It was a gorgeous day today, so it was spent walking through the city and taking a canal tour. To me, the city feels like Copenhagen meets Tobermory. The atmosphere is relaxed and welcoming, but is colourful and bright at the same time.
forty
Day 44: Amsterdam part 1
I decided to have a weekend break in Amsterdam and get inspired for my final artefact. Today, I spent most of the day in the Rijks Museum which was completely renovated last year.
Below are some of the art pieces I found most inspiring.
Stupidly, I didn’t record the name of this piece. What I found interesting in this piece, is each level (foreground, mid-ground etc) is painted on a new layer. This gives the piece an uncanny depth and parallaxing action when moving past.
Girl in a White Kimono – George Hendrick Breitner
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A windmill on a Polder Waterway, Know as ‘In the Month of July’ – Paul Joseph Constantin Gabriel
Windmill Cups
Panel with Pyramus and Thisbe – Dirck van Rijswijck
One of my favourite parts of the museum was the stained glass windows in the great hall. The figures either represent different art movements, or celebrate artists, sculptors etc. And it was great reference for my side project and final artefact!
Showcase Thoughts
I really liked the ship painting with the layers. I did wonder if I could possibly recreate one of my 3D scenes using decoupage, or something similar. With my work being digital, I’m wondering if something physical and textural would balance nicely with the clean cut digital graphics. In today’s exhibition there were constant contrasts, from small areas to big, dark areas to light and each area felt grander because of this.
Following that thought, it may not work if it becomes a misrepresentation of what I my honours project is. I’m all for some artistic license, but I don’t want to misquote my work, so again I will need to look at how I am going to put my booth together and the context of each piece.
One thing to remember is to hang the piece so it is straight to the wall; otherwise it can cause some weird visual illusions where the painting looks squint and the wall line straight – even if it is the other way around.
Day 43: Emotive run cycles Part 1
And here are the emotive movement cycles I have been working on. What I wanted to do was take Dr. Ekmans seven basic emotions (Hooks 2011, p.63) and apply them to run cycles, to see if you can get emotional movement cycles. I tried animating a happy, angry and sad run cycle and you can see the results below.
I wouldn’t say any of the runs look like an emotion. Instead I would say happy is carefree, angry is determined and sad is introverted. Having the camera behind the character definitely makes emotive posing a lot harder. Instead, I think a lot of emotion will come from secondary gestures which are overlaid while running. So if the sad person was wiping their eyes for example. I think this will be my next set of tests.
p.s. I hate the happy run, the shoulders and hips are misaligned and the arms don’t work.
Day 42: Movement and performance in animation
I have been looking into animating performance in movement for my next set of tests and these are notes on papers I have read relating to character performance and believability.
Below quotes from:
El-Nasr, M.S. et al. 2009. Believable characters. In: Furht, B., eds. Handbook of multimedia for digital entertainment and arts. Boston: Springer US. 2009. pp.497-528.
https://www.trinitylaban.ac.uk/sites/default/files/imports_2834
“Rudolf Laban is considered one of the most important movement theorists of the twentieth century and the founding father of modern dance in central Europe…. Laban Movement Analysis (LMA) is an open theory of movement that is applicable to any area of human movement investigation.” [57,58] (p.517)
“Another concept of importance is phrasing. Phrasing describes how we sequence and layer the components of movement over time. A movement phrase is analogous to a verbal sentence, or to a phrase of music, in which a complete idea or theme is represented. A phrase unit involves three main stages: Preparation, Action and Recuperation. Our uniqueness is expressed through our movement phrases: individualized rhythmic patterns and preferences of Body, Effort, Shape and Space.” [57] (p.518)
“Warren Lamb worked closely with Laban in the late 1940’s… [19] His interest in behavioral analysis led him to create a theoretical model and assessment technique called Movement Pattern Analysis (MPA), which relates decision-making to non-verbal behavioural styles.” (p.519)
[19] J.Hodgson, Mastering Movement: the life and work of Rudolf Laban: Routledge, 2001.
[57] P. Hackney, Making Connections: Total Body Integration Through Bartenieff Fundamentals:
Routledge, 2000.
