Changes

Before starting the facial animation, I spent some time making the changes that I talked about in the previous post. The movie below shows these changes:




I think that this reworked start to the animation works very well. On the down side, there are still a lot of drifty movements during the animation, particularly with te patient character. There are also a few parts where the doctor and the patient are stood absolutely still. This is ok if there characters were robots but people never stay still even if they are standing or sitting in the same position. Their chest may be moving from breathing for example.

The movie below shows some of these issues being dealt with:




At this stage, I have tidied up a lot of the animation in terms of the parts where they are stood still and where they are drifting. The main change is that the patient now reacts to the doctor at the end. When he shouts, the patient moves back away from him. I think that this is working much better now but, as the movie below shows, I have polished the animation a bit more before starting the facial animation:




Again, there is not a significant change but there is much more weight in the movement of the doctor now. This is due to adding frames in that make the body follow though when he takes a step or bounces on his toes. I have also added in frames before the more exaggerated movements so that there is some anticipation.

I will keep tweaking the movement of both characters but the next part of the process is to put in the lip sync for the characters.