Animation 2025

When it came to creating the poses, I ended up creating full animations from them to better my skills and demonstrate my knowledge (I more or less wanted a challenge). Exploring animation in Unreal, I was able to create a lounging animation and a squatting animation with image references. To accomplish this for the squatting animation, I opened the game that my image was from, and watched the character movement thoroughly. The result was far from perfect, but for the position I was at in the module, it was very well done.

 

Using the playground setup, I utilised constraints- which I initially struggled greatly with. However once I was able to comprehend the constrains, I found it quite simple and utilised them later in my emote. (The pencil behind the waitress's ear and notepad in hand) To better my understanding of constraints, I will continue to research them and use them within Maya to expand my knowledge and skillset. 

 

Advancing into motion capture technology, I found the original concept of things quite easy. It was easy enough to attach the skeleton to the model/mesh, and watch it perform the animation.

However, cleaning up in motion capture was much more difficult and I found it immensely unenjoyable. It was very difficult to see the model, and I remained slightly unsure of my final product. Even in brightening the screen, I struggled to see the mesh, but I did my best to ensure what was visible was a well done cleanup. Creating the emote was relatively easy (As I unintentionally did create emotes out of my poses, so I felt quite confident going into it), however I did find myself having an issue with the knees not lining up properly at times and making a jittery movement. It was irritating to try and fix it, but ultimately, I managed.