— Rendering & Reflection —
Rendering
After finish adding animation I started to add lighting and camera then I rendered the animation in to 80 frames and combined in to video in AE.
Critical Appraisal
Generally speaking, I am quite satisfied with the outcome of this project. In particular, the portrayal of the characters can be said to be very consistent with the Chinese New Year theme. In terms of modeling, I think the character’s hat is built very detailly. At the same time, I was particularly happy with the vivid eyes of the characters I painted. In terms of animation, I think the addition of hand-held lanterns to the characters was a smart finishing touch. Throughout the process of modelling, I enjoyed depicting details. I believe that through constant practice, I can use various props more skillfully to depict better details in the future modeling. I also enjoyed painting UV textures very much, although it was the first time that I hand-painted UV materials which were not quite perfect yet. But next time I will spend more time on detailling the texture. On the other hand, throughout the process I found that I really dislike dealling with UV especially sewing and cutting up parts. I found it really confusing and repetative. But I do enjoy painting the textures and colouring. If I could do something again differently, I would try not to use online animation resources. Instead I would try to create my own animation which could give me more freedom when creating. Also I would try to create a longer animation and add in some camera movement to create a longer video outcome. In previous projects I didn’t fully use the UV function but simply copied textures from online onto my models. In this project, I chose to make a complete UV expansion diagram and hand-draw the textures. This allowed me to have more freedom with my model and not be limited to texture choices. In this project I used rigging for the first time. Through future practice, I believe I can fluently control many forms of models, not just limited to human structures. When I was working on this project, some new methods and skills I learned mostly through teacher. And some of the little things I was confused I looked up tutorial from the Internet. Both method helped me to throughout this project. One thing I will remember to do in the future is to frequently save the progress since file crashes happens all the time. Also I would remember to build my modle through origin mode instead of smooth mode. One thing I really want to learn is how to retopologize the modle so that every faces are quadrangle. Overall, in this project I spent the most of my time and was most satisfied with the character’s hat. Although its production process was very long and has a lot of difficulties. But because of these challenges my ability can grow much faster. I do not regret that I have increased the difficulty of the project for myself, instead I am glad I challanged myself. In the future projects, I will be more and more bold to challenge with complex models and try to build a masterpiece of my own.