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.