The Encyclopaedia of Riding Poses

Never think something is easy before you have ever done it!

But are you humans really alright doing this… on a horse…….

Blender really drove me crazy when I was firstly doing the animations with more than one pair of the rider, which was the two humans on a camel one. Because I used the same rider prefab appended into the model, the two humans were always in the same poses although they have respective rig. And if I made multiple actions for one model, like the common horse, then they always messed up with some actions seemingly gone nowhere.

So I stopped to look for some explanations systematically for the action editor to avoid keeping wasting my time trying to clear up things or losing my animations that I paid great efforts on….

This should be basic knowledge of using Blender but I still wrote it down here… So actually each single object can take only one action at one time. That object is the ‘user’ of that action, and each action can have multiple users which is shown as the number after the action’s name (4 in the picture). When no one uses the action, it will disappear after closing the file; and F is a fake user which means there will always be the user for the action.

So when I used two humans on the camel, they were identical because I was trying to make them in the same action… and they got alright after I allocated them into different actions. And I can keep many actions for one model which is obviously better for my importing them into Unity later.

But I was still quite worried if Unity can play the different tracks for one model since I had just done some simple single animations before. So in this project for the first time I opened Unity and created my project today lol.

 

 

The model imported into Unity is still separated by object as they were in Blender. And actually I just set the default take and it was exactly how I saved the animation (set it ‘legacy’ and loop time to make it keep animating). However, some small things in the models did not work properly, like the eyeballs. I made them separate objects to the body, but in Unity they came out of the head, and also I feel the relative position of the humans to the camel is slightly changed. This is not a good sign… but for now I just test if the animation can work in Unity so that I can go on with my work in Blender.

Anyway, so far more than a half of the circle has been done. I now get quite familiar with the process of parenting the rider prefab with the bone of the mount where he sits on, and then making the animation for other parts of the body.

Did very delicate key frames for not only the body pose but also the gesture and facial expressions, and cleaned up the problems in weight paint along the work. Now feel great satisfaction when looking at these together! Really hard work literally did nothing but this for the whole days but the time is still extremely tight for the tremendous pit I have dug for myself……….

Animal Modelling – Quadrupeds Day 3

Finally finished everyone (however, just the mounts) in the circuit. I am feeling exhausted especially when thinking about this is just a small part of the whole work……

I found that I actually left all those don’t-know-what things for the last day and that might be why I felt so tired today.

Like the rabbit/cat, the bear’s face is also very different with the horse-like animals which needs a rebuild, a different shape of the body and different paws. I won’t say tail and ears though because everyone has its own kind.

The pig, or porcupine. The hair on its back drove me crazy but I would not say so after making the next one… Quite like the shape though comparing to the bear which seems kind of too cartoon.

Totally no idea what this big shaggy is. I can only see its head on the painting but that is interesting enough to imagine its body!

A griffin. This guy seems really cool but I had totally no idea how to reform from something else, so I just re-modelled it from zero which took me the whole night.

I thought I had finished but suddenly found this guy on the left-down corner of the circuit, raising his head up high and looking like a frog or something… I had lost all my patience to think about what it should be and made it always like the position it is on the painting. Quite nice though! Lol.

Animal Modelling – Quadrupeds Day 2

Keep finishing the quadrupeds in the circuit but still have not finished by the end of today. Hope things could get smoother when I make those without the rigging, weight painting and animating later…..

This is the one with birds standing on its horn so it moves most steadily.

A happy animal!

This is a cat-like animal who has a don’t-know-what thing on his head, and it took me great time because its face is much different with others and there is a problem of this animation that makes its frame rate really low, but I have not figured out why. Hope it will not affect my game though…

This deer’s horn seems quite flexible so I added this whip-like animation for it. But for now I am thinking that it will be really fun and a rich scene when these mysterious creatures walk together!

Animal Modelling – Quadrupeds

New models reformed from the horse for now.

