New Animation "Gerrarrahere Mhen 2" {Gerrarrahere 2 funny Naija Nollywood skit 3DAnimation done with 3Dsmax}

Hello People and welcome to HypefroActive. The Blog that eats, drinks, spits and talks animations. Well it's become a thing for me disappearing and abracadaba-rin into the scene when you least expect me to. And i'm so tired of apologizing every minute only to do it again some days after like some evil villian in one of these cartoon series, maybe like Zangif or something. Eeeerrr maybe one of those bad guys in the Power Rangers franchise or the immortal "joker" form DC's Batman. Yeah i kinda like all these guys and maybe been bad is a good thing. Heck i like been bad. Ok, i'm just chidding, I'm sorry again and i'll try keeping up with you guys in the future.

Anyways, one good thing about me been away is that i never go away to come back thesame. I always come back a monster. In animations that is. So with no further Ado, lets get into today's business. Yeah i have been working on this Gerrarrahere 2 Animation which is adapted from one of the Nigerian Nollywood films with main actor "Francis Odega" and is sequel to this one right here for a while now. With the motive of this Animation not just bothering on not just animating per se but also to come as close as well as cartoony funny in relation to the original feature film. Well, i did finish the video some weeks ago rendering it out with the 3Dsmax scanline render engine and a preview of it is what you've been seeing as images in previous posts but just for the sake of show, here it is here. Why did i render out in the 3dsmax scanline renderer? Well to start with, it's a decent rendering engine that could at least achieve the minimum of what i what for the short considering render time. The Mental Ray Renderer in 3Dsmax would have been a much better option when it comes to rendering Animation clips or sequences but after animating and time is not on your side because there are a lot of other Animations or ideas waiting to be attended to, then you begin to weigh your options and perhaps see things like the way i see them. Anyways that's just me for now Animating in low poly and rendering out Animation clips in the 3dsmax Scanline render engine.

The Final version of the shot though was re-rendered by Liquid Cenema. Which is a powerful Animation studio here in Nigeria owned by a friend and partner. They also do alot of CGI and VFX stuffs and ind this shot, LC actually re-created the environment, re-lit the scene and re-rendered the whole Animation shot and that's why it's coming a lot different from what i used to render out as rendered animation clips. And for the record, again the character was rigged with the 3Dsmax CAT rig and animated all within 3Dsmax. No custom bone rig, no other rigging software, just the default 3Dsmax Cat Rig. That's to lay to rest that it's not all about the Rig all of the time but about what you can do with the Rig when faced with an Animation challenge. Now, this is not to say that the CAT Rig matches the Custom Bone Rigs of 3DSMax. Because it doesnt really come close in reality if you begin to compare the two. However, for simple or a little advanced animations that would require less movement from the "Hip Bone", then the cat would do just fine.

So that's it for today, i'll be working on something new next and do follow to see what it would be plus i still am going to do the fight Animation. So keep animating and stick around.

Gerrarahere Nollywood 3D Animation teaser (Video)

Hello HypefroActive fans and welcome to another exciting edition of animations on HypefroActive. Ok, it's been kind of a little while since i dropped something here and as you are aware, i'm working on an animation shot featuring my Dante Mascot doing the Nigerian Actor, Francis Odega's "gerrarahere mhen" which is quite popular here in Nigeria. It's tasking and very challenging but what can i say, i do what i can. A lot has been done and plenty learnt and in all it has been fun animating this piece. So with no further ado let's get on in and talk about it.

Well, seeing the original clip and watching Francis go will get you thinking, hey this is easy. Guys, animating a Francis Odega especially in this clip is nothing near easy. This guy is a toon in himself. Most of the dialogues were done with his head doing the movements. Then there is this SUV he's sitting in, getting up from and exchanging beer cans about. It truly is a hand full.

The challenges met with animating this shot would be the RIG itself and understanding animations. If you are on the CAT rig like myself then you have to understand exactly how it works because there won't be any room for training on the job. And by the way, the hand pose that i thought would be of advantage for me if i use the CAT turned out a nightmare. It didn't turn out as as expected and reason is that i set the fingers(digits) up badly. I guess if you are using this RIG with the hand presets in mind then it's a good thing for you to test them out even before skinning. Then again, it could be that i've stayed away from animation for too long.

