Abstract:
For my final project I used lights, camera animation and detailed animation of the Lowman rig to have two people fighting one another.
Production Log:
This project started as a simple animation of the Lowman rig punching and it quickly evolved into something more. After animating a couple more punches, I decided it would be fun and interesting to have two Lowmen fighting one another (or at least have one get beat up by another). The first step was to finish animating the first Lowman, who would be the eventual winner of the bout. As this project required very little modeling from, I was able to start animating from the beginning. After some hours working on making the first Lowman's punches look realistic, I added in an uppercut and a kick that required a lot of tweaking to look smooth. I then added in a stance animation of Lowman bobbing up and down with his hands up, ready to fight in between these animations to add more motion and more realism.
However, without anyone to fight, Lowman was just practicing his punches and kicks. So I copied the Lowman I had and pasted him facing off against the first Lowman. I had to delete most of the animations from the second Lowman as he would simply mirror the first. Then came the hard part: making this second Lowman realistically react to the first's attacks. The first step was to have Lowman's head bob back when he was punched as well as his body arching with each blow. Having the rig move so it looked like he was being hit required numerous deletions and reworks to get it to look just right. I had each blow have more and more effect on the Lowman and made it so that after each hit, he would be knocked back even more and even slouch in fatigue lower and lower. This ended with the second Lowman clearly unable to fight after the first's uppercut and then with him being knocked down and out by the first's final kick. Definitely the hardest part of the animation was getting the second Lowman to fall realistically. This required the most retries and the most thinking in terms of what looks real and wnat actually works for animation. Numerous tests of how far the keyframe for the fall should be from the keyframe of him getting initially hit were done and I had to keyframe his individual limbs to flop down after his body hit the floor.
After this, I simply added details. The first was the camera swooping around the two Lowmen fighting. To do this, I created a three-point arc around the Lowmen and had it move closer to them towards the end of the animation. I then created a camera, positioned it and constrained it's aim on the first Lowman so it would always be focusing on the fight. Then I attached the camera to the arc and with a few tweaks I had a camera movement around the fight.
Then, I added in the simple building they were in. To do this, I created a plane for them to stand on and a box to show as walls around them. I then added in soft ambient lighting and a spot light overhead for a more dramatic effect. Lastly, I colored the first Lowman red and the second Blue simply for aesthetic value and rendered the animation with a slight motion blur.
Self-Evaluation:
My animation is short and I think if I had a lot of extra time I could have modeled my own models and rigged them to fight like this. The problem is that I scrapped another idea in the middle in order to work on this fight scene. I wish I was able to make the Lowmen look more different and perhaps add in a more detailed-looking environment around them. I am fairly happy with how it looks so far though and hope to do more work on it in the future to add to the scene.
However, without anyone to fight, Lowman was just practicing his punches and kicks. So I copied the Lowman I had and pasted him facing off against the first Lowman. I had to delete most of the animations from the second Lowman as he would simply mirror the first. Then came the hard part: making this second Lowman realistically react to the first's attacks. The first step was to have Lowman's head bob back when he was punched as well as his body arching with each blow. Having the rig move so it looked like he was being hit required numerous deletions and reworks to get it to look just right. I had each blow have more and more effect on the Lowman and made it so that after each hit, he would be knocked back even more and even slouch in fatigue lower and lower. This ended with the second Lowman clearly unable to fight after the first's uppercut and then with him being knocked down and out by the first's final kick. Definitely the hardest part of the animation was getting the second Lowman to fall realistically. This required the most retries and the most thinking in terms of what looks real and wnat actually works for animation. Numerous tests of how far the keyframe for the fall should be from the keyframe of him getting initially hit were done and I had to keyframe his individual limbs to flop down after his body hit the floor.
After this, I simply added details. The first was the camera swooping around the two Lowmen fighting. To do this, I created a three-point arc around the Lowmen and had it move closer to them towards the end of the animation. I then created a camera, positioned it and constrained it's aim on the first Lowman so it would always be focusing on the fight. Then I attached the camera to the arc and with a few tweaks I had a camera movement around the fight.
Then, I added in the simple building they were in. To do this, I created a plane for them to stand on and a box to show as walls around them. I then added in soft ambient lighting and a spot light overhead for a more dramatic effect. Lastly, I colored the first Lowman red and the second Blue simply for aesthetic value and rendered the animation with a slight motion blur.
Self-Evaluation:
My animation is short and I think if I had a lot of extra time I could have modeled my own models and rigged them to fight like this. The problem is that I scrapped another idea in the middle in order to work on this fight scene. I wish I was able to make the Lowmen look more different and perhaps add in a more detailed-looking environment around them. I am fairly happy with how it looks so far though and hope to do more work on it in the future to add to the scene.
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