Evaluation / Reflection

Experiences

Overall I personally feel that this assignment of 3D Character Animation was well received and I particularly enjoyed learning how to use the Morpher Modifier to simply animate a character’s facial expressions. The learning experience as a whole has been exceptionally challenging  especially regarding the sheer extent of 3DS Max’s animation tools which are first were intimidating but gradually comprehended.

 

The main downsides I experienced was the complexity of adjusting the envelopes and vertex weighting in an attempt to help the mesh to deform properly according to each of the bones. This was perhaps due to the detail and subsequent number of polygons the created character model consisted of. In addition prior to this assignment I have had limited experience regarding character animation and believe that with hindsight these problems could have been avoided by creating a simpler mesh for example.

 

Final Animation Review

Despite all of the hard work devoted to creating, rigging and skinning my Ice Skater character I was extremely disappointed with my final animation which was hastily conducted after a limited production time  imposed by other projects. Severe problems within 3DS Max crippled my animating capabilities as I was unable to even preview the animation within the application which was very unresponsive due to unknown reasons beyond my control. For this reason the final animation was also split into 4 separate parts which made the animating process slightly more manageable.

 

Improvements

Looking back if I was to repeat this project a simplified character would have been created to avoid potential technical problems during the skinning stage of adjusting bones envelopes and applying the necessary weight to vertices. I originally intended recreate a typical figure skating performance incorporating the associated body language of concentration and emotive facial expressions however this was inadequately achieved which is rather disheartening.  Despite this though key skills were gained regarding how to use a range of animation tools which I believe will prove beneficial in future projects.