Well somehow i managed to get this piece out for your viewing so that you as always are in the know about HypefroActive. It's almost done, low poly as usual and the environment is a little bit filled up and i'm using the Scanline rendering Engine. So you see, i'm keeping everything really simple but opening the nozzle in animating.

 Here's a link to the video and please rate it by commenting, or liking, or both and criticize in anyway you can. Click the link below for the video.

https://youtu.be/AJeWro2eFp0

Animating gerrarahere 2

Dante posing with car hiden

Hello HypefroActive fans and welcome to another exciting edition of animations on HypefroActive. It's weekend and i hope you guys are gearing up for the goodies that comes with it and while at that i hope you also accomplished your tasks for the week. If you didnt for whatever reason, do not relent, get back in there and fix things unless otherwise you've abandoned them with good reasons.

Ok, so last week i released the finished version of my Dante character cartoon animation doing the "gerrarahere mhen" originally made famous by the Nigerian actor "Francis Odega". I've also been trying to re-trace my roots back to the construction industry because that's where i originally from and like HypefroActive, me and my partner are coming up with something for the construction industry called the COPORAD Project. That will be kicking off anytime next week.

Dante posing with car

Today, i've come back to animating after taking some time off to work on my construction business and the time has also come to animate the other final half of the "gerrarahere mhen" shot. In trying to come as close as i can to the real thing, i have embarked on doing more models for the car and i might eventually model the houses and surroundings that's caught up within the major take of the camera. but wether i model more or not, the car has to come into the scene. A pain in the butt if you ask me but i gotta do this. So incase you haven't seen the part 1 of it, here is the link https://youtu.be/enCSbLk3idI

Dante posing with car hidden in another view

The car has been created and that's it with Dante striking a pose somewhere up there. The car is not finished but i at least have an idea of how it should look, where the steering should be, the car seat and positioning of Dante.  These parts are very important because he actually made contact with all these parts and though i will be animating very close to what the actor did in real life, some little additions and exaggerations will be added to make it look cartoony. So these parameters are enough to get the animation going and when i'm done animating, i can come back to finish up the modelling work for the car.

Now here's a tip, the last anime i did which is the part 1 of these shot, i set up the rig in FK and switched one of them to IK some few frames into animating. It gave me some problems as i couldnt rotate the IK solver in all three axis as i would have wanted. I dont know why that is but this time around, i switched everything to Ik from start and have tested it a bit to make sure nothing weird is happening and so far everything has been good plus i'll be doing a lot of "pose to pose" animations and why is because, i am animating to an already existing shot so the poses do matter a lot if there is to be any semblance at all compared to the actual film. Yeah, the first was more of a free style trying to run wild with it but in this one, i want it looking as close as it can get with some very few variations and that means i have to study the clip to understand what Francis is doing.

So, that's the 411 on what's happening on HypefroActive and yeah, see you guys next  time as always.

Completed Gerrarahere 3D Animation. The Dante Project (PT 1)

Hello HypefroActive fans and welcome to another exciting edition of animations on HypefroActive. Today i'll go straight to the point showing you the completed animation project that i embarked on weeks ago tagged the "Dante Project". It's been finished for a while but i didn't have the time to upload and share. Well bla bla bla and it's finally here.

Here's the link https://youtu.be/enCSbLk3idI

I seriously hope this inspires other upcoming animators and newbies. The sequel or final episode if you like will be coming in a week or two, so stay tuned.

gerrarahere 3d cartoon, the making. The Dante Project.

a shot from the dante project.

Hello HypefroActive fans and welcome to another exciting edition of animations on HypefroActive. Ok, so here we are again still on the Dante Project, only this time i am animating. It's been a wonderful experience and i wish i could share a "work in progress popularly known as WIP" video but i cant for a lot of mingy reasons but not withstanding, work has been fun amidst the power problems and all.
So i am almost done with animating as i look for some things to add in other to make it more lively. Yeah and i even added a squash and stretch on the head. I like seeing that in those animation school reels like "animation mentor" and in "Blue Sky's" film like Rio. And it really did bring a lot of comic into the shot. So what next did i do afterwards? I looked for places in the models' body that i can correct the skin deformations. A lot of people will call this "The Skin Test" which means testing to see how the skin deforms or will deform during the animating process.

