Consider the following questions and try to provide brief answers on your blog for next week.
- On graduation which area or environment of production do you wish to focus upon and why?
- What skills will you need to attain the standards required for vocational practice?
- How will you showcase your FMP practice for the final shows?
- Is it important to directly connect the thesis research to your practical work?
- Do you have an area of research you wish to conduct that is unrelated to practical element?
There are several areas that I would like to focus on in my thesis and project:
Area 1: Facial performance animation
Facial performance animation is an area that I would like to develop an in-depth study and research in. I was moved by the facial performance in some CGI films and games like The Last of Us, L.A Noire and Resident Evil series. It has been applied in animation film production for years, and its applications in computer game area is increasing. With the technology updating, it can be forseen that facial performance animation will be used in a wider area in the future.
From my point of view, great facial performance animation can enhance the development of characters, which also builds up a close relationship between viewers/players and characters. The small details in facial animation can covers tones of information, which is more artistic and playful. Although some of realistic facial animations are made by motion capture, I still believe that hand-made facial performance is more impressive and touching.
To enhance facial performance animation, several things must be learned: face anatomy, facial expressions, rigging. Also, learning the basic use of motion capture and thesis of acting are important.
Area 2: Realistic shading for characters
Another topic that I’m interested in is realistic skin shading, which can be also called the subsurface scattering (SSS) skin shading. Realistic skin texture may covers several areas like facial and body details sculpting, muti-channel texture manufacture and rendering.
The research of this area can also be expanded. For example, blended dynamic normal maps, which can be driven by rigged controlers to get a better facial performance result. Another example is the research on the diffrence of realistic shadings between races, which may covers more detailed thesis. What’s more, the relationship between emotions, actions and skin textures (people’s actions and emotions will change the performance of their skin textures. For exmple, when people angry their face may turn red)
To enhance skin shading, several things must be learned: anatomy, SSS shading, textures, skin lighting and rendering. Simple rigging techniques are also required.
Area 3: Facial rigging or other advanced rigging
A better research or practice of character rigging or animal rigging may improve my understanding of softwares, animations and film/game production. Therefore, facial or other advanced rigging techniques can be another area of my thesis writing. These techniques may cover: FACES (Facial Action Coding System) rigging techniques, quadruped creature rigging or other things.