MoTR Production Update: Week 9
- 1rregularcharlie
- May 13
- 11 min read
Ahoy! Another week of progress and tests!
So, we've been busy as always.
Aaaaand I've been dealing with continued stomach issues messing up my sleep schedule. I now have medication! So hopefully that'll help me out a lot. :)
Anyway time for some updates!
Current Status:
General:
So, we've been doing some more tests to better iron out the animation process. Also better put together the animation with Hawkins and Carbo we completed last week. Evidence of which can be found below.
Technical Aspects:
Blender Render:
So firstly. We edited the animation of Hawkins and Carbo to better use the layering technique I discussed last week. We made some small adjustments to the camera, added the rest of the props and with Katherine's help added a sky box using the beautiful artwork of The Seas Between created by Melotea.
As you can see the layering and reorientating the characters to treat the clipping line as the ground really worked in dealing with the floating characters issues. I'm really happy with how this shot came out.
Ahhhhh, it's so nice to see these shots coming together. :DDD
Natka does want me to put the pinky down on the gloved hand holding the bottle. I'll get to that at some point.
Layering Test:
Now this was something I briefly discussed last week. My original plan was to use the shot before the one above to test this technique as it had a still camera, and I was very confident it would work brilliantly.
However my Dad, a retired project manager, made a good point. Fail Fast. As in tackle the hardest stuff first so that problems can be identified early on and dealt with before too much work is already done. I thought that very wise. Thus, my plans changed and instead of choosing a shot with a still camera I instead chose a very complex shot from Episode 1. A shot that will need heavy reboarding as the dimensions of the ship have changed significantly since it was boarded. Hence why I'm not too bothered about showing it here. ;D
When we get round to Episode 1 I'll be going through the boards again and changing things based on what we've learnt from creating the shorts. The plan is to use Blender for these changes, but we'll see when we cross that bridge.
As you can see this shot is a rather tricky one. Here's a list of things we needed to keep in mind.
The camera turns WITH Hawkins turn and run. So timing needs to be very precise and Hawkins' turn needs to be accounted for in the animation itself.
Hawkins climbing up the stairs would need the use of at minimum 3 layers. One of act a middle/base, one to act as a layer behind Hawkins and another to do the same in front of them.
Because Hawkins runs into a skid we need to work out how to effectively have the character move properly in time with their steps, in a 3D environment without causing drift.
So I approached this with a series of ideas that I would hope would complement each other. We wanted to make sure I wouldn't go too over the top in terms of animation. Keep the animation to a SUPER rough design with a focus on just seeing if we can make it work considering the issues pointed out above.
Isolated Animation:
Firstly I went through and isolated the drawings of Hawkins from the boards and imported that into Toonboom. I changed the resolution of the scene to better fit around Hawkins and generally tried to centre and scale all the drawings to be roughly inline with each other.
My intention was that even though I would animate Hawkins running, I would animate them running in place. Then, once that animation was imported into Blender, move the entire mesh in time with the steps in blender itself. My hope was that this would mean that we could use this technique in all future walking/running shots in the future and make the process of importing 2D animation that featured movement around an environment easier. Results were mixed, which we'll get into further down.
Stacked Layers/Meshes:
Another thing I wanted to test was a theory that utilised layering and this test would provide the perfect excuse to try. I mentioned above that animating Hawkins running up the stairs would require, at minimum, 3 layers of meshes arranged in such an away to provide a middle/base for the animation, a layer ahead of the base (effectively "in front" of Hawkins body) and lastly a layer behind the base (effectively behind Hawkins body) from the camera's perspective.
As you can see from the terrible MS paint drawing above my hope was that I could move these separate layers/meshes as a single group. I knew such a thing is possible in Toonboom using the node view, I've done it many times, however I wasn't sure if such a thing existed within Blender.
Drawn Depth:
The last thing I wanted to test was if I would give the test animation the illusion of depth by drawing depth on the separate layers. By which I mean, given the angle of the camera, if I could draw the top of the shoes in front of the base animation and stretching back to the base animation. Results from this test were not great.
The results of the test:
The Animation:
The animation I created for Hawkins was as rough and simplistic as I could make it. Honestly I doubt I would even use these drawings for thumbnails during the initial boarding process, but I'm picky like that. Natka still told me I put too much detail into the shoes. :P
Importing this animation into Blender and fiddling around we realised several things and learned even more about animating complex shots in this style. All of which is essential. I'll go into detail below.
Isolating the animation:
The isolating of the animation and simply eyeballing the movement and turn based on the animatic turned out to be supremely ineffective.
Put simple, the animatic is not timed to perfectly work with the eventual animation. It works in terms of what it's supposed to be, a guide for the shots that depict the events of the story, but do not work well where PRECISE animation timing is required.
When I attempted to have the entire animation move in time with the running depicted in the animation the results were really jerky and not at all what I was looking for.
Some possible solutions:
There are several solutions I can think of to minimise and help guide animation in the future.
Edit the boards and the camera in such a way to hide the exact placement of the feet in the environment. This would allow us to animate the character and move them about the environment without having to concern ourselves with the exact placement of the footfalls. Whilst this is possible, some shots might look a lit awkward. Still a good note for future edits.
The creation of a simplistic 3D model, roughly correlating to the dimensions of the character with basic rigging enough for us to use them as a base model to do the movements the character does. As an example we'd us this rig to animate (in basics) the running into the skid to the stairs, and the climb up those stairs. Then we'd isolate that animation. Import it into toonboom (or any animation program) and animate over the top of that rig. This should solve the issues relating to timings and space.
Possibly when we remake the boards in Blender itself we'll be able to do a degree of posing (a step up from boarding but before full rough animation). Hopefully if we can do this within Blender we'll be able to using the layering technique and better predict the appriopriate timing of the movement.