With all that in check and passed we are almost good to go in terms of rendering. Some months ago, i would have probably finished everything about this shot but i guess things have changed slightly now compared to before. There are a lot of things to see and add. You also have to consider what you are animating and the order of flow plus a lot of other things that makes sense out of the principles. The scene is really simple and almost empty because i want to keep the project free of polygons and as for the animation, i guess you'll have to wait a little while to see for yourself what i've been talking about especially when you consider the fact that it's coming from a CAT rig. I'll be rendering soon and i hope it doesn't render for ever so as a precaution, i'll be using only necessary rendering parameters and NO i'm not even using the mental ray.

Ok, so above is one of the shots from the project and i will try updating this post with many more when i find the time to. The audio for the shot was coined out from a Nigerian film with Francis Odega playing the lead role. And has since become very popular because of his own version of gerrarahere which is supposed to be pronounced as "get out of here". And although he wont be saying that in this video because this video is only 30seconds long or there about and still worth seeing. He will be saying that in the subsequent video to follow and this time i will be animating a little closer to how he acted in real life. This one is a freestyle as i just jumped into animating without practicing anything. Phew, it does feel good to be back.

Alright so until i see you again, have a great time animating and stay blessed.

Final Update on The Dante Model "Before Animating".

Hello HypefroActive fans and welcome to another beautiful edition of Animations on HypefroActive. Ok so i'm still on my Dante Project creating morph targets for expressions and letters. Actually i'm done creating morphs save for some few that i might create or forgo as I don't think they will affect the Anime project in any critical way and some others that i give a second thought about refining. I'm trying to create something more realistic than what i used to do and not withstanding i think these basic morphs targets will do just fine. Right now, i'm testing out the morph targets to see if they work fine and so far so good...yeah , i'm making progress.

So today i'll be talking about Rigging. Though i once talked about it in an earlier post on this same blog. After considering for a while what should drive the mesh, i settled for the CAT Rig. Why? Because i've spent too much time creating models and my fingers are itching for some Animations. Setting up the CAT rig won't take more than an hour once you make up your mind on which to use and you can use the Skin modifier to attach the bones to the mesh.

The big advantage here for me is the "hand presets". With these i don't need to pose the fingers every time i want a particular hand pose that i have already used within an animation shot.  For instance, a punch or a hand-shake can be recalled in another frame for re-use instead of posing the hand and fingers all over again. Once in the CAT Studio, you can store these hand poses as presets and call them back with a double click for re-use any time you like. The CAT Studio also allows you to store a whole animation sequence like you would do while exporting a MOCAP data (That is assuming you actually do use MOCAP data). In these case, it would come in handy when you are working on projects where they have fight scenes.

The Con however to using the CAT rig on this project is that it doesn't come with the IK spline kind of bones like the custom bones have and this factor would affect it at the pelvis and body in general even greatly, if you are using 3dsmax like me that is. In this situation, when you rotate the pelvis bone control, the whole body rotates with it which is normal. However, there should be a control in the pelvis region that is linked to the legs and upper body, so that when this part of the pelvis rotates, the pair of legs rotates with it but  the Upper body remains still with only minimal movements, which is acceptable and desired if you ask me. Well, this rig don't have that control and even if i managed to insert one like i have done, it doesn't quite function like what i've just described. Still the rig is just good enough for what i want it for. CAT rigs are generally meant for quick hand animations or MOCAP data transfers and would perform badly when it comes to a dancing character or an animation that would require plenty of rotations at the pelvis.

Ok, so i'm just beginning to round up the morphs for facial expressions and i'm heading towards animating something gradually. Eerrr, it's been a wonderful experience and an eye opener creating different types of morph targets and learning a lot of other skills on the job. I also have gotten the sound for it. Because it's African i'll be using an African sound and what i will be animating to is the popular "gerarahere mhen" meme used here in Nigeria that was created by Nigerian Comedy Actor, Francis Udega.

