ChuhanD's Blog

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3D Computer Animation Fundamentals Maya Unreal Engine

Term 1: Showreel and Experiences

Feelings and Experiences

UE5：

For this project, I used over 600 assets to create a first-person animation that moves from a fancy atmosphere into a magical one. Through this semester’s learning, I’ve become familiar with the UE5 animation workflow, but I feel that I still have a long way to go, whether it’s environment art, atmosphere design, UE sculpting, foliage painting, cinematography, animation, or light baking and rendering. Each step requires much more time and practice to truly master before I can create a polished, complete animation in UE5.

Maya:

This semester has transformed me from a complete beginner who didn’t know how to use Maya into someone who can now comfortably create simple animations with it. I’ve gained so much and learned many new things. For example, it was my first time realizing how important timing and framing are in animation, and that most movements can be thought of in their simplest form, like imagining them as a bouncing red ball. This makes it much easier to visualize the timing and speed, helping me create stronger animation clips.

Whenever I ran into problems with animation concepts or knowledge, I turned to our “animation bible” which is The Animator’s Survival Kit. Honestly, this book guided me through every animation I made this term. Whenever I felt stuck, I could open it and find answers or inspiration.

I faced all sorts of challenges while working on assignments. At first, I didn’t even know how to select the main controller in Maya. Now, I can use the Graph Editor smoothly—all thanks to the patience of my classmates and the dedicated guidance of my teachers. I’m truly grateful.

There are still areas I need to improve, like managing my time better and avoiding last-minute work. I hope to make progress in this next semester. I also plan to watch more outstanding animations and films to learn more about visual storytelling and camera language.

Categories
Unreal Engine

Week 12: Homework and Feelings

This week I worked on animation and rendering. The animation part was quite challenging for me. Many assets, whether downloaded from the official Fab library or other online sources which part often had issues. For example, some models were imported without proper skeletons, only placeholder rigs.

I had a small bird that I wanted to animate in a cute but slightly startling way. I felt the bird alone wasn’t enough, so I also looked for a butterfly material from Fab. When I opened its mesh, I was surprised to find that its body and wings were separate! Even though I searched for tutorial videos to learn how to merge the two bone rigs together, when I tried to import it into the Sequence for animation, it still didn’t work. With time running short, I had to give up on animating the butterfly.

To ensure the rendering quality, I did a test render before adding all the animations. The result was very disappointing, the video looked heavily aliased and jagged… So I adjusted the settings again, following tutorials online. Finally, on my fourth attempt at rendering, I achieved the result I wanted.

Then I continued adding animations. I felt my fairyland scene was missing something magical, so I wanted to add elements like a school of fish flying in the sky, but I couldn’t find the fish model I had in mind, and time was tight. Instead, I used a cute little demon character. At first, I wanted it to follow a spline path in Blueprint, but when I adjusted the coordinates, the spline wouldn’t generate new points correctly. So I had to abandon that idea and just animated and rotated it directly within the camera view instead.

Finally, I worked on camera shake. For a first-person animation with running sections, camera bounce is essential. I looked up how to create a camera shake system in Blueprint online, adjusting the right parameters to get the effect, and placed it into the Sequence. I kept adding shake throughout according to the story’s rhythm, which gave me the final result.

Reference and Process screenshot:

butterfly cannot connect
I try to connect rigs
Butterfly rigs connect tutorial
Just leave it
animation in bluemap
cannot move
I try to render see the environment
Bluemap
Add running breathe in camera
animation in camera
Very unsatisfactory rendering

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Maya

Week 12: complete homework and feelin

In this time, fixing the animation is very hard than I expected. I need to adjust the timing and the angle of left and right hand post( make sure their difference) , spine angle and arms and so on.

This week, I focused on smoothing out the hip’s bouncing curve and making the hand gestures look more natural.
I also had to decide which of the two animation versions from the past two weeks. Even though every animation when I doing that I could find new problems, the biggest challenge this time was animating the speed and angle of the poses until they felt right.

Finally, while adjusting the head movement, I noticed something: Before jumping, a person usually looks ahead to judge the distance and direction. At the highest point of the jump, they tend to look down toward the ground, and when it landing, the head drops slightly again because of physics.

