Week 10: Unreal & Shot 12

 This week's Advance Production work consisted on cleanup, exports, and reshooting reference for Shot 12. For Shot 6, the feedback I received Monday was to change the direction of the head for the cookie spit and to add a snarl-like expression at the end. On top of the minor fixes that I needed to make to the arm movement of the in-between poses, I worked on implementing the feedback to this week's animation.

Previously, the left arm from the first three step back poses had a sort of jitter on the elbow rotations. I worked on fixing that jitter on the keyframes and removed a few keys that I felt were slowing down the flow of the arms. In the new keyframes for the facial animation, I used some reference from a mix of stock images to identify the facial features that needed to be keyed for the snarl. Based on those references, I found that the snarl was best read with raised opposing eyebrows, a raised cheek crease, and a raised upper lip. As seen on the GIF, I attempted the snarl and I believe I completed the look for it. 

What I will be working on to finalize this animation for this week, would be a slow raise on the shoulders as the snarl is made. I will also be adding a moving camera to keep the frame of the shot consistent, from the start to finish of Shot 6.

As we are starting to move everything into Unreal, I decided to export my more complete animation on Shot 6. I exported my animation using the Alembic cache feature in Maya. I had also uploaded a screenshot of the camera settings I am currently using for this most recent version of Shot 6 on our team Google Drive to help the camera setup in Unreal.

In comparison to last week's animation of Shot 12, I removed the poses on key frames 18 to 27 of the toss. Additionally, I added a few new frames to the end of the animation to resolve the fall. Rather than having the fall look like a stiff possum, I created a more relaxed pose after the impact with some minor movement on the neck and arms. The settle of these movements need more time to read better, so I'll be adding time to have a flow.

I still in the process of re-animating the toss once again. While I wasn't able to video record the reference, I did have some practice tossing the box the box. What I have at the moment is some placeholder keyframes while I figure out a way to record a front view of the hand movements for the box toss for a more accurate reference.

This week, I'll complete the re-recording of the reference and polish up the block out of the needed poses. Additionally, I'll be testing out different timing for the camera movement for Shot 6.