Above are some of the expressions the character is able to perform and that rounds up today's' episode of Animations on HypefroActive. Ok, so from all of us at HypefroActive, we are signing out until we connect again, keep animating.

Update on The Dante Project. (Still on modeling)

Hello Peeps and welcome to another fantastic episode of Animations on HypefroActive. Today, i wont be taking too much of your time as i just want to keep you guys updated with my work so far. Boy i hate modeling but i have to do these things because one of them leads to the other. No model, no animating, so yeah i have to swallow my hate and do what i have to do. It wasnt easy modeling these stuffs especially when you have to continually change from the reference to something never planned for. Anyways i'm here now and here we go.

Ok, so i would say, modeling the hand was the biggest challenge for me and i kept changing until i arrived here. Something i learnt though is that, while modeling the thumb and if you are using the box method like i am, it comes easier when you extrude the portion where the thumb is supposed to

sprout from just like the other fingers. Another thing is that since it would be animated, it's good idea to leave the hand and all it's fingers in a base pose. Keeping it really simple so that they appear plain and neutral, that way it is easier to rig and get into any pose you like. Also, the proportion in the fingers are clearly seen. And that's all i have for the day. So far i've modeled and textured the main character, i'll probably do an anime with a simple scene like i used to and begin rigging soon. Still thinking of what to animate though but it wont be long like before. Maybe something in the 20-30secs range. Until i come your way again, stay blessed and keep that passion burning.

Creating The Dante model. (Creating and correcting Morph tagets).

initial head model

Hello HypefroActive fans and welcome to another fantastic edition of Animations on HypefroActive. It's nice been here again especially when you get feedbacks from other africans doing good, "animation wise". I'm not allowed to share their works here and that's probably because i have not asked for their permission to do so but in all, it's good to see that we are growing in the CGI industry. Today's episode kicks off from where the last one left off. I'm on a new animation Project that i call the "dante" project and so far i am still in the modelling stages. Some days ago, i posted a facial appearance of a finished untextured head model of the character and right now i'm following up with creating the morph targets. Well i'm not much of a modeller and modelling does bore me alot but when an artist is creating this things to be animated, then you have to give it your all because precise facial expressions can contribute in making a difference in that animation. To this end i have learnt that it's not how many morphs you are able to create in a day that matters or will matter but how precise they look and how you use them.

corrected head model

Anyways prior to creating the morph targets, i made some changes to the face for ease of change in the animation. Here is a pix of what it looked like when i first created it and right below it, is what it looks like right now. The change is minor and could be disregarded without causing any damage, lag or problems but i choose to because i want my base model looking like the new one rather than the much too serious old model. The change is in the brows in case you've not noticed. i just dragged the vertices of the brows by the top nose bridge up to lighten up the character and i think it would be easier to animate from there.

So how did i go about it? Since every other head model revolves or emanates from the main head model, i went after that. Already i'd modeled about six morphs or there about and that seemed a bit of a problem. And if i have to go through each one individually plus trying to see if the edge loops positions match, the end result would be disastrous to the world of animation and that alone is enough to discredit all your hard work especially, if the animation at the end is expected to be crappy, this one mistake could make it look even crappier.

Ok, i didn't do that, instead, i corrected the main head model first and positioned it in the   zero(0,0,0) planes of my UI(user interface).

morph targets

Next i picked each model one after the other and aligned them to the main model.

Then ALT + X   the main model to put it in the backface cull mode and freeze it. To make life easier for you, go to it's object property mode and turn off the "show frozen in gray" botton.

Next freeze the main model. Now switch the UI (user interface) to wire frame mode.

Pick the vertices of the morph you want to edit and place them where it's original in the main model are. Aaaand you are done.

If placed correctly, movements on the edited vertices will not be noticeable and it would appear like they never left their position at all. Ok that's how i fixed that and now i am progressing to testing the morph targets to see if it's what i want and probably create more morphs if necessary. immediately after that, the body comes next, then i'll do some mild texturing, rigging and finally animating.