Here is the final animation demonstration:

Categories
Unreal Engine

Week 11：homework process and change

This week, I mainly worked on lighting adjustments and animation, with a focus on lighting. I’ve decided to leave the animation for next week, so I first tried adding volumetric fog and setting up the lights.

The DirectionLight seemed too bright, it actually made the environment I created hard to see, and it overexposed the original colors of the materials, which lost a sense of realism (P1). I then adjusted its position again. This time the color looked more textured, but it was still too intense and a bit exaggerated for my taste (P2).

After that, I followed a tutorial video on setting up ambient light, but I couldn’t get it to look the same as in the tutorial. So I dimmed it down first, went to the ExponentialHeightFog light settings, enabled Volumetric Fog, and kept adjusting the angle and position of the light. I also changed the Intensity Scale of the SkyLight and tweaked it many times. Eventually, the environment looked better, and this is the environment that I chose.

Then, I began adjusting the composition of the scene. To make the upcoming camera animation work better, I angled all the tall trees toward the center to create a visual guiding effect, especially in the initial forest, to build an atmosphere that subtly pushes “you” forward.

change to dark and open Volumetric Fog
final choice
Compare the original environment without the light setting
adjust the angle tower

Categories
Maya

Week11: Keep polish body machanic

In this week we still need to polish our animation in Maya, I keep doing the jump forward. I consideration about this animation is to do it look like realistic or make if more animation, which one is better. Will, after I search on the < animation survival kit> I think, do the animation is aim to understand why the post is in here, why we should fix that.

In my understanding I think we should not think to much, just do it and make it looks like better, that is the aim in this term for me(maybe) then I asked Ting for help in the class on Friday, I got some useful feedback and some tips.

Tips in my understanding be like: when the character jumps, the hip motion and speed should be like a bouncing ball ( Slow with many frame—Fast with key frame—Slow the same when it land)

when I back to my home, I start look at old animation like “Tom and Jerry “and “Mickey Mouse”, trying to be inspired. To focus on how master do their animation post and principle in their character.

This is the tips from Ting’s feedback （Very thanks to my teacher)

Animation issue

Feedback advice
Feedback advice
Feedback advice

Categories
Maya

Week10: Body Mechanics Polish

In the class, I show my maya problem with George, he give me some advice that do the post making more animation, like hand post when character prepare to land, and the feet angle, ect. Then I also ask ting for help in Friday’s class after I adjust my animation but still quite confuse. Ting also give me lots of feedback, I think those are helpful and inspire me to do the next.

Technical issue

Sometimes the knee keyframes would overflip on their own, and the whole leg would bend backward. At first, I didn’t know why it was happening. Then I noticed there’s a controller for the knee, but I never even touched it, and it still flipped. My teacher explained that it’s because the knee was following a different part of the body, so it got confused.
So for some parts, you have to try fixing it, whether it follows the Main controller or the Hips.

Later, I felt like Maya can be a bit crzy sometimes, but honestly, it doesn’t matter how you fix it. What matters is that after you fix it, the animation looks the aniamte it should.

sometime follow
Knee problem
sometime fix like it

Animation point

I can get feedback from different teachers, each with their own perspective， and that helps my animation work a lot.

Ting told me the hip should be like an bouncing ball, and also when it jumps, the shape should be like a big curve! during this jump process, animation timing should be like ball’s timing, she noticed that my animation is not enough for timing, maybe it is too quick to key enough, and should add more frames in animation. especially the earlier part before jumping up.

Also George’s feedback is different, he told me the post should not complete following the reference, it should be add more animater ideas. like golden post which is difference with reality.

From George’s feedback
timing from Ting’s feedback
whole animation in this week
Ting’s feedback note tips
Categories
1.2 Design for Animation, Narrative Structures & Film Language

Week 12: Research Presentation

This is my homework research presentation in term1

Categories
1.2 Design for Animation, Narrative Structures & Film Language

Week 11: Writing process

I started drafting my essay. The reason I like ARCANE is that its art style is very unique—different from other Disney or Pixar 3D animated films. Arcane’s 3D looks almost flat, yet it’s still 3D, without that popular “3D anime-style character” feel often seen in Japanese animation. In short, it’s very special. Once I looked into it, I realized it’s an entirely unprecedented and distinct style. I thought, wouldn’t this be perfect as a topic for an essay?

