Research ArticleResearch on the Computer Case Design of 3D Human AnimationVisual Experience

Kai Liu , Qinghan Yang, Yuhao Lu, Taoyu Zhang, and Shuo Chen

Institute of Art and Design, Nanjing Institute of Technology, Nanjing, Jiangsu 211167, China

Correspondence should be addressed to Kai Liu; liukai@njit.edu.cn

Received 5 October 2021; Revised 24 October 2021; Accepted 25 October 2021; Published 3 November 2021

Academic Editor: Xin Ning

Copyright © 2021 Kai Liu et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, whichpermits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

In the animation industry, with the development of computer software and hardware technology, a new technology began toemerge, that is, three-dimensional animation. Three-dimensional animation software first creates a virtual world in thecomputer. In this virtual three-dimensional world, the designer builds the model and scene according to the shape andsize of the object to be represented and then sets the motion trajectory of the model, the motion of the virtual camera,and the scene according to the requirements. When setting other animation parameters, we need to assign specificmaterials to the model and turn on lights. When all this is completed, the computer can automatically calculate andgenerate the final picture. The software Maya can just help animators to complete this work. When using Maya, we canapply many professional courses such as action design, scene design, and storyboarding script design that we have learned.Maya is a 3D software with convenient operability. It can combine the rendered sequence frames with AE to show uniqueanimations. Therefore, the three-dimensional production method is preferred in the production method. The production ofanimation based on the 3D software Maya brings infinite challenges. At the same time, it also helps everyone grow andhas a good position for our employment direction.

1. Introduction

With the rapid development of animation visual experienceand 3D data processing capabilities, more and more scenesin social life use 3D images to replace the original 2Dimages, making the current network accumulate abundant3D entity and behavior data. At present, we often use rel-evant data mining methods to filter out more real andeffective data, so that the three-dimensional image hasmore accuracy, text relevance, and multiscene applicability.And on the basis of the above research, the visual experi-ence system is deeply researched and developed and thethree-dimensional data image data is efficiently improvedthrough machine learning and other technologies. In addi-tion, with the change of industrial application standards, itis necessary to address special speed requirements anduser behavior preferences and wait for improvements inmultiple directions.

The traditional 3D human animation visual experiencesystem can randomly collect a large number of 3D parame-ters and use super large model training to solve the problemof 3D image display experience. The system architecture isconstructed on the basis of 3D laser scanning. There aretwo main ways to experience 3D human animation: one isto quantify the image data through 3D equivalent data trans-formation to convey the complex information of the 3Dhuman animation; several effective data node resources arecombined and calculated to maximize the representation ofthe representative parameters of the three-dimensionalhuman body image from the existing three-dimensionalhuman body animation in the extended system storage.However, the traditional 3D human animation visual experi-ence system has poor ability to fuse related data in the imagedisplay process and it is very difficult to face the fusion of bigdata. For this reason, a 3D human animation visual experi-ence system based on machine learning is designed [1–3].

HindawiWireless Communications and Mobile ComputingVolume 2021, Article ID 8809036, 7 pageshttps://doi.org/10.1155/2021/8809036

2. The Content and Creative Source of 3DHuman Animation

The case design mainly describes in detail the source ofcreativity in the creation process of this three-dimensionalanimation short film, the determination of the script, theproduction of the model, the drawing of the texture, thebinding of the model, the adjustment of the animation, thepostrendering and special effects, and the description ofthe short film.

The third creation of “Immortal Academy” is a storyabout the inspirational growth of the hero of the Chinesestyle and fantasy, Huozai. The story happened in a certainperiod in ancient times. An ancient village was flooded withlocusts, and the crops were seriously damaged. The peoplecomplained. So, the county magistrate found Taoist prieststo do it but it did not help. The magistrate rewarded the war-riors who can get rid of the demon. The protagonist Huozaiwas hungry and wanted to eat and drink, but he was sent tothe demon lair to eliminate the demon. He was almost hun-gry in the jungle. The wolf killed him, but fortunately, he wassaved by the Di’er of the Immortal Academy. Afterwards,they went to the Death Valley together, and finally, withthe help of Di’er, Huozai wiped out the locust demon andbecame a hero who understands and saves people’s lives.

