Animation - Self-Promo Stormtrooper

The model was a from a free asset site which also included game assets for weapons, props and other secondary elements I could include using parent constraints. However, the HumanIK method I used to rig the stormtrooper caused a twisted wrist joint that wouldn't allow me to parent the blaster without major distortion.

I found a jogging reference on YouTube that proved extremely useful. However, the framerate was different from what I was using in Maya and what I did to fix this was import the video in After Effects and interpret the footage so that the framerate reflected what I'd be animating at.

The animation principles I found myself using for this animation were Pose-to-Pose, Slow-In/Slow-Out, and Follow-Through/Overlapping Motion. I used the pose to pose technique to block out each major movement and step done during the jog. Slow in and out came into effect when I had to the stormtrooper turn his body to look at the text framed on the wall. I had the body and arms follow through when the stormtrooper stopped jogging, swaying slightly which I believe added a natural touch.

Session 1 - Rigging

I spent the majority of the first lesson rigging the model I'd be animating. I found a very helpful tutorial on YouTube that takes the viewer through the process of applying a HumanIK skeletal rig to a humanoid mesh.

One thing I was dissatisfied with was how the humanIK method automatically weight-painted the mesh for me. I certainly would've preferred being taught the process of weight painting as opposed to working with inaccurate joints which caused a lot of problems when animating.

Session 2 - Pose to Pose

In this session, I blocked out the keyframes of each movement in accordance with the timecode of the reference. Since I used cycles to practice with the other two rigs I used on this course, I was familiar with how to quickly and efficiently save keyframes to the timeline as I went using the S key.

Apart from the arms which, despite spending a while readjusting the elbows so they wouldn't clip through the torso as they swing in accordance with the rest of his body, still looked unnatural when I finished, the leg and torso movements flowed naturally as they do in the reference.

Here's a quick screen capture of one step I manage to complete by the end of the lesson alongside a second step that completes itself using tween because I hadn't animated it yet:

Session 3: Finished Animation

I got into the rhythm of copying position information from the step I'd already completed to finish the rest of the cycle. From there, I used the central controller around his waist to make him turn towards the would-be text I hadn't added into the scene yet before looking forward again (using the same rotational information that is) and raising his foot to take his next step and continue on his way.

The finished result left me feeling accomplished as this was, besides the rig I stole from the internet, my own sequence I rigged and animated. Of course, it's not perfect, again referencing the elbows and hand positions, but I like how I managed to use certain restrictions (the inability to rotate limbs which caused distortion) to make the motions stiffer and the suit of armor seem heavier as a result.

This was the final animation playing inside the 3D perspective viewport:

Session 4 - Rendering with Unity

After Finishing the animation in the last session, I exported the stormtrooper's mesh, rig and animation from Maya as an FBX which I then imported into a new Unity scene. From there, I used a selection of asset packs to both set the scene and obtain better graphics for the eventual render.

The first was a SciFi Texture pack I'd apply to the surfaces to give the stormtrooper a suitable enviroment to travel through.
Next I imported the Post Processing Stack into my project which is a graphics enhancement extension developed by Unity themselves. This the options it gives me once I applied a post processing profile to my virtual camera in my scene:

This certainly improved the look of my scene, especially since it went from looking like this:

to this:

finally, I applied the FBX and set the animation to loop so when I captured it, it would simply be a matter of trimming the video based on the point at which it resets. Then, once the scene was playing the animation, I captured the cameras in my scene with Nvidia's capture software: ShadowPlay.

This was the final render:

Summary

When setting up the workspace for the animation, I also worked with two viewports: one showing a 3D perspective view and the other showing an orthographic (flatter, 2 dimensional) side view. This helped replicate the positions from the reference.

I made the environment in Unity, enhancing the visuals with post-processing effects like bloom, reflections, and color correction.

Looking back, I feel I could've adjusted the timing of the motions slightly, especially with the arm motions during the jog and the duration the stormtrooper looks at the text.