Preparations
I spent some time browsing the available rigs in the UAL asset library when considering my ideas for this project. Though the Hulk would’ve been fun, I decided the gymnast was a better option for a couple reasons; the first being that a small and agile body would be both a challenge and great practice for me to maneuver in precise, acrobatic positions, the second being that the minimal, tight clothes would allow me to better learn what I’m doing without the distraction of attempting fabric animation or preventing object phasing. Now, as with any typical young American, Simone Biles comes to mind immediately whenever gymnastics are mentioned. I allowed myself to spend some time watching her performances during the 2016 Rio Olympics before coming to the decision to use her floor performance in the 2018 World Championships. The clip below is actually probably the least impressive part of her routine, but I thought that more jumps and less triple backflips would not only be easier for me but also help me learn more about weight.
Once I’d selected my clip, I spent the entire first work day and part of the second sketching out a storyboard. I ended it at her final pose, but intended to allow the video several more frames afterward as a “cool down”, where I let the body adjust to its position and practice smaller, realistic, subconscious movements.
Preparations Continued
I could barely wait to begin animating. But unfortunately, technical difficulties lay ahead. When I opened the project in the UAL Maya Launcher through VMware, I was able to view the texture and assets that come with the rig, but I was met with the annoying difficulty of my Alt button not working. I’m not sure if it’s because I have a Mac or a USA keyboard or a combination of the two, but I was stuck using the onscreen keyboard. After a couple of poses, however, I realized that working that way was simply not sustainable to a productive workflow and switched back to working on the project without VMware, resigning myself to the back-and-forth of downloading my project between the two remote desktops when I wanted to do serious animation work vs when I wanted to render.
As an aside, I did purchase myself a UK Windows keyboard to ease this difficulty. It arrived after I’d already finished all the keyframes for this project, but I’m very excited to make use of it in the future. It makes me feel very cool as I stare at my screen for hours on end.
Day One
After a couple of days of technical difficulties and preparation, I began animating. I found it surprisingly easy compared to my last project, and had finished almost half of the key poses within only five hours, whereas the Knight took me almost four days merely to finish the blocking pass.
I attribute this to me knowing more about how to work a rig, as well as the lack of distracting clothing. I was able to go into this one with the knowledge of which pieces of the rig to never touch, and so didn’t make the mistake of animating the root control. I also was able to use the knee controls to my own benefit rather than them being a source of stress and confusion. One thing that I will say that has frustrated me a little, though, is that I’m unable to animate her ponytail much without skin folds on the back of the neck behaving oddly, so I wasn’t able to put in as much fun hair movement as I had hoped. I was extremely surprised and happy with my success on this first day, and absolutely couldn’t wait to see this hyperrealistic rig in action, so I transported myself and my project back to VMware to render, out of curiosity. Every time I do this you must imagine me with my project files in a virtual briefcase at the virtual bus stop waiting for the digital 12 to Oxford Circus.
I was beyond delighted with how the rig looked in action, but after many hours of gazing awestruck at my work, I realized that the right arm looks a little bit janky on that second jump. It flaps around bizarrely like a robot getting stuck. I resisted the urge to prolong my work day and made a mental note to resolve it first thing the next morning.
Day Two
I went into Day Two with more confidence than I ever have on an animation exercise. I fixed that arm joltiness easily by simply taking a peek at the graph editor and deleting keyframes during the jump that were unnecessary (ones that followed a path they would have anyway, or ones whose motion I could recreate by editing the curves). Although I planned to dig more deeply into the graph editor for next week and merely plot out my keyframes for the blocking pass, I did also edit the curves so that the jumps look a little more realistic- when the feet leave the ground the line is linear, and while they are in the air, bending to an athletic point, they’ve got more time to adjust.
Day Three
I finished my keyframes on Day Three. Overall, I still felt very proud of them, but I was very aware of how jolty and floaty some of the jumps look, especially in the final twisting split. I wanted to wait to work on it, though, for academic feedback, so that I didn’t mess up my keyframes trying to work on a polish ahead of time.
I utilized the time at the end as I had originally intended: I was going to add in a closeup where we see the gymnast breathing heavily after the end of her rigorous routine, and a look of nervousness or excited anticipation on her face indicating her confidence in her performance and possible expectancy to be graded. I felt drawn to do a closeup by the realism of this rig; which I had never worked with before.
I am very interested in facial animation such as lip sync and expression, and I although it didn’t exactly fit into the parameters of this project, I wanted to find some way to experiment with it a little.
Day Four
After almost an entire day of playing with cameras, HDRI globes and frame rates, I was able to produce this. I have to admit that despite its flaws, I am beyond overjoyed with it, and if you were to tell me a month ago that this is my work I wouldn’t have believed you at all. I’m especially proud of the breathing at the end. It’s exactly what I had visualized and it came to me very easily. In my opinion, the expression, arm movement, heaving chest, and neck bending look natural and professional. Despite being a body mechanics project, that’s the part I would show off.
That being said, although I was happy with it, I couldn’t get past that joltiness during her twisting split at the end. I’d also come to notice how broken her wrist looks in that final pose. And so despite being just about ready to submit the project the night before, I decided to take one last crack at it in the final day to polish up that twist just a little bit, without letting myself go too far into the polishing end of things.
Day Five
And so I rendered one more time, keeping my eyes out for little things without necessarily committing myself to a polish. I fixed the broken wrist and I tried to simplify some of the joltiness in the twisting split. I did this by once again deleting keyframes that were unnecessary and editing the curves a little bit, as well as keeping an eye on where the knee controllers were at all times. I also spent some time making sure her chest, waist, and neck looked natural and comfortable between poses. I’ve put some work into the fingers and toes, but ultimately I plan to work on those as well as add in more breathing throughout during my polish pass.
…..And here it is. The jump looks better, which was my intention. Overall I think the quality is better. There are still some changes I’d like to make, but that’s what the polish pass is for, and I’m still very happy with my work.