I am using the way as below to take note of what I have done and what is the file I named for it, and the blue ones are the normal horses.

I had really good time observing and modelling these weird creatures, feeling like the work has finally come into a period of more fun, and that I now have the right to decide and design something (although it is now still based on the 2D image).

And I found I am so fond of this flat-shading sense of sculpture they look. It does not really make sense if I say this looks more delicate than the smooth shape because it is actually rough, but maybe it is because then it feels like the artwork from a craftsman with every corner carefully cut, rather than a industrial auto-produced smoothness. I think I am going to import the sculptural shading version to my scene later, but I am not that sure since it depends on how the texture should go as well, and I don’t know if the straight faces will look bad when they are far away.

Donkey, the first one of today with smooth shading

some others with the sculptural shading.

Another interesting thing is I found a rabbit-like animal in right back of the circuit. The head is quite obvious although the body is blocked. It is so eccentrically cute but I was stuck because I did not know how I should make its body. I gave it the body of all other horse-like things. A long-leg rabbit. Then I was trying to give it a different armature animation of a rabbit, but it turned out that it was like just a giant rabbit which is obviously not how the long-leg rabbit should move. So I went back to the normal animation again. Still looks really eccentric!

Animal Modelling – a First Discussion, and the Horse

I started modelling animals after the human meshes done.

Obviously there are numerous species, real or unrecognisable, for me being the second most significant and noticeable part/category of the work. I think it is quite interesting that after some time of reading and observation I found generally what are the animals in the each panels have rules to follow. (Click to see original images)

It seems that, while there are only Adam, Eve and the God in the first panel, the exotic creatures are more eye-catching. But then you will find that most of them appear to be very weird, many with quite horrible eyes at the bottom – yes I do not think they look like good creatures, and there are those with multiple heads, creepy reptiles, a “dog” with only two limbs, birds with strange body, unicorns and a “giraffe” – I remember a statement saying that at that time giraffe had not been imported into Europe. That is to say most of the animals in the heaven panel are the mythological ones.

But they turn quite normal in the central panel. We can see most of the animals there are common ones. Mainly three kinds: birds, fish, and quadrupeds,  looks normal and real, and stay harmonious with the earthly delights. And then in the last panel, there are few animals – and even not like animal anymore but monsters with roles and characters, and seemingly they have the authority above human, or are as the way to punish human.

But anyway, for my own project, I decided to start from the central panel where the title comes from. Actually from the very beginning I was really not sure where I could finally reach and am especially worried after I started make practical things, and thus I have been kind of prepared that I would be only able to finish one or two panels if I want to do the aspects I talked about in my proposal, and then it should be the central one, with most people, looks quite ready for an animation and would be more fun to interact with, and the right panel, which could be a great material for fascinating lightings and atmosphere that I would like to explore. They seems much more narrative after all.

So for the central panel, as why I made human first, the horses around the central pond are of the greatest quantity and similarity so will be the most efficient way to start with. Not all under the riders are horses though; there are also goats, oxen, donkeys, camels, bears, and other strange creatures. But as quadrupeds it would be easy to edit the rig.

I would say that this area is undoubtedly the most lively part of the whole triptych: it is almost animated. A round shape in the centre of the central panel, with the biggest crowd being engaged in this single activity, you can imagine how dominant it would be if the painting is a animated picture.

For the horse modelling and the rigging I mainly followed tutorials below:

blender 2.5 horse modeling PART_1 – YouTube
Animate a Moose in Blender – Part 1 The Rig – YouTube

Having looked at every single animal and the rider’s pose, I found none of them are being in a high speed of run (humans are seated steadily, some lying prone and even birds are standing on them), although several do have their forelegs up high. So I chose a mild one among the searching results of horse running frames. And according to that tutorial, I finally chose the slowest way “walk” for my animation instead of the “trot” I clicked on.

Click the image to see the original page, an incredible tutorial with many illustrations.

 

The two basic sets of poses I have made: walking and prancing for the quadrupeds.