[58] C. L. Moore, Beyond Words: Gordon and Breach, 1988.
I’ve been jumping in and out of Ed Hooks “Acting for Animators” so here are some other points I have been considering.
Seven Essential Acting Principles (p.11-12)
1. Thinking tends to lead to conclusions, and emotion tends to lead to action
2. We humans empathize only with emotion. Your job as a character animator is to create in the audience a sense of empathy with you character.
“The way this works is that they see what you character is doing, and then tune into the emotion that led to that particular action. In the dark street example, if an audience was watching you reach for your pepper spray, it would recognize that the way you are doing that is a result of fear. And the people in the audience will feel fear, too, because of empathy.” (p.14)
3. Theatrical reality is not the same a regular reality
4. Acting is doing; acting is also reacting.
“A character’s reaction has everything to do with that particulars character’s values… My point is that different people react in different ways.” (p.22)
5. Your character should play an action until something happens to make him play a different action
6. Scenes being in the middle, not at the beginning
7. A scene is a negotiation
//To me, 1, 2, 4 and 5 are the most applicable to what I am doing. If humans only respond to emotion, and actions are emotion-led, then one way to improve player engagement would be to add more emotion in to how a character completes actions. Acting is re-acting is what I’m stressing in my project.
Seven Basic Emotions
There are seven basic emotions that are universally recognized: (p.63)
Happiness
Sadness
Anger
Fear
Distrust
Surprise
Contempt (a feeling of superiority).
Videogames
1. Eyes
– “Eye contact is a status negotiation” (p.68)
2. Empathy
– “One of the requirements of empathy is distance. What that means is that a game player cannot empathize with a character he can control. Cut scenes work as they do primarily because, while watching one, the player cannot control the behaviour of his character.”
– “The way to evoke a more nuanced emotional response from the player is via “buddy” or “Companion” relationships. ICO was the first came I know about that featured such a character, the blind girl Yorda.” (p.70)
3. Humour
– “Games are chock full of deadly serious, angry characters.” (p.71)
4. Motion Capture
– “Motion Capture (mocap), which is used by many if not most game companies, is inherently flawed in terms of acting… Mocap makes everybody, actor included, think about movement too much. When you think about your movement, it automatically stiffens.” (p.72)
5. Credibility
– “The reason we see these kinds of unrealistic reactions in games is simply because honest and believable reactions take more time, and cost more money, to animate. The produces figure it is a game after all, so probably nobody will notice. This kind of reasoning will have to change en route to stronger performance. Character behaviour must reflect what real humans actually do…” (p.73)
6. Dialogue
– “Remember, acting has almost nothing to do with words.”
7. Male/female relationships
8. Can a videogame make a player cry?
– “Speaking as acting teacher, I have to say yes, of course it will eventually happen. When designers finally solve the empathy problem that is inherent in games, tears and all the other emotions will not be far behind. Empathy is key.”
Walt Stanchfield ‘Drawn to Life’ Volume 1
“It is utterly impossible for a person to do nothing.” (p.126)
Day 41: Situational, Spatial & Tactical Awareness
I was talking my ideas over with my father today, he’s an ex-games industry progammer who now works with robotics, about how I was trying to get a character to react to their surroundings. He said, “Have you thought about situational awareness.” I think this is the phrase I have been searching for, as it perfectly describes what I am trying to achieve. I want the characters to be ‘aware’ of the surroundings or ‘situation’ and respond to that in a believable manor. And so I did some reading into the term.
Situational awareness was a phrase coined my modern fighter/attack pilots. “It is the ability to know what is going on around you all of the time.” (Hendricks 1999, p.10)
[Hendricks, J. 1999. Situational awareness. Trailer Boats. 28(8). p.10.]
“Having SA requires you to have an accurate perception of what is going on, deciding what threats are looming, and then forecast your actions to appropriately defend against the threat.” (Gruber 2004, p.6)
[Gruber, M. 2004. Situational awareness is key. Combat Edge. 12(8). pp. 4-7.]
But how is this related to game animation? Well it seems to be one of the things games characters have failed to do in the past. When being chased, they don’t look over their shoulders to see where the thing is chasing them; if things are falling from the ceiling, the don’t look up.
