Shark Model in Progress

For Advanced 3D Modeling I'm finally getting to use ZBrush for the first time! I received a $1000 grant from Penn when I won the Seltzer Digital Media Award in order to purchase the software and I'm so excited to finally get to use it. This is progress I've made so far on my great white shark model. I've made sure to model the mouth, teeth, and outer body separately in case I want to animate this shark in the future, but still made sure the three pieces fit together cohesively.

The project is to recreate an image and I chose this particular one. I really like the drama of the pose and I really want to inspire a visceral reaction in the viewer. It's been incredibly exciting to work on this model. I always enjoy finding an emotional aspect to whatever I'm modeling, and I'm enjoying trying to capture the raw power of this image. I'd still like to add some more details to the model (I'm planning on looking at some muscle diagrams of Great Whites), but my next step is working on texturing. Then I'd like to move on to working on the environment, possibly learning to use Real Flow for the water simulation.

Reference-Image-Angle.jpeg

Jello Sim Working

I have a working jello simluation! I implemented Euler and Midpoint integration schemes, but RK4 is the most stable and the most pretty, so as soon as possible I'm going to import it into Maya and make an interesting scene to demonstrate with.

Things I still want to implement: Friction, inclined plane intersection, importing into Maya

Fun ideas for the future: Non-cube meshes (My dream is a Pusheen jello), jello on jello interactions

Gif from Animation I made as a gift

Back in January for my 6 month anniversary I made my boyfriend a hand drawn letter/animation. I'm not posting it anywhere (for obvious personal reasons), but I figured I would at least mention it because it was a fun experience. I ended up editing the final work to music which is something I hadn't done with animation before. Note to self: deciding to add music in retrospect is a lot harder than just animating to music from the beginning, but in the end it really help with timing. Here's once short gif to give a general sense of what I mean by animated letter (it is Valentine's Day after all):

6Months_kiss.gif

Jello Simulation - Part 1

Well I've finally started it, the infamous Jello assignment for Physically Based Animation. So far I've written the code for internal spring forces (including the dampening force), collision detection with the ground, collision detection with cylinders (but not the end caps just yet), and added structural, shearing, and bending springs to make the jello more stable.

Because I haven't actually included the floor in the scene yet I don't have any interesting deforming or crazy explosions happening yet, but those will come soon.

Things I still need to implement: Explicit Euler and Midpoint integration (right now its using RK4, which is more stable, but I was given it by my professor. I'd like to implement my own integration.), collision response, collision detection with other shapes (cubes, spheres etc), and supporting advanced rendering so I can use Maya to keyframe and render in MentalRay.

I'm taking Advanced Topics in Computer Animation: Facial Animation with Chris Landreth!

I managed to get into the Facial Animation class I really wanted to take! I'm super excited for this semester, our first class with Chris was great. After only 4 hours I felt like I had a much better grasp of facial proportions and how to think about a photograph of a face in 3D. He's such a talented person and its such an honor to get to take this class with him, I'm glad I'm not missing out.

Final Project for Hand Drawn Animation - Progress so far

For my final project I'm animating the story of my dog Pickles learning how to swim for the first time, by being jealous and insane. I started with some gestural sketches to get an idea of how stylized I wanted the character to be. Then I cleaned up some of the line work to simplify the characters a bit, a played around with different poses and expressions. 

Pickles_sketches_01.jpg
Sheeler_sketches_01.jpg
Pickles_model_01.jpg
Sheeler_model_01.jpg

I then did a test animation of Pickles running to see if animating a quadriped would prove to be more difficult than I could handle. I used video footage for the test run. 

Pickles_test_run.gif

After showing my professor the run she recommended animation a movement without the use of video footage before proceeding, so I animated the test jump without a video. We both agreed that the animation I did without a reference had more character, so I decided that I wouldn't animated directly from video for this project. I still plan to use video footage, but I only when my action is from a different angle. This way it'll force me to understand the movement rather than just copy the form.

Pickles_test_jump.gif

Action Figure Mix

For one Hand Drawn Animation assignment we were randomly given a verb and an adverb with which we designed a character and animated the action.

A4_ActionFigureMix_Pajaczkowska.gif

Can you guess my words? They were "Urgently" "Putting on socks". Although I'm not completely satisfied with my final animation, I did have a lot of fun with this character. I wanted to add an extra level of determination to her, and play around with the audience's expectation of what adverbs a little girl would normally represent.

Things I'd still like to improve:

-That landing in the beginning. I wanted it to look like a last second change in direction. She looks down and notices the sock so she slams her foot down and slides a bit to stop her momentum. It looks a bit strange now, she doesn't slide enough and her back leg stops a bit too abruptly.

A to B Animation

For our most recent Hand Drawn animation project we were given the first and last frame of a character animation and had to fill in the inbetweens, any way that we chose to. It was an exercise in creative motion and sticking to a humanoid character model that was provided for us. The animation had to be a minimum of 12 seconds.

A3_AtoB_PajaczkowskasansKssmall.gif

Some things that I'd like to go back and improve: 

-His proportions when he's on the ground and his legs are in front of his arms

-Adding more sticky stuff when he lands and generally making it stick around for a few frames longer

Flour Sack Animations

For our second assignment for Hand Drawn Animation we had to animate a flour sack emulating an emotion we picked from a hat. My word was "Timid".

FlourSack3.gif

Then for a secondary animation challenge we had to add a tail to our character. I chose an anthropomorphized rat tail.

P3_FlourSackP2Tail_Pajaczkowska.gif

Hand Drawn Animation Exercises

This semester I'm taking hand drawn animation and I'm incredibly excited about the class. Here are just some very simple exercises I've completed so far. 

A self portrait or avatar in 2 frames

A self portrait or avatar in 2 frames

Transforming one shape into another and back again

Transforming one shape into another and back again

For this one I was inspired by the changing seasons. And the fact I wanted to draw a poor little determined snowman.

For this one I was inspired by the changing seasons. And the fact I wanted to draw a poor little determined snowman.

Key Frame Editor - Digital Flipbook

Key Frame Editor - Digital Flipbook Our ongoing CIS277 project is implementing a Scene Graph and creating a GUI to interact with it. At this stage the user can create and store keyframes, allowing them to create a digital flipbook. They can also batch add frames between two keyframes that will automatically be interpolated to create the beginning stages of motion tweening.

Created using: C++, QT, OpenGL