Self-Reflective-Journal: Week Eight: 19/09/24

T​his week I retargeted the body in Motion Builder. Here I brought the proxy data provided by Dr Kennedy and then added a actor body where I moved the limbs of the body to fit the markers. For the proxy rig I needed a proxy skeleton so the data wouldn't collapse. Fist I needed to characterise the file by going into the assets folder where character is and dragging a actor into the scene. I hid the skeleton in display. I needed to move the opticals by moving the sphere in front view orthographic and then going control 'R' to go to the side view. I wanted the original data to be as close to the actor as possible. The actor model is not the same dimensions as the dimensions of Fred i.e. seen in the data. I widened the hips and moved the calves/legs with 'W' to be more further apart and closer to where the data was sitting. I rotated the legs slightly while checking all my camera views to make sure everything seemed aligned. I then extruded the neck so it would be longer and made sure the head was slightly bigger as well. I selected the shoulder and then in Z rotation I typed 30 and for the opposite shoulder I put -30. I then re-rotated the arm to look like a t-pose again and orient hand slightly to be flat. I saved the file and then now I had to the target the optical data to move our character around. In navigator I found the actor and then created a marker set. I started putting the optical on the actor by select clicking and pressing x to drag onto the marker set. Under actor, source I clicked mapping and this now made the actor move with the data. After that I scrubbed through the timeline to see any inconsistencies. I was quite worried about the hand detaching but in Dr Kennedy's video he says if it reattaches it will be fine and can be fixed later on. I also was worried about how the clavicle and legs would bake, and not come out being broken. Now I had to apply this data onto my rig. I turned the visibility of the skeleton and then selected the characterised rig by selecting character and then I changed the source to the actor. The joints then snapped to the body. Now the movement looked a bit more different. I was quite confident in the final output even if there were some minor inconsistencies. I made sure my frames per second were 24 and then was ready to bake so I went to the blue box and selected bake plot and then bake to skeleton. I saved the file and now this was ready to map the body data in Maya. I went into Human IK windows I made sure my rig controls were on and my joints and IK handles were hidden as well. I then brought into maya my performance proxy rig and I selected in the definitions tab Character(custom rig) and for source Fred_Character. Since the character was down a little I went into character tab and made the IK pull and blends the unit of one going into each control. I turned the body, controls and head visibility off and then selected the points of the skeleton individually and made the rotate axis zero. I tuned the body controls and head etc and then made sure the timeline was 24 frames per second then I was ready to bake in Maya. I went into the blue box and went bake- and then bake to custom rig. The baking was done once the timeline was fully red and then I saved the new file out.

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I then made animation layers where I would edit the knees positions as the knees were twisted and the wrong way round. So I followed Dr Kennedy's tutorial on animation layers and how we can use them to edit keys on a timeline. In the perspective cam I selected my camera and then unlocked the value by right clicking and selecting 'unlocked selected'. I selected the controller of the head then the camera and then under rigging I went constraint, parent, options and then add. I parented my camera to the face as it was not set to follow the body of Fred when he moves around the grid. Now that the camera was parented to the head of Fred it will seamlessly follow the movements as it has a camera constraint.

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I am glad to get this week done, I know that I have to have full focus on the tutorials so I don't miss any vital information. I think I am on track and any feedback given to me will be very important in taking account of.

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