This week I will be animating characters.

It mainly includes some simple walking and squatting movements. And some expressions.

First I will import the model into maya for rigging.

According to the reference, I set up a walk action.

Then import them into ICLONE. good results.

Next week I’ll be doing storyboards and shot settings.

This week I did a relatively simple scene animation.

I made this scene in C4D.

First of all I simply built a background and made a swirl-shattering effect.

Then I attachThen I attached the shaders and laid out the lights.

This is the final effect.

This scene is very simple, and the visual effects are not very good. We will consider whether to use this scene later.

I did the woods scene last week. This week I will be doing a wonderland in a cave scene.

First I made a small cave out of stones.

I found some assets online and built a secret room with them.

Then I added a lot of plants, as well as gears in the assets. Lights were also added.

Add water to the pool.

Next I will make raindrops and dynamic water.

I used the emitter to make the water drop on the ground.

Then make some more changes.

This is the final show.

I made my second scene this week.

This time I’m going to create a natural landscape. Based on some references from week three, I decided to use Blender for this scene.

• Tree ＆ floor making

I created a simple ground and added some details. Next I created a tree with the assets that come with Blender. And found stickers online. The color of the leaves is pink which I really like.nextI created a tree with the assets that come with Blender. And found stickers online. The color of the leaves is pink which I really like.

• Clouds and lights

I added some clouds and added lights. Added a sky by the way. Also my favorite pink.

• Mountain and camera

I built three hills with Blender assets. and added a camera.

I’ll be doing the first scene this week. It’s a forest scene.

According to my reference. I found a lot of related tutorials online. I found that for the forest to highlight its mystery, there must be fog. If it is a sunny forest, it also needs a lot of fog to achieve the Tyndall effect. I wanted to make the forest not need too much sunlight, but to bring out a dark and mysterious feeling. This is also creating a contrast to my second scene.

First, I created a mountain terrain and attached materials using the tools that come with UE4.

After that I made some textures for the plants and put them on the terrain.

Put in some natural light, the effect is like this.

Now my woods are not mysterious enough. So I wanted to add some fog to enrich my scene.

The effect is not very good. Add another ExponentialHeightFog.

Now I am satisfied with the effect.

Next I will make the second scene.

I finished my first scene with AE this week. The effect is very good.

Below is a video.(Since exporting video is a waste of time, I took a screen recording.)

But I’m having trouble. AE software is difficult to import 3D characters. I researched for a long time and found that the character model and the background do not blend well.

I found some information on the Internet and finally decided to use UE4 to make a similar scene.

• Construction of the scene

I built a simple model, and found texture materials on the Internet and put them on it, and finally made a triangular space.

I have assets that I found online for the light tube and put it in my triangle space.

• Light controller

I used blueprints to make some controls to control the lights.

Allows the lights to automatically match and flash to the rhythm of the music.

This is the final effect, I can achieve how sensitive the light is to sound by manipulating the controls in the upper left corner.

I changed the color of the light, but ended up changing it back to the original color because it wasn’t good enough.

This week I continued to address the issue of clothes.

Since CC3’s clothes are not compatible with DAZ, I chose another clothes.

First, I adjusted the textures of the clothes one by one.

Clothes look more textured now.

Next I’ll deal with the weight of the clothes.

Solved the problem with clothes. I imported the character model into ICLONE for testing.

I used ICLONE’s action assets for testing.

Next I will use the Unreal Live Link plugin to link the ICLONE and UE4 in real time.

The effect is very good. Next I will create some actions in maya and import them into ICLONE for the characters to use.

But I have to create the scene first. Because they are time consuming.

We had another meeting this week and set the scene.

Scene References

Below are some references.

Scene plan

Regarding the creation of the scene, we thought of several plans.

• Scene 1

We want to make a scene that can be linked with BGM. It can control the flashing of lights according to the rhythm of the music.

I searched a lot and finally decided to build a scene in AE to do this.

• Scene 2

We also wanted to create some scenes close to nature, here are some references.

• Scene 3

We want to create a dynamic scene. Here are some references.

• Scene 4

This is the most important scene. We wanted the characters to dance at the school gates in LCC. So I decided to model a school in maya. Here are some real images I found on Google Maps.

I use them as a preliminary modeling reference.

Next I will start preparing for these scenarios.

This week I designed my character model. I created a female character using DAZ.

According to my reference. I want to create an Asian face. Through DAZ, I can change the face and body of the model at will, and set her to my liking.

I downloaded a lot of assets online to dress up my model. Such as adding eye shadow, changing eye color and so on.

You can also adjust the figure of the model (I personally like to be thinner)

I adjusted the model’s face again and added makeup and hair.

I have adjusted for a long time about the model’s face. Because I want her to be closer to a real human.

Added costumes to the characters.

For the clothes part, I did not choose to do it myself but downloaded assets from the Internet. Because I don’t know anything about clothing.

But I found some problems. Cloth simulations are hard to do in DAZ. Clothes are penetrated by the body. It only applies to images to add weight to clothes. And put it in the action, the clothes will still wear the mold. Even if I import UE4 to do cloth simulation it doesn’t solve the problem.

I spent a long time working on the weights of clothes and found it difficult to solve. I’ve looked up a lot online, maybe importing the model into CC3 and adding the clothes will solve this problem. I’ll continue working on the model next week.

We organized a meeting about the choice of character style. We found a lot of videos and pictures about virtual idols on the Internet and started to design the protagonists.

Some realistic virtual idols are included here. They are characterized by being closer to humans.

Some two-dimensional idols are included here, which are in line with our original design. Because our inspiration comes from Hatsune Miku’s 3D concert.

We hesitated for a long time on the setting of the character style. But our final confirmed character style is Imma’s similar style.

This is a character made by Chenghao Su. We identified her as our character.