Character Animation and VFX in Blender

Overview

In this assignment you will create a small VFX shot by augmenting a real video with an animated character. You have to create the animation of the character yourself as well.

Preparation

1. Begin by accepting the assignment invitation.

Part 1 To Do : Character Choice and Augmentation Plan

1. Decide on the fictional character you wish to animate (Example Buzz Lightyear from Toy Story). Search and find a mesh for the character that is available online and is free for use. Be careful of not infringing on any copyrights. Preferably the mesh should be coloured/textured or you will have to add this yourself. Export the mesh to blender and verify that it renders correctly.
2. Decide on an animation sequence involving at least four moving parts of the character with at least one part with two or more degrees of freedom.
3. The video you capture will be of a static scene where only the camera view changes. Decide this scene that you will capture to later augment with your animated character. This scene can be indoors or outdoors.
4. Write a small report explaining these decisions along with an outline of your plan to augment the video with your animated character. Add a render of the character mesh you are going to use to the report.
5. Name the report as plan_report_your_roll-number.pdf.
6. Upload the report to your repository.
7. This part must be completed by 23:59 IST, March 19, 2023.

Part 2 To Do : Character Rigging and Animation

1. Download/create the character mesh along with the material(s)/texture(s). You can download and use any freely available mesh as explained earlier.
2. There are two ways in which you can animate the character.
3. You can rig the character in Blender by adding an armature to it and animate it using keyframing. For character rigging you can consult this tutorial : Character Rigging for Beginners. For keyframing you can consult this tutorial: Become a PRO at Animation in 25 Minutes
4. Another option is to upload your rigged character mesh to Mixamo and generate usable movements from the site. You will have to consult Mixamo documentation to figure out how to do this.
5. Generate at least a 10-30 second animation video of your character at 30 fps. This animation is expected to loop around multiple times in the final augmented video.
6. Write a report containing details of this entire process, your design choices and the references used.
7. Name the report as animation_report_your_roll-number.pdf.
8. Save the .blend file of your scene as animation_your_roll-number.blend.
9. Upload the character animation video, the report and the .blend file to your repository.
10. This part must be completed by 23:59 IST, March 26, 2023.

Part 3 To Do : Video Recording, Camera Tracking and VFX

1. Record a 30 second video (at 30 fps) of the static scene you had decided, in which only the camera moves around. It may be good to record at least a 1920*1080 resolution video.
2. Track points in the recorded video using camera tracking in blender as shown in the following tutorial: How to Camera Track in Blender for Beginners
3. Identify a region or surface in the video in/on which your character will perform its movements.
4. Set up the character to stay at the specified location within the recorded scene even when the camera view shifts. (For example, your character may be doing push-ups on a yoga mat in the scene - when the view shifts, the character should still be on the same yoga mat.)
5. You can add lights to you scene to match lighting and shadows for the character with the scene in the video.
6. Save this augmented video (without the tracking points).
7. Write a report detailing the steps and choices along with key observations about the augmented video.
8. Assuming that you got the character placement right, are there things in the final video that give away the fact that this video was augmented? How would you go about addressing these in your future work.
9. Name the report as vfx_report_your_roll-number.pdf.
10. Save the .blend file of your scene as vfx_shot_your_roll-number.blend
11. Save the original video as orig_video_your_roll-number.mp4
12. Save the augmented video as vfx_video_your_roll-number.mp4
13. Upload the original video, the augmented video, the report and the .blend file to your repository.
14. This part must be completed by 23:59 IST, April 2, 2023.

Marking

1. Planning report with character render: 50 marks
2. Animation report: 50 marks
3. Animation blend file: 100 marks
4. VFX report: 50 marks
5. VFX Shot Blend file: 100 marks
6. Original Video: 10 marks
7. VFX Final Video: 50 marks
8. Total: 410 marks
9. Late submission policy: There will be 25% degradation in total marks out of which you will be graded for every late day beyond the deadline. If you are more than three days late, then no marks will be given. The late submission policy applies to the every part of the assignment.

To Submit

Submissions are handled via Github Classroom.