Final Video

Putting it all together

An important part of After Effects is knowing how to render the footage. For the previous examples I've used quicktime - compression H264, which is producing reasonably sized files (around 100mb).



I felt the colours were a bit dull and the walking seems boring and doesn't link into the flies very well. The particles don't look too dominant since I changed the lightness but one can see its bounding box when it rises.

For the next render I used Quicktime - JPEG 2000 with 'millions of colours', the colour is much brighter but the file is now 350MB. I think the darker tone works better on the transition, but the particles move too suddenly.

I used Quicktime - MPEG4 for my 3rd render, I feel the man looks a bit lost in the colour change and should perhaps change darkness with the background. The flies should maybe already be moving to make the transition smoother. Finally the particle effect is still too fast because I'm moving its position, using opacity may work better. I rendered these changes but there is a problem with playback where he powersups and hits the fly; it jolts forward. This may be due to the compression.

I rendered it back in to H264 and the movement is back to how it should be but the colour definitely suffers. I rendered using DVT PAL and the colour was richer but the motion stutters on the power up.

Fly fight

I had only rendered this as a preview (earlier post), and didn't add the lower half constraints. So I added the IK, track to, and limit rot constraints for hips, upper and lower legs, feet and toes. I had to rotate the foot bones in edit mode like before so that they touched the ground.

I should avoid making the sequence too complicated with a fly being 'dissolved' on every punch attack, so should base it on the previous version; with a fly dodging a punch but getting hit on the next punch. I was really pleased with my previous version of this and like the way the flies take it in turns,1 as if they are avenging their 'friends'. On the final punch I will have the fly drop like before and particles splurge out drifting up to the sky to signify 'the end'.

I imported one more fly and got it to interact with the character by knocking into him and dodging the punches, when it does get hit I used the explode modifier that I used for the other flies, and keyframed loc rot for it dropping down.



The final step was to create the particle effect of mist/end of flies rising up from the floor into the sky. It was frustrating that to get Blender to record the particles I had to play from frame 1, my sequence took at least 3 minutes to get to the final few frames which was what I needed to analyse. I couldn't do this again as it would have taken too long so I opened a new window and looked at what the settings did, I would have to scale up lots because my mocap scenes are so large in the Blender world.

Once I'd found settings I was pleased with I used them in my fly battle scene I put the orange cube, which I used for the particles, at the beginning of the timeline (quicker to see results). I used 40 acc z which made the particles reach the top of the camera but moved a bit fast, 20 didn't reach top and when it fades out (1700 - 1800 last frame) its life of 50 means it travels away for 50 frames which makes it look like the flies drift out of the scene.

The particles would fly up when I put it at the beginning of the scene (1-100) but when I tried it anywhere else on the timeline the particles would not go above the solid shape. I would have to add them separately in After Effects and hope it gave the same effect.

This is when it works at the beginning of the scene, but I feel it moves a bit too fast. By having it on a separate layer I can decide on the speed using the time mapping tool.

Sequence in After Effects

I imported my files into After Effects and organised them in the sequential order.

walk - I gave this a fade out to soften the change in video

fly movement - I had this fade in, making the two videos cross over

attack - I didn't need to add anything as the fly moving into the camera was a transition in itself

explosion - I alternated between red and yellow solid colours to show something was happening to the character and scene, it was a very simple technique but I think shows enough about what is going on. I used an ellipse to look like a bolt going thru the camera and had it fade in using the alpha.

rise - the yellow fades out to begin the rise clip, I had it change opacity while the action happened as this makes the transition smoother

The final video to add will be the attack which I'll need to develop further and then I can put it all together..

Fly transition

The flies follow the man walking and when the camera zooms over his shoulder I need to show what he's afraid of. I imported the flies in and decided to use symmetry and have a larger fly in the foreground. I began by keyframing loc rot from 1-100 with the flies moving towards the camera.

I used the same particle effect as the dropping fly from my fly punching scene, and thought it would look nice to have them leaving different coloured trails. This video was very mysterious and complemented the worry the character was feeling.

I added a cube and gave it particles, importantly increasing the acc z values, which made them move upwards. I played around with the amount, normal, and random values to try to create a fog effect.

I changed the colour but it would not be as simple to make the particles look thicker and bolder, for that I used a halo effect and used a low amount of hardness. I increased the acc z and also acc x making the particles spread out further and faster. Everytime I had to use ALT A to prepare the particle script and then render the animation to see the results.

I added 50 frames and moved the flies to go past the camera, this gave a 'proper' transition as before it was odd that the flies stopped. I was pleased with the largest fly moving into the camera making the scene completely black. I made the particles black but feel they are slightly too dark.

I removed the large fly's particle trail as it created an outline above the 'fog' which isn't what I want. I was very pleased with my final result (below) and its colours and brightness, it sets the mood I want, I really love the glint in the large fly's eyes as he goes under the spotlight lamp.