Also, in creating morph targets, you could go about it by taking pictures of your different facial expressions, looking for references online or using the mirror. It's fun when you use the mirror because it's somehow interactive and you get to make your own kind of crazy faces. Downside is if you are creating this morphs in the open such that people can see you then, they might probably think you are going nuts so you might consider an enclosure or secluding yourself somehow. And for the record, i use 3dsmax. A lot of you already knew that. Also, the technique i used above will apply only if you are correcting one model of same kind at a time. If you are re-modeling more than one model of same kind in 3dsmax, you could consider adding an "edit poly" from the list of modifiers into your already-in-place "editable poly" in the stack.

 A little secret is that this "Dante" character is HypefroActive's mascot and you'll be seeing a lot of it often as simple casual characters, as action characters even as the ones in mortal kombat, justice league and marvel type characters. I did promise to do a fight scene last some time last year but didn't. I'm sorry about that but will see about that this year and soon. There are a lot of things that would be happening this year and action packed animation is one of them. We have to put Africa on the map, so stay with me.

Alright mates, that's all i have for today. Until i come your way again sometime next week, it's good bye, stay blessed and keep animating.

The making of Dante. Modelling tips.

final model of the head.

Hello HypefroActive fans and welcome to another wonderful edition of Animations on HypefroActive. So i kick off the day with my newest animation job and i'm in the modelling stage. I didnt  find this funny at all, owing to the fact that i've not touched 3dsmax for close to a year now and jumping right back in, i hear the tools in the program say "oh no you dont". Well, i'm here and i've got to do what i"ve got to do. So let's go.

Ordinarily, i find it difficult to use references to model and even when i find one, i still dont keep to it. And even when i went back for some drawing lessons and thinking "ok this time i will constrain myself to this drawn out reference", well no i still didnt respect that. Somehow anyways and after a lot of hours of modelling, i came up with these. It really is an improvement of a lot of the things i've modeled so yaaaaaay, i'm happy with it, thank you very much.

refining the head

However while modelling, i found out that if i'd stayed with the model i would have been faster and it would probably have turned out a lot easier for me especially with the reference looking at you in the face and you dont have to make speculations on where what should stay. The con however is that you are confined to a particular model and you are too serious doing what it is you are doing because it looks like a job instead of something you should be enjoying.

head almost done

The biggest lesson here is that, after modelling the head and because i used the symmetry modifier to achieve this, i should have collapsed the symmetry modifier into the edit poly modifier making the head model one whole object. If you are on this path modelling for animations and you do not collapse all you have in that stack into its basic modelling modifier, in this case the 'edit poly", then you would have problems when the time comes to add the morpher. The morph would work properly as expected but will seem to malfunction when you move vertices that are existing on the axis of symmetry to either side of the horizontal or x-plane and i'm sure that's not what you want unless ofcourse it's planned that way. So this little advice goes out to the newbies because i know that the pros know about this evil trick.

Alright, that's all i have for now and remember there is no gain if there is no pain. Animation requires sacrifice and it wont come cheap but that dont mean you should give up. So until i see you again, keep animating.

My 2D drawings

Hello People and welcome to another edition of HypefroActive Animations. It's been ons and offs for me and i rarely keep to schedule like i used to, eerrr i'm sorry about that and i hope to improve drastically on that "in a positive way". Yeah, so to everyone that's visited this blog for something new but finds thesame boring status quo "nothing new to read blog", i am deeply sorry once again. So we're through with the bad part and the good part is that Animations on this blog has improved a great deal too. As a matter of fact, i'm onto something new but i wont be doing anything over a minute like before. But you are guaranteed of better animations and improved animating techniques here on HypefroActive.

Starting off this version 2.0 type Animating skills, is a flash back of my drawing prowess. I've learnt plenty during my time off and in that while, i took off some time to summon my drawing creativity. Though 2d is not pre-requisite into learning 3d animations or animating. But a good or at least fair knowledge of it is an added advantage so don't get scared. Ok, so here are some cartoon drawings i re-duplicated in ink. I'm an ink person and i did about two or three versions of them for you to see.

So, that's that about my drawing skillz. Coming up next is my recent 3d character animation i'm creating from scratch and i'm still in the modelling stage. Tried working with references again, but couldnt so i'm alone one again like the wolf exploring animation and hoping to churn outsomething good. Until i the next edition, i'll see you guys when i see you.