With all that said, I believe that isolating the animation and actually moving the characters in the 3D scene would be best. It would ensure a great deal of freedom when it comes to editing and moving aspects of the shot.
Stacked Layers/Meshes results:
As you can see in the very rough test animation above, the lines on the ground depict the clipping line of the layers. When the outline of Hawkins is light green, it's on the layers AHEAD of the base. When the line work is a darker blue it is BEHIND the base.
As it turns out you can move multiple layers/meshes/objects as one by making one of those layers the "parent" of the others. In this case I made the middle/base layer the parent of the other two and this actually worked really well.
I was able to move, scale, rotate etc all the layers of the animation as if they were a single layer/object and even, if desired, do so to individual layers without affecting another. So big win. Nice to know we can do that in Blender and the 2D animation works in this format.
In the future I might create a seperate blank mesh the same size as the others to act as the parent. Thus allowing me to edit the scale and placement of the middle layer without affecting the others.
Might also be worth while to add another layer even further ahead and behind, just incase a range of depth like that is needed.
Drawn Depth results:
Unfortunately the attempt to draw depth not work out as intended. I honestly should have predicted this ahead of time as it's an issue we've come across before. I imagine this will be a persistant problem.
The introduction of depth through drawings, does not work.
I had hoped that I could use the layering to depict depth in the drawings would avoid the floating issue. I think the issue largely comes from the fact that you cannot see the shadow cast by the animation on the environment whilst actually animating in programms outside of Blender. It goes against every artistic insict to not draw depth, particually in feet. The reason being is that, in a 2D enviroment, it literally grounds the characters. Remember in more traditional 2D animation, animators have to literally add in shadows themselves and not have those shadows generated and cast through a 3D lighting engine... in most cases anyway. :P
Some possible solutions:
I've come up with some simplistic solutions to this problem, though neither of them is perfect.
Reallign the camera and character positions to avoid the need to draw depth. In the shot used in this test I would lower the camera at the start. Angeling the camera more upwards this meaning we can draw the front of Hawkins shoes on the front layer. This probably won't work for every shot and sometimes the shot is simply too good to change. The camera itself is a tool to enhance the story and the characters within it after all and I don't like the idea of resistricting it's placement/movement.
Simply treat every clipping line of each layer as the ground of that layer. With this we'd rely on the layering itself to give a degree of depth. This solution only really works on shots that don't look down on the characters. But for the shots like the one of Hawkins and Carbo laying on the ground (the first video in this post) it works a charm.
Future concerns:
Colouring and Shadows:
It does accure to me whilst working on this that colouring the animation is going to be interesting. As the modelsheets are depicted currently, the characters all have drawn on shadows and black shading of extreme shadow. But we run into possible issues in the future due to our layering technique.
The layering technique works so far because the illusion of these characters being one solid being isn't broken. But if say, coloured and shaded Hawkins leg as if it smoothly connected to the rest of their body, we'd essentially be locked into neever moving or tweaking the camera as doing so would cuase and obvious tear in the shadow drawn onto the animation.
The solution might be to simply colour the characters flat. No shading aside from black shading. They we'd have the Blender lighting engine itself help create shadows.
Just a thought for the future and one we will have to test. I imagine this will be a test I undertake after completing the rough animation for shot 3 in the 2nd short.
The Coming Week:
1rregularCharlie:
I'm honestly not sure where I should place my focus for the coming week. These tests have revealed a lot and helped enlighten us to some of the pitfalls of animating this series.
The possibility of switching this series to a more tranditional fully 3D one has been floated about, but realistically I don't know enough about 3D animation to get the results I want. I could learn of course, but I don't want to cease all the momentium to study up a whole new way of animating. Though I do want to learn properly in the future.
More than that but I think the 2.5D style we're going for lends this series a unique look that I think fits the setting and gives it a interesting pull. You don't often see animations done in this style after all. I've seen this style used more frequently in games. A comment Katherine made when we talked about this over half a year ago sticks in my head; "If you go 3D you loose your unique artstyle." I took that to heart and I've been loving the results, when they work, despite the problems that come with it.
Not only that but the simple fact that the characters are 2D and the enviroment 3D does add some visual credence to Hawkins internal dysmorphia. They don't feel right in their body. Like the 2D characters be different to the world depicted around them.
Opens the possibility of us change the dimensions of the animation in the future too. Season 2 maybe (which yes I do have some vague ideas for). ;D
All the issues we've discovered so far are not insurmountable. We've just got to be smart and refine our process and be prepared to adapt based on the issues that arrise.
So with all that said I could turn my focus back onto doing the rough animation for shot 3 of the 2nd short, keeping in mind what has already been learnt. OR I could continue to mess around with the test animation and see if I can puzzel out solid solutions/techniques to the remaining issues ahead of time.
As I'm typing this is does seem prudent to do the later before the former.
After all what was the point of the test animation if not to identify these issues and work on solutions before they come up in full production? I feel it would be far better to have a series of prepared techniques documented and ready to use to solve these issues as they arrise.
So continuing to fiddle around with the test animation seems like the angle for now. I'd much prepher to jump into rough animation (I do love making my characters move) but to ease the burden on future Charlie, this seems like the best move.
Natka:
Natka is still searching for the time and energy to do some test animation herself. FUMI keeps her busy, as they should. She's a great animator after all. :P
Also as you've no doubt figured out by now, Natka is great at keeping me on task and giving thoughtful and great feedback and suggestions. Which is invaluable.
Katherine:
Still burning through her school work and probably will be untill her summer break. We're wishing her all the best and enjoying watching her stream her work on the MoTR Production discord.
Helps her focus apprently. Even with my constant chatter and elctroswing mixes playing in the background.
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