Introducing Customized Bones and Animated Equipment
Concerning the Artist
Tom Breuer is a dynamic and proficient freelance 3D designer with a selected aptitude for Blender and Unity in game-based purposes and character creation. With ardent storytelling, he has created a complete world crammed with fascinating 3D creatures with distinctive backstories that he likes to share. You’ll be able to discover Breuer’s beautiful creatures thriving of their pure habitats by visiting his web page at https://sketchfab.com/TomBreuer.
Character Idea
When creating a brand new character, I take into consideration:
What would this character need most in life and what would drive this character?
For instance, a turtle that desires to get from level A to level B shortly. Or an ostrich that basically needs to fly even when it naturally can’t. My subsequent step is to brainstorm what this character must do or have with a view to obtain its objective.
Determine 1. Idea Artwork
Modeling Course of
I often solely use Blender and Substance painter for my workflow, however for this venture I can even combine Reallusion Character Creator (CC) and iClone to understand their advantages.
In Blender, I begin with the road instrument and start constructing the silhouette of the true animal. This fashion I can play with precise shapes and never lose sight of the reference drawing. I carry on rearranging the physique elements till I like the general form.
There aren’t any fastened guidelines for my modeling course of. I simply pay shut consideration to the silhouette and go from there. I maintain the mass of the ostrich physique resembling a triangle pointing upwards and the one factor that disrupts this move is the backpack it’s carrying.
Determine 2: Fabric for Ostrich
Texturing
Instantly after the character is modeled, I export it to Substance Painter. I begin by creating completely different areas on the mannequin by assigning completely different supplies: metallic, plastic, cloth, and many others. Then I change to the Diffuse layer to give attention to the coloring.
For every colour, I add three layers with a major, spotlight, and shadow colour. I mix these three layers utilizing masks ranging from the ambient occlusion, edges, and regular route of the floor. Right here I work largely with gentle gradients.
Rigging
Once I’m proud of the mannequin and textures, I proceed with the animation course of. I begin by utilizing the AccuRig module contained in the Character Creator.
As soon as rigged, I examine the automated skin-weights utilizing instance animations offered by Character Creator. And I exploit the pores and skin weight instruments to blur and refine wherever wanted.
Including Customized Bones
Within the subsequent step, I import the rigged ostrich into Blender. Right here, I regulate the bones and add new customized bones. I do that, so I can animate the facial animation with these added bones. I additionally add new extra bones within the neck to permit for smoother motion. Lastly, I rework the skin-weights of my character and regulate it to the brand new customized bones.
Knowledge Switch
With the skin-weights accomplished, I nonetheless have to course of the spacesuit accordingly. For this, I exploit the Knowledge Switch modifier which permits me to switch knowledge from one mannequin to a different.
Including Extra Bones
After importing the ostrich with its customized bones through the Blender plugin into Character Creator, I begin to edit the facial expressions. To do that, I first need to mark the character as “Humanoid” by clicking on Modify > Characterization. There, I add the additional bones that have been appended in Blender. As soon as I’ve added all of the bones I would like, I can activate the HumanIK system to have them accessible to Character Creator and iClone.
Determine 4: Including additional bones
Making Facial Expressions
I export the determine from Character Creator to Blender as FBX once more, however I choose the Blender with Face Expression choice to have it generate morphs for facial animation.
The morphs are conveniently named and keyframed, so it’s straightforward to see which facial features is being activated in Blender. With this, I can regulate the facial expressions of the ostrich body by body whereas conserving keyframes. Since I positioned a number of bones on the face prematurely, I can now use them shortly to regulate facial expressions and create all of the expressions I have to make my character speak and emote.
Within the final step, I export the animated mannequin once more as FBX and change again to Character Creator. Contained in the Facial Expression window, I import the created FBX body sequence (If this isn’t completed, solely the morphs shall be used and bone animation shall be ignored). After this, the facial expressions might be examined with sliders and completely different animations offered within the Content material Supervisor.
Animating Dynamic Equipment
At this level, I’ll add the Spring bones and Fabric components in Character Creator. For this, I choose my mannequin and click on the Modifier > Spring Bones button. With the window open, I mark the bones I would like as Spring bones and set the load, energy, and bounce attributes accordingly (the wings and the flag on the backpack for instance).
Determine 6: Spring Bones window
For the neck, I exploit fabric simulation to boost the animations with the usage of a texture primarily based on the UV of the fabric object (in black and white) that marks areas for simulation. This texture is added through the Edit Weight Map window.
Determine 7: Weight Map window
With this setup, I can focus on the principle animation and let iClone deal with the dynamic simulations.
Animation
Now I change to iClone to work on the primary clip the place I often begin with the principle idle animation. However, what sort of steady animation does the character really want? For me, it’s not a lot about one particular animation that reveals every little thing about our character, moderately it’s about getting a really feel for the character’s character and manner of shifting.
Ranging from the primary body, I pose the character with Edit Movement Layer, and replica this body to the top of the clip. In the course of the clip I add a contrapose that ought to maximize the counter movement. In between the keyframes, I’ll add increasingly “interference keys” that distort the direct path between the beginning and center key.
For the next animations, I copy the completed idle animation and add an Animation layer in order that the idle animation nonetheless performs whereas I transfer the character to new positions. This protects me plenty of time as a result of I solely need to animate the additional actions. Right here, you’ll be able to see the completely different animations all primarily based on the idle animation:
Animated Equipment
Initially I had wished to animate the entrance protect utilizing spring bones, however as a result of sturdy actions, I made a decision to make use of bone animation as a substitute. However earlier than shifting the entrance protect, I needed to animate the determine to see how it will adapt to the actions of the physique. Then I appeared for the acute actions inside the animation sequence and rotated the entrance protect accordingly. For this, I exploit the Edit Movement Layer window as I did earlier than for the physique animation, however this time in FK mode, as a result of I wish to entry non-humanoid bones.
Animation Clips & AccuLips
I considered the inside monologue of the ostrich character and the way it will be alongside the strains of “Why did I change into an astronaut?”. First, I exploit AccuLips to get the timing down for the animation. For many who aren’t acquainted, AccuLips is a robust animation instrument that may map spoken or written phrases onto an animated face. Particular person faces can show feelings by utilizing a plethora of accessible choices.
I exploit the sound recording from Vincent Fallow who lended a voice to the ostrich, giving him an exquisite character. AccuLips converts this audio monitor and provides a Viseme layer that exhibits the spoken phrases and lip animations contained in the timeline window. This permits the audio recording to playback throughout animation. For the bottom movement I exploit the “EMOTES” pack from iClone’s embedded library, which is then refined and customised with my very own animations. I put 4 clips in a row and play with the timing by chopping, stretching, and mixing the clips collectively till they match to the audio monitor.
As soon as I’m proud of the principle actions I begin to refine the animation by including a layer to every clip and including extra animation to emphasise the character’s character. Lastly, I add an Expression layer the place Face Puppet can be utilized to transcend simply utilizing AccuLips.
Once I’m proud of the animations, I export the entire file to Blender, render the scene with Eevee, and export to Sketchfab.
Wrapping Up
Reallusion Character Creator and iClone present supportive options and make for fantastic additions to my workflow. Lastly, I’ve change into particularly keen on the AccuLips system because it permits direct conversion of textual content and sound recordings into editable lip-sync animations.
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