Body mechanics and facial acting animation show reel:
This week, I completed the final polish for my body mechanics and facial acting animation. I focused on refining the motion details and making subtle adjustments based on the feedback I received. In addition, I worked on setting up the lighting and did the final rendering to present the animation in its best possible quality.
Lighting part:
Three-point lighting
I used three-point lighting to light my character, rendered it in Maya, and then imported it into Nuke for some modifications and adjustments.
I used a warm key light to ensure that the main part of the character feels warm and has a sense of volume. I also added a cool fill light for the darker areas, so the shadows still have details, and the overall image has a nice contrast in color temperature, which prevents it from looking flat. To make the character stand out from the background, I placed a back light behind the character to outline the edges and make the character look more three-dimensional in the scene.
For the background, I didn’t just use a flat color or a simple texture. Instead, I considered that different animation moods require different background tones, so I adjust the background colors based on the emotion and story. In addition, I added a background light, which makes the center area of the background — right behind the character — slightly brighter than the surroundings. This naturally draws the audience’s attention to the character and also adds more depth to the image, so it doesn’t look too flat.
Post processing part:
Since I set the color space in Maya to Aces, it gives me a wider color gamut and more variations compared to the traditional srgb. However, most monitors can only display srgb colors, so I need to import the Aces exr files into Nuke and output them as srgb png files. In Nuke, I can also do some color grading to fine-tune the final look.
After getting the rendering result of the acting animation, I found that probably due to an issue with the model itself, the character’s eyes had some strange shapes, like small triangles. So I used roto in Nuke to mask them out and fix it.
Animation Reflection:
Looking back at this semester, I feel I’ve made real progress in understanding how to keep a character alive on screen even when they’re not moving much. One of the biggest things I learned is the importance of moving holds and copied pairs. At the start, I thought holding a pose was just about freezing the key frames for a few frames. But through practice, I realized that in 3D animation a still hold pose is don’t a good way cause everything looks stuck.
By learning to use copied pairs properly, I started to edit tiny adjustments during a hold, like a small leg press, a tiny weight shift, or a head tilt. It’s a simple trick but it makes the animation feel much more polished and believable.
However, I also found that adding movement to a very short hold is not as easy as just pushing keys around. If the timing isn’t planned well, those small movements can look shaky or unintentional. So this semester taught me that moving holds are not just a technical step; they force you to really understand timing and spacing at a deeper level.
Another area I improved on is planning the flow of actions. For example, my timing at the beginning often felt too evenly spread out or slightly off rhythm, sometimes too slow where it should be snappy. With feedback, I learned to think more in terms of slow-in, fast-out, slow-in, and to use anticipation and follow-through properly. It’s not just about making big poses but about how those poses connect smoothly.
For acting animation, I learnt not to stick too rigidly to the reference, especially when the character model has its own limitations. Like I struggled with the crossed arm pose at first because of the character’s chest is big so the arms will clip through the chest. George’s feedback helped me realize that it’s okay to adapt the pose to fit the model better. By letting the arms hang naturally, I avoided unnecessary problems and freed up more time to polish the facial animation, which often has more impact on the final performance.
Refining facial expressions also taught me a lot. Before, I actually didn’t pay much attention to how important the lines of the eyebrows and mouth shapes are for guiding the viewer’s gaze and strengthening the emotion. Now, I will pay more attention to making the eyebrows form a clean, continuous curve, and the corners of the mouth should have a clear direction and shape. Additionally, details like whether the teeth are shown, how much they are shown, and whether the angle is natural—these small details actually have a big impact on the naturalness of the expression.
I previously struggled with body movement during dialogue. I tended to animate the whole body shifting, but real people usually keep their lower body relatively stable. By focusing more on the shoulders and upper torso movements,
This semester, George also taught us the technique of using spline for blocking. It helped me spot unnatural transitions earlier and quickly block out the character’s body rotations in a easy way.