H. Chris Brown FMX Classes Blog

 I did in fact have to go back and re-key every frame, but I fixed my problem and I can continue on with grinding out the animation. The dinosaurs "roar" scene is taking me forever. 

 Somehow half way through animating, my playback speed switched itself from 24x1 fps to "play every frame" and this really messed me up. I had been animating to "play every frame" without realizing so it looked good in the playback, but it looked really fast in the format I would end up rendering it as. I am trying to find a solution, but I fear my only solution is to go through and slowdown every single key frame I have made so far which is about to take up a LOT of time...

 I took a little time to really understand the rigs and what they were capable of. Once I felt I had a good foothold, I started animating.

 I now have all my models set and a nice ground layout. I used a youtube video to teach myself how to build rocks from circle polys by using the vertex editor and sharpening points and then laying a rock surface texture over top. I did this to create a little rock/mountain wall around the border of my ground. I also used the cube website we talked about in class to generate a skydome image of a jungle, it took all 5 of my free generates to make one I liked. Now having a nice background. I went back to the paint brush tool and learned how to make vegetation like trees/bamboo/bushes. I am about to finish covering my ground with vegetation to really make the space feel full. I am very close to the point where I can actually begin animating. 

 With a ground base done I decided to finally try and get my models into my workspace and man, these things were problematic. They had to be downloaded at .rar files which meant I had to download WinRAR in order to even use them. Then when I put them in the gorilla model was fine, but the dinosaur model was about 100x the size of my project so I had to figure out how to size him down without corrupting his nodes/look. Eventually through a lot of trial and error I managed to get them to a good place, however their textures were super buggy, I'm guessing because of the re-size. I also kept messing them up while putting them in which lead me to completely delete my project and re-start which also meant re-making the ground a bunch of times.

  Pixilation Video Storyboard:   Start off by entering the kitchen and sitting down at table (feet don’t move to give impression of sliding)   Clap hands together and form bread out of thin air   Slice bread with hand   Clap hands together and form strawberries out of thin air   Smash strawberries on first half of bread and create jam   Spread hand along other slice of bread forming a PeanutButter spread across the bread   But the bread together completing the sandwich   Sit on the ground as if to be driving a car and drive away   First person view from sitting down and sounds play as if it’s a busy traffic road   Another person changes lanes in front of camera view   “Hey I’m driving here!”   Drive out of the door   The End  

  I followed a tutorial on how to add grass and learned how to not only use the paint brush tool, but also how to mash. Using the paint brush I made a grass model and then I modified and converted the brush into a poly model. Unfortunately, my ground was too big and I had to add around 50,000 pieces of grass to cover it and it completely lagged my whole project. Instead I just used photoshop ai to generate a ground image and textured it onto my ground. 

 I've already spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to setup the animation I want to create, and in doing so I have had to teach myself a lot. Something I just taught myself was how to texture map the ground and give it a little but of depth as opposed to it being flat. I am about to move on to try and add grass/vegetation.

For my final project I took a lot of inspiration from the 2005 version of the film King Kong. I found a King Kong rig as well as a dinosaur rig in TurboSquid so I want to somewhat re-create the scene from the movie where Kong fights off some dinosaurs while protecting the lead girl.  However instead of a female rig, I want to use the box rig. I created a storyboard to show my plan, I know it looks complicated, however, all of my previous animations were made in one nights work so I feel with 2-3 weeks work I am definitely capable of accomplishing this. Beat List: 1. Box falls from sky 2. Box lands in jungle setting 3. Giant gorilla is chilling by box 4. Giant gorilla picks up box and is intrigued 5. Dinosaur launches into scene and bites gorilla arm 6. Gorilla swings box down onto the ground 7. Gorilla throws a haymaker into dinosaur 8. The gorilla and dinosaur start grappling/fighting (base fighting on where I am in the process) 9. Dinosaur almost steps on box 10. Gorilla catches ...