Have Mercy On Mei Breakdown

  Time for a breakdown! 

  This was a fun one but it definitely presented a few challenges, namely getting Mei to rise up on the machine without breaking the rig, and achieving believable movement on the connected wires while also avoiding them clipping through the model.   

 In this breakdown I'll go over some of these points, as well as just a few “cool things” about the animation.   

 For the wires, I created a simple plane object, subdivided and duplicated it, and placed them in the appropriate places over her body. I then used a Shrinkwrap modifier to attach the plane to Mei's body, two Solidify modifiers to add some depth (one for basic depth and one to fatten up one side, where the cord enters), and finally a Subdivision to smooth the whole thing out. 

 The order of these modifiers is important; Blender process them top-to-bottom, so you want the Shrinkwrap first and then the solidify. If the solidify was first, you would get a messy result like this:

  Now the wires are set up well for a still shot, but since this thing needs to be animated, there's still some work to do. 

  I had one of two options; brute-force or physics. While physics are useful, in this situation I have 8 different pads/wires, and I need to be able to control them and make little adjustments when needed. While the "brute force" method does indeed take more time, I like to know that, when it's all over, the result will be consistent and predictable. 

  For the cord I used a spline object with 3 points, one connected to the back of the device, one in the middle, and one connected to the pad with a "hook" modifier. The hook modifier keeps the end connected, but I still need to add some "bob-and sway" to the wire to make it realistic. For this, I added a shapekey to the curve object, moving the middle spline a wee bit up/down. I then animated this shapekey to provide some wobble, intensifying the "wobble" when Mei is going through a particularly intense motion. 

    The "brute force" aspect of this setup is animating the end shapekey to keep the wire from intersecting with the body, as well as connected to the pad. 

  For every wire, I went through frame-by-frame and animated a shapekey to do this. It was somewhat painstaking, but again, once it's done, it's done, and I know it will work, rather than re-baking memory heavy physics. 

  It's not perfect, but it's effective and accomplishes what it needs to. When making these big animations (or any animations really) it's important not to get TOO caught up with things like this; I could have easily spent more time on this effect; added physics, perhaps even added a rig to the wires for fine-tuned movement, etc. But you have to keep moving! Get things looking good, polish a bit, and move on! 

  The electricity bolts that jump back and forth between the conductors were done with 8 curve objects and two lights, both animated on/off. For the curve, I animated the "Bevel Start/Bevel End" properties, off-setting them a bit so the bevel travels along the spline. 

  With this setup done, I started thinking about how to raise up Mei so that Mercy can get easy-access to those cute 'lil feet. 😘

  I decided on creating a "parent empty" that everything would be attached to, and this would be animated upwards. At first I forgot to parent Met's control empties which, uh, creating a pretty horrifying effect. 

  After going back through and making sure everything was parented properly, the effect was much better (and poor Mei wasn't stretched to oblivion).

  The end of this gif. shows a small example of "hidden" animation. This is one reason I set up all of my camera angles first, as it gives you leeway to "get loose" and animate things off-screen. As you can see in this shot, I simply animated the entire rig to simulate the "foot-brace" coming down, just grabbing and rotating the whole parent control empty. Remember, it's only what's in the camera that matters! Get as loose as you want; being quick and nimble is more important than being perfect!

  Now my favorite part. The jiggles!

  Now that is obviously a DENSE gif, but the basic idea is pretty straightforward. I create approx. a dozen shapekeys for the jiggles, animate them on/off over 4 frames (0--1--0) and then loop them, using the "Cycles" modifier in the graph editor. I then offset certain shapekeys to get that nice "overlayed" effect. You do need to plan it out a little bit, I.E. the "lower tummy" should jiggle before the "upper tummy", and the "upper tummy" should jiggle before the "breasts", so you get that nice layered flow. And since we're using the Cycles modifier to loop just 3 keys for each shapekey, it's very easy to make timing adjustments and experiment.

  Here's an example of a few of the main shapekeys I created for the jiggle, some obvious, some subtle. 

  Finally, I'll go over a couple visual aspects of the short. 

  One thing I use to give a nice "hazy" effect to my animations is "volumetrics." This gives the whole scene a nice subtle depth, and has a side effect of embellishing the lights, making them more dramatic as they shine through the volume. 

  To enable volume, you head into the "world tab" and simply attach the "volume scatter" node. Adjusting the "Density" value will give you more/less volume, which has a dramatic effect on the lighting of the scene. 

  In the "Scene" tab under "Volumetrics" I recommend playing with the "Light Clamping" value. This changes the prominence of your lights and how visible they are; it's basically a must if you have lights in view of the camera (which you usually will), as leaving this at its default value will give you a big 'ol ball of bloom, as you can see in the gif. below. 

  Most of my stuff takes place in darker environments (often neon-lit), so doing a brighter medical room was  a nice change of pace. Of course, we will be getting back to that dark tone with Tifa...

  Let me know if you have any specific questions for me, in the comments or on my Discord. Whether fan or creator, I hope you find this interesting. 

  I'll have a new video going up in the latter half of next week, and after that some previews of Tifa Tickled. Going to be a good time! 

  Hope everyone is safe and well.