Author: Mingyue Pang

Topic Change

According to the teacher’s feedback on my outline, I changed the topic of my proposal. I chose a topic that I’ve been thinking about a lot for a long time. Why did Chinese mythological animated films spread outside of China? On IMBD, reviews by Nezha, Jiang Ziya and Yang Jian further prove that foreigners can be confused when watching Chinese mythology-animated films, but they also want to understand traditional Chinese culture. So this topic is well worth studying.

On the contrary, Spirited Away, which also has an Oriental cultural background, can earn about 119 million US dollars in foreign countries (literature) and win the Oscar for best feature-length animation. I want to study why this Japanese animated film can successfully spread across cultures, and find out if there are any methods that can help the cross-cultural spread of Chinese mythological animated films.

22/23 Advanced and Experimental Personal

Flower Bloom

When I was doing plant growth, I was always thinking about how I could control the bloom of flowers. In the end, I decided to make a controller for the flowers so that I could control the animation of the flowers‘ bloom .

Animation

First, I added blend on each lace x and y axis to make the petals curl naturally. Then I added attributes to the controller of the whole flower to control the curling of the petals. In this way, I can make the flowers bloom in order according to the growth rate of the branches.

22/23 Advanced and Experimental Group

Digital Earth

This week’s team project is to create a hologram of digital Earth. My approach was to use the After Effect plugin Form to make a rotating digital earth; at the same time, I put a light under the earth to connect to the hologram equipment. But the rendered sequence will be 2D flat, so I need to do 3D Tracking in nuke to match this digital earth.

22/23 Advanced and Experimental Personal

Plant Growth – Test – 02

Because it was difficult to make plant growth using blender’s geometric nodes, I found a way to make plant growth using curve and curve extrude in maya. We can control the size of the subcurve to control the growth of the branches. To be honest, this method is much more convenient because I can also control the points on the curve to move the growth direction and size of the branch.

I can use bend’s function to control the bloom of flowers.

I used mash to copy multiple flowers onto the branches and then animate the initial flower’s size and bloom.

22/23 Advanced and Experimental Group

Handrail & Extinguisher – Clean Up

Post author By Mingyue Pang
Post date 24th May 2023
No Comments on Handrail & Extinguisher – Clean Up

The task for this week’s group project is to wipe off another handrail and a fire extinguisher. I did it the same way I did it last time. But when it came to wiping the other armrest, I was faced with a challenge. Due to the camera moved, the background of this handrail moved from the wall to the staircase, so I chose Frame 157 for erasure. At the same time, I used roto to cut out the wall of the original footage and put it in the front to block the movement and deformation of Frame 157. I used the same method to wipe the fire extinguisher.

Proposal

Proposal – Outline – 01

Topic – How does Non-photorealistic rendering create vision of Hand-drawn stylized animation?

Introduction

Nowadays, more and more hand-painted stylized animations are popular with the public and widely spread.
Background – What is non-photorealistic rendering?
Motivation – Hand-drawn stylized animation and non-realistic rendering put the artist’s 3D and 2D skills to the test. Skillfully and naturally using 3D to show the hand-painted sense of 2D vision is difficult.

Topic

Making a hand-drawn stylized short animation to explore the application of Non-photorealistic rendering in the theme of barbaric growth.

Research

1. Case Study – Compare the 91st Academy Awards for Best Animated Feature Film Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Man Verse to The Incredibles 2, a 3D animation nominated for the same year’s Academy Awards – Using this methodology can help me understand the feasibility and advantages of non-photorealistic rendering.

2. Case Study – Investigate the behind the scenes production of Arcane: League of Legends – This methodology can help me to know about the different kinds of non-photorealistic rendering.

3. Secondary research: Academic resources Critical Review

Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Man provides an approach about using non-photorealistic rendering to make Hand-drawn stylized animation. Simplifying the intricate details of the graphics or models can make the vision of animation clearly primary and secondary, and provide more creative space for artists’ stylized creation. [compare two animations’ advantages and disadvantages]

Most productions of the Arcane: League of Legends’s environment are drawn by concept artists. They arrange, reduce, and blur the details of the environment to highlight characters or key parts. [advantages and disadvantages]

3. Academic resources Investigation

Questions – Simplifying graphics or models in the animation can cause objects to lose some of their attribute details.Therefore, their 2D textures need to be hand-painted to express their real texture. – With Non-photorealistic rendering, the picture is relatively flat. So how to use lights and shadows on 2D materials needs to be studied because effective light and shadow will make the vision of 2D images more spatial.
FMP – In FMP, I will focus on how to hand-paint the surface textures of plants and buildings on 3D models. – Since most of the scenes in the FMP animation are in the daytime, I will constantly adjust the lighting effects to make the picture more spatial.

22/23 Advanced and Experimental Personal

Plant Growth – Test – 01

The plan for making plant growth is to use blender’s geometric nodes. I found a tutorial online and followed along. Although I made it, I found a lot of problems, especially too many nodes are too complicated, and the effect of plant growth is relatively stiff. So I gave up this method and decided to find another way to make it.

22/23 Advanced and Experimental Group

Handrail – Clean up

For the group work, my task is to remove the handrail on the wall. My method is to clear the handrail of frame 200 in photoshop now, and then do 3D tracking in nuke to make the corresponding card according to the position. Then use framehold to lock the image of frame 200 where the armrest has been erased. At the same time, because of the camera movement, the lighting and color of the scene would change, so I added grade to match the color change of the footage.

22/23 Advanced and Experimental Personal

Model – UV

Making a model UV is a simple but tedious job. Based on the color and material classification of the model, I use multiple quadrants to combine the UVs of models of the same color and material. This method is convenient for me to make materials in substance painter.

Proposal

Work on Topic

Non-photorealistic rendering/2D-3D hybrid Animation

The role of 2D-3D hybrid Animation’s vision in the evolution of animated films

bI watched some 2D-3D hybrid Animation and their behind-the-scenes production videos, and understood the production method of this style of animation. Then I would like to have an in-depth study of the creation process of these animations, as well as the analysis and evaluation of some professionals on these animations.

Spiderman: Into the Spider-Verse:

https://www.postud.io/blog/spider-verse-breakdown/

Paper man:

https://www.wired.com/2012/11/paperman/

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/254463426_Computer-assisted_animation_of_line_and_paint_in_Disney’s_Paperman

https://digitalcommons.cedarville.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1129&context=idea_of_an_essay

Keywords

2D-3D hybrid Animation

Source

A Study on the Visual Effects of Non-Photorealistic Rendering Animation focusing on ‘Paperman,’ a Short Animation

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/283685124_A_Study_on_the_Visual_Effects_of_Non-Photorealistic_Rendering_Animation_focusing_on_’Paperman’_a_Short_Animation

The role of hand-drawn animation in Disney’s Moana