Then, I searched on CNKI using keywords like “3D technology” to find any references related to Arcane. I found one article titled A Preliminary Discussion on the Aesthetic Effects of 3D Animation Technology, which discussed several animated films produced by the very popular studio Taking Light Chaser Animation Works in the spring of 2025. The article mentioned 3D animation technology as well as the aesthetics and value of these Chinese 3D animations.

Then it occurred to me that my own essay could also touch on technology and aesthetic value, so my thesis topic emerged: discussing the production techniques and aesthetic value of Arcane.

I wrote several versions of the outline in Chinese first, as writing an in depth, layered academic paper might be easier to organize in my native language initially. Later, I found an exclusive technical sharing session from the Arcane studio online: using Arcane: League of Legends as an example, the video introduces the exclusive animation production process, covering what Fortiche shared at SIGGRAPH and revealing the technology and workflow used to create Arcane. The video mentions the software and tools they used, as well as key steps like assetization, camera projection, and digital matte painting. This is a highly beneficial and crucial step for my writing!

original langurage
translated to English helps people who read my blog
Drafting version1
Drafting version1
Drafting version1
version 1
Categories
1.2 Design for Animation, Narrative Structures & Film Language

Week 10

In class, the teacher explained that although it is academic writing, it does not require overly complex language or highly ornate and advanced vocabulary. Academic writing should be concise, clear, formal, and active. It does not need to be complicated or rely on long sentences and obscure words. Being concise in formal academic writing is important, as it helps others understand the points you are making.

I continued to gather data and references for my writing. I repeatedly used the keyword “3D animation” to search various authoritative academic writing websites. I found one article related to 3D technology, but it leaned more toward modeling rather than techniques for creating animation (Animation Image Art Design Mode Using 3D Modeling Technology Animation Image Art Design Mode Using 3D Modeling Technology – Tan – 2022 – Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing – Wiley Online Library. Then I found another article titled Real Time Animation of Trees Based on BBSC in Computer Games (Real Time Animation of Trees Based on BBSC in Computer Games Real Time Animation of Trees Based on BBSC in Computer Games – Ao – 2009 – International Journal of Computer Games Technology – Wiley Online Library and considered using it as a reference. However, upon careful reading, I realized it wasn’t the content I was looking for.

After repeatedly searching for articles and finding none that matched my needs, I began to consider whether I should simplify my topic, just as my teacher suggested, by narrowing the scope. So, I started thinking about my favorite 3D animation, ARCANE.

My favorite animation
Categories
Unreal Engine

Week 10: Homework process

At the end of the week, I was feeling pretty confused. So I went to ask my teacher, Serra, for help and feedback. I remember Serra said my story had too much animation, it would be very hard to finish in such a short time. She suggested that I change my story board to a first-person perspective. That way, I’d have less animation to do, and it would help the viewer feel more immersed in the forest atmosphere. I think she made a really good point. For someone newbird to UE5 like me, it’s not about making an amazing story right away—it’s more important to understand and get comfortable with the tools in UE5 (especially since I’m still not very familiar with it, and often don’t even know how to do certain things).

I started feeling more and more anxious, but what’s the use of worrying? I just had to start taking action. Gradually, I noticed the scenes I was building didn’t really match my story anymore. So I decided to change my original story concept. The current version of the story is roughly this:

(First-person view) “I” walk through a dim forest, feeling nervous and scared by the atmosphere, kind of like the forest Snow White runs into when the hunter spares her. There aren’t actually scary creatures in the forest, the fear is just imagination. Then, as I run in panic, I end up lost and stumbling into a beautiful new place by accident.

So I started adjusting my UE5 project accordingly. I also plan to experiment with lighting to make the whole forest feel more atmospheric. But before that, I tried walking through the story in first person view, just to test it out.

My camara test

Then, to create a sense of mystery while transitioning from the tense forest to the magical forest—just like in my storyboard where a hand emerges from the bushes, followed by a little boy, I placed a large bush at the middle between the two style of forests. This way, it can partially hide the view and help build that feeling of mystery.