Attack with flies

I imported the fly and joined the mesh with its 'material', I had to go into edit mode and move the mesh to the centre point so it rotated correctly.

I then started keyframing loc rot with a fly spinning round the man, and getting knocked back, before flying in on frame 1065, there I will add an explosion in after effects and then link it into the powerup sequence.

I introduced two more flies which added a lot to the piece. I tried to make the flies interact with the character as much as possible without making the action complicated to follow. There are a number of visible mistakes with the sequence and I need to distract from this so I'll try some camera movement.

This video works well, with the important action captured but also mistakes aren't highlighted, I would need to add a transition for the powerup, so I zoomed the camera to the floor. In After Effects I'll make a bright spark or something and some colour change this should help link the powerup scene together.

Walking Modify

I was a bit worried that the body looked slightly different to the one in the other sequences. I think it is a problem with the shoulders, and I tried so many different places, and scales and I found this to be the best result. I also changed the camera lens to 20, and had it zoom over the man's shoulder for the fly transition.

Attack Video

I opened up my attack file, and modified the hips by rotating them to the same shape as the other armatures I've been working with, to get the best movement from the data. I connected the hips to the master bone and rotated that round 180 (to click to the tail).

I also modelled the face to be more worried by raising the eybrows and opening, stretching, and pulling down the mouth.

The elbow looks much better than before as it doesn't fold in so much, but the body shakes a little, and the body looks a little deformed. It's got to the point where I must make the best of what I have, so next I shall add the flies and put it into after effects.

Strong Walk

The file I downloaded was not only enormous in size, far bigger than the others which were huge anyway, but also had no imported armature, meaning I wouldn't be able to use the file.

I will play around with my previous files and try and get it all together and see what the sequence will look like.

Rise in After Effects

I imported the video in to After Effects and split into two (on two layers), I trimmed the parts I wanted using ALT [/] -- for beginning/end. I wanted to hold the video (last frame) with his hand fully up but I couldn't extend past the video's full length. I used CTRL ALT T - time mapping and pulled the created keyframe to where I wanted the sequence to be held: 2 seconds to generate power.

The next step was to add effects:

• white solid / simulation / star burst - like a continuous 'anime' style background effect
• colour / hue/saturation - I did this for the end of first video and start of second, so I had to make sure the colours matched up
• similuation / glow - this strengthened the character outline and made it more 'cartoony'

Finally I added a yellow solid to emphasise a godly power coming from above, I animated it to shoot down his body and grow, then fade out. For this I used keyframes: scale/position/alpha.

I wanted to add a transition so it moves into the punch scene smoothly,
added blue solid, block dissolve, worked backwards (completion 100% - 0%) and changed opacity of model.

The next part in the sequence will be the character fighting the flies, I will probably need to redo this, changing the model's bulk and colour.

Rise continued

The sequence is 2200 frames long, but I only really want one arm stretch, I will modify the current 120fps to something much slower so when I bring it across into After Effects the sequence is long enough to make it look like a power up.

I scaled down the keyframes in the NLA editor and displayed all of the motions quickly (due to render times etc.) I think the second motion is best, with the arm central.

I scaled the keyframes back up (to about twice the original length) and cut it to the motion I needed. This video was using 60fps, but I felt it was a little too slow, the one below is a better speed at 120fps.

Rise

I followed through the same steps, using the constraints from the rise.c3d file. There is a real issue with the armature because again the bottom sticks out strangely. In this video I lifted the body up but this affected the head.

I went into edit mode and altered the hips to the same position, the most important difference was making the hips parented by master, before they were children of spine1, I also connected them. It took some tweaking and I had to move spine1 down in pose mode:

The overall shape is much better, but there are still issues with it, the arm bends in and doesn't seem to follow the empties correctly.

I played around with the top half of the armature, getting the shoulders, arms and hands, scaled and positioned similarly to the imported armature. I had a lot to tidy up with weight painting and making sure things lined up etc. I also changed the left hand to have an influence of 0.5 which stopped it sticking out so far. The right arm did pass through the body partially but the overall movement is much better.

Attacked

I changed the spine of my armature to just a spine and chest (like the imported armature) but had to redo the weight painting of the chest because when I deleted the spine bones the weighted body was also lost.

I continued applying constraints but found problems with the hands; they would snap against the wrists and just look deformed, as well as rotating by its own accord. I altered the position and scale of the arm bones, and even deleted the other 2 parts to the hand but found the best solution was to deselect the use tail option and the followed the lower arm movement, which looked fine.

I again had problems with the position of the armature's hip and shoulder bones, and for some time I changed the position of the spine and chest moving the neck and head positions.

I believe in this video the overall balance looks better but there are still so many things to adjust, with the hand going through the head, and slight position problems.

Importantly though, I discovered a way to see more of the sequence through the camera, I changed the camera lens setting from 35 to 20. There were still parts that disappeared but it meant I didn't have to keep keyframing the camera movement and sacrifice seeing parts of movement.

I can use this to show more of the walking and other things I needed to zoom out for.