3D
Animation and modelling​
I am learning how to animate in 3D and as long as I am having fun, I will continue learning and creating.
My role
All of them
Date
Nov 2023 -
The film is done! It took a bit longer than planned because I wanted to create my own music. It is very difficult to compose music but I am happy I gave it a shot because it turned out OK. Not great but not very bad either, although I have to edit it a bit.
I also have to fix some stuff in the film. The book looks like it is a bit inside the table and not fully on top of it. After working on a project for a long time these details are invisible and time is needed away from the project to see them.
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The film is called Hongsai and can be watched on youtube: https://youtu.be/rISY0GniSuk
I decided to add more stuff to my scene because it looked a bit empty. I also had to re-do a lot of things, because I cheated in areas where the camera could not see. I will not do that again, lesson learned: Never take shortcuts and do things properly even though the camera can not see.
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It has been about 6 weeks since I started this project and I feel pretty good about it. I need to add sound effects and music and then I think I will be done.
The new project is progressing forward and the animation part of it is almost finished. I have started creating furniture and other fun stuff. Rendering in Cycles is awesome.
New project!
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A while ago I wrote a few short stories, and of course I have to make a movie based on those stories. The image above is showing the main character.
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The floor looks a bit so so. I am trying out the render engine Cycles. Textures and lighting behaves very differently compared to Eevee.
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I learned from my last project that it is very difficult to create good lighting, animate and all the other things that makes a movie - at the same time.
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More will follow :)
I have done it! The animation is finished. I will post it here after Christmas, because its a surprise film for the 24:th. There are still some things to fix, but it is good enough for a first project I think.
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The lighting is ok now, but could be better, and the clothing does not follow the body of the character as well as it could. I was supposed to do footprints in the sand, but the character is blocking the prints so I skipped it.
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I removed the background image and used the "atmosphere" in Blender to create the sky, and it looks much better.
This project was super fun and it took 1 month from start to finish. I have learned a lot during this time and will continue with 3D for sure.
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I have started to work on the lighting. I do not want to use the "world light", as it affects everything in the scene so everything looks flat. Here I have 3 light sources from different angles and "world light" is turned off.
If I use the render engine Cycles, the light bounces off objects and creates real shadows and lighting the scene is "easier". In the render engine Eevee, the shadows work differently, they are kind of "made up".
This image takes 2 seconds to render in Eevee and 4 minutes in Cycles, on my computer. I have 1300 images (frames) in my project. This image is rendered with Eevee.
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I was supposed to add footsteps in the sand, but I had so much fun animating my character as he hops down the train. The lighting is still not fixed, but I will do that when I am finished with the modelling and animation. I started this project doing everything simultaneously, a little bit here and a little bit there, and that does not work very well.
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I am happy I created my own rig to animate with, because that gives me full control and I understand what I am doing.
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My nephew drew a train, so of course I had to add it to my animation project. I kept the train as close as possible to the original and changed it from 2D to 3D. This is rendered with Blenders Eevee engine, but I will change to Cycles for the final product.
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The lighting is not great and I am working on that, and the sky is just an image for now. The clothes stick to the body too much and I will fix that with weight paint. Footsteps in the sand was easier than I thought and I will save that for next time.
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I am trying to keep the animation fairly basic, but it is difficult not to add more cool stuff.
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Controller bones are added to the legs so that animating my character will be easier. Creating a walk cycle proved to be difficult but its getting there. Eyelid controllers are very hard to do, the way I want them to behave, but I can animate the eyelids "manually" for now.
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My character is now updated and bones are added for animation. It is time consuming to set up, but after that is done, I can move and rotate my character without having to "re-paint" it like in 2D animation, which is very nice.
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