A quick test of a character’s run where they look behind them to check who is following them.
But it seems that this is finally changing in games. In the Last of Us, “Ellie might look away or cover her face in the presence of bright lights (like a torch shining in her direction) or she may become startled as you fire your weapon.”
[EuroGamer. 2013. Tech analysis: the Last of Us. [online]. Available from: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-the-last-of-us-tech-analysis [Accessed 22 October 2014]. ]
In the above video, you can see her look out the windows, before looking back to check where Joel is, to call to him. There also nice touches in Joels animation, where he looks towards windows and open areas if he walks past them. Again small details that show signs of spatial awareness.
Animator Jonathan Cooper (who has worked at Ubisoft and has now joined Naughty Dog to work on Uncharted 4), gives his insight into the hardest part of animation for him: “The primary challenge I’ve faced is to give the character enough weight in the world so that they naturally fit in a realistic setting, without making it unresponsive for the player to the point that the connection is lost with the avatar – that sense of embodying the player character is central to every decision a game animator makes.”
[Cooper, J. 2014. On photo-realism in games. [blog]. 4 August. Available from: http://www.gameanim.com/2014/08/04/on-photo-realism-in-games/#more-6869 [Accessed 22 October 2014]. ]
And this idea of giving character spatial awareness is one way to help make a character fit, and perhaps avoids making them unresponsive to the player, as it can be layered on top of responsive movement animations.
I’ve just come back from eating tea and re-reading my notes, I realise I have mistakenly typed spatial awareness instead of situational awareness. But I think both are related to what I want to do, so I’m going to have a look into spatial awareness in games too.
“Humans modify their behaviour based on their environment. Straight and gently curving corridors of space are appropriate for running, while sharply curving spaces are not. Wide-open spaces provide good vantage points for trying to spot other object, but are bad spaces to hide in. Dimly lit spaces, however, are good to lurk in.
Since humans strategise their behaviour based on their environment, designers of AI agents may wish to do the same to create compelling agent behaviour.” (p.15)
[Perkins, S., et al. 2008. A spatial awareness framework for enhancing game agent behaviour: Proceedings of the ACM SIGGRAPH symposium on Video games, [no place] [no date]. New York: ACM.]
Spatial awareness in a physical sense is well implemented in game animation, for a good example we can look at the techniques used in Assasin’s Creed III. Desmond can respond to uneven terrain and climb up any angle of slope and can move effectively over obstacles using a complex predictive foot placement system that allows him to step on to different levels and directions of terrain and respond with according animations. You can find a full explanation of the system in the below link.
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/193015/Video_Improving_AI_in_Assassins_Creed_III_XCOM_Warframe.php
skip to 30:19 for Assassins Creed III breakdown
Ground navigation (32:19):Reactions to environment, (33:30)uneven terrain integrated into not just movement, (34:00)Procedural animations (Scramble, slide..etc) and problem solver (predictive foot placement) (35:00-38:00)
Free running (40:00-42:00): Comparing old and new jumps, different jumps and positioning
Climbing (42:00): (43:08) 360 support climb system, sequential animations, (44:22) organic surfaces, (45:15) new moves, (46:00-48:21) Dynamic contextual pose and adjustments (Connor`s position on environmental facades)
Tree running (48:23): (48:51)Concept and rules applied, (49:02) Tree archetypes, (50:30-52:50) Procedural animations, contextual poses and adjustments with trees..
And from searching spatial awareness, I’ve ended up at GDC talk called “Spaces in the Sandbox: Tactical Awareness in Open World Games”
http://gdcvault.com/play/1018136/Spaces-in-the-Sandbox-Tactical
Although this talk was very code and implementation heavy, it raised an interesting point about how to apply spatial awareness to something practical. Much like the above quote, it’s about responding and using the terrain to your advantage.
Although all of these points are relevant and enhance todays game animations, the spatial and situational response of the character is still limited to the physical environment. Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker is still the only example I have where the character responds to the atmosphere, and I think that is what is lacking from many games. The character has little awareness, and thus depiction, of their emotions in relation to their surroundings. This could be the next key step to creating believable characters.
Honours Year 