Here is something I’ve been obsessing over (yes, obsessing… ) for the past 2 months. The character animation is wonky, there are texture issues and lighting issues, but I have to call it done and move to getting paid work again, because rent is due.
Hopefully you all like it! There is a short intro and outro describing what the point of this is, but hopefully all of you enjoy it.
Software Used: Blender 3D, Substance Painter, Reallusion Character Creator 4 and iClone 8, Adobe After Effects, DaVinci Resolve, ElevenLabs Prime Voice AI
Royalty Free Music Provided by: Epidemic Sound
AI Voice Over Cleanup Provided by: Adobe Podcast
I don’t think I’m the right person to critique anything, but if I were to pick one easy to fix thing with pretty noticeable result, it would be smoothing out the camera movement.
It reminds me how I learned to do it in Rockstar editor. I first locked it onto a character with some mild bouncing in between, with a very similar looking result of what you have now. But the next step was to releasing the camera restraint and smoothing out the movement. Usually, the camera was delayed, barely following the original character movement, but simply moving (now unrestrained) camera movement a few steps/frames ahead, it all created much more live-action camera. Pretty natural looking like camera movement, with steady focus, but not machine one like.
I hope it makes sense. Again, your video looks very, very good in it’s own right to me already!
Thank you for the suggestion! I wonder if Blender has a similar delayed option. Perhaps using an empty as the camera target, which is parented to the character’s head bone, with offset? I’ll have to play around.
Frankly, after staring at it for almost 4 months, it becomes so difficult to see the mistakes or issues that it becomes necessary to release it just to get fresh eyes on it.
Thanks Helmut! And thank you very much for watching it. If you can, please share it out to others to get some attention to this. Perhaps it can become a regular feature?
I’d like to tell you, but I literally just started to get familiar with animation in general a few weeks ago.
Perhaps using an empty as the camera target, which is parented to the character’s head bone, with offset?
Sounds like a good way to go about it.
Frankly, after staring at it for almost 4 months, it becomes so difficult to see the mistakes or issues that it becomes necessary to release it just to get fresh eyes on it.
I think I know that feeling pretty well, even if not talking about animation.
I agree with @MoravianLion about the camera movement, but otherwise, everything was nicely done; the characters, the secondary motion, the dialog… I enjoyed it.
It’s always possible to criticize an animation film, but I find the overall effect to be striking. I perhaps only regret a slightly “timid” lipsync, but bravo for the expressions, the secondary movements, the calibration and the very “film-like” framing.
Thank you for your publication.
Another update. Refining the animation process for a more realistic, life-like approach. This is Commodore Darius, in Scene 3, giving Captain Lostra his orders. This will be in hologram form in the final scene.
Some lip sync issues still, but things are cleaning up well.
Rendered in Blender 3D, with CG elements imported from Character Creator 4, iClone 8.
Updating to the second draft of Scene 4, Episode 2. Hopefully continued improvements will continue!
In this case, there were numerous improvements to the choppy character animation. Also, facial animation was redone using mocap so that it fits better and is more dynamic.
The stand-in set was replaced with the final conference room set specially built for this series.
) for the past 2 months. The character animation is wonky, there are texture issues and lighting issues, but I have to call it done and move to getting paid work again, because rent is due. 
