Astronaut animation

When wanting to create the astronaut animations we had to result in using the mixamo software where we rigged our astronaut by applying joints and armatures. When this astronaut was rigged, the software converted it into several animations which we intended to use throughout. We decided to use this software due to our own attempts of animation not seeming realistic or natural enough. Also when doing it ourselves, it was too temperamental as sometimes the animation would work and other times it wouldn't. So our only option was to use the service of mixamo. These animations look very realistic and natural and they also flow relatively well between each other. This was also very effective as we were able to edit the overdrive, speed, body position etc. of the astronaut, ultimately giving us various means to make it our own. Below are screenshots of a few of the animations that we exported.

1. crawling

2. floating - In this floating animation we were able to turn down the overdrive in order to make it seem as if the astronaut was moving in slow motion - perfect for our introductory scene of the subject floating in space.

3. looking around

When importing the files into C4D we then had to create our own materials for the astronaut. This included materials for the suit, gloves and boots as well as the helmet and visor. When creating the material for the suit we had to ensure that we didn't have any reflectance showing - because as previously shown, this caused a lot of noise and unwanted flickering. To avoid this we applied some diffusion and colour in order to get the final texture. Also in order to get the reflective material of the visor without using the reflectance setting, we used the environment setting on the material which reflected the surrounding environment. We also experimented with key framing the movements furher in terms of speed in order to correspond to the pacing of our piece.