for another blog So the royal family is now ready for Trent to up rez and I now get to animate a sequence of soldiers attacking.

A few important things to note here; there are twelve soldiers in this scene, including two leaders. We’ve divided the sequence into two shots, first one is seeing the vehicles come into the scene and stopping to let out the soldiers, second one is a wider shot that lets you see all the vehicles and soldiers firing. The plan for which to animate first was vital to help keep things under control, then I needed to work out their influences, how it would move, cloth simulations, face animations and decide the interactions of each soldier.

For the first shot, I decided to start with the vehicles since they are the primary focus of the shot. Using a lot of references on how army-type vehicles move, I slowly refined the movements of the tanks so it’s movements were convincing. Then I’d animate the soldiers sitting on them, focusing more on the those that were the most obvious. The reaction of the soldiers sitting on the vehicles is important to help create a sense of weight and size of the vehicles.

The second shot was more difficult due to the the focus of all the army soldiers jumping out of the vehicles and attacking. In an effort to keep things stabilized, I divided the soldiers into three groups, only having that particular group visible when animating in the scene. Each group I needed to work out, how they would move, where they would move and how they would communicate with one another. I used a lot of hand gestures and body language to give a sense of personality to each soldier. Interaction is vital to make this shot convincing.

Well that about wraps it up for this blog entry, I think I might have over done it here haha, I’ll be surprised if you have managed to read up to this point You’re one dedicated person and I’ll plant a tree for you