The third creation of “Immortal Academy” is a three-dimensional animation short film about 10 minutes inlength. This film uses a variety of animation lens expressiontechniques in animation production techniques, mainlyusing Photoshop, Maya, Audition, After Effects, Premiere,and other software for production [4, 5]. In the way of mak-ing animation, three-dimensional animation software isused for production. Various three-dimensional softwareand postsynthesis software to produce a fantasy short movieof a fairy man in ancient costume were used.

The short film has traditional Chinese mythology andfantasy. It tells the humorous and legendary adventure storyof the protagonist Huozai rebirth and inspirational growthin adversity. This film will give people a different visualand auditory experience through cool martial arts fightingand special effects.

3. Creative Conception and Design of the Case

3.1. Character Design. Animation character design is animportant link that cannot be ignored in animation creation.It not only is the basis for completing the entire animationcreation but also plays an important role in the creation ofthe entire animation style and the development of the storyplot and can express the central idea of the animation [6].When designing the protagonist, based on the key pointsof character design and referring to a large amount of mate-rials, the male and female protagonist must be cute, have athree-headed body, and have gorgeous clothes and individu-ality and they are very different from the masses, so finishthe person first, set up the picture as shown in Figure 1,and immediately perform the modeling as shown inFigure 2. Compared with the two-dimensional animation,the three-dimensional model can be modified before bind-

ing. The latter operability based on the three-dimensionalanimation is stronger, so we will make the model. Whilereferring to the protagonists of various films, learning fromeach other’s strengths, and making up for their weaknesses,after a long period of modification and polishing, these rolesare perfectly presented now.

Most of the ancient characters are long haired and wear-ing dresses such as skirts. Considering the technology andcomputer configuration, we have to give up some bolderideas and integrate existing technologies to create ideal ani-mated characters [7].

3.2. Scene Design. Animation scene design is an indispens-able and important part of animation production. It is animportant guarantee for the animation film style and charac-ter performance, and it is also a prerequisite for the successof the film. The different screen effects of the animationscene directly affect the entire animation [8]. During theuniversity, based on sophomore sketching and junior yearpicking, we transformed the scenery we saw along the wayinto models, and combined a large number of samples toform a complete set of archaic buildings as shown inFigures 3 and 4, through the software Build a model andapply it to our animations to maximize the application ofwhat you have learned. At the same time, the texture draw-ing is carried out through Photoshop, which retains theshabby and old sense of the ancient architecture.

3.3. Storyboarding Process. The scene-by-shot script design isthe scope of work in the pre-production of animation, thebasis of the entire animation production, and the blueprintfor the production of animation [9]. Based on the require-ments of the storyboard design, draw the script shown inFigure 5 through Photoshop and use Adobe After Effectsto make the storyboard picture into a dynamic storyboardaccording to the dubbing as shown in Figures 6 and 7 andwatch the animation rhythm. According to the language ofthe shots, the position of the characters and the scene arearranged in the Maya software. As shown in Figure 8, thecharacter is roughly performed as a block and a previewvideo is run through Maya’s playblast and the previewvideos are connected to form a complete video. Adjust theinappropriate parts of the shot according to the video andclearly grasp the rhythm of the animation to make the ani-mation. The production will not deviate from the direction.

Figure 1: Character design drawing of Immortal Academy.

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3.4. Animation Production and Adjustment. Like traditionalanimation, the time of conventional 3D animation is also 24frames per second (frames per second, FPS, or frame rate).More high-definition standard productions will often be

25 FPS or film-level 30 FPS. The short film “School ofImmortals” is a high-definition animation at 25 frames persecond. No matter what kind of three-dimensional softwareis used, it must be known that the control of time is achievedthrough the “TimeSlider.” The time axis is shown inFigure 9, which can record all the changing attributes suchas the movement and rotation of the object. Before makingan animation, you must determine which time range touse; otherwise, it will cause serious picture jitter and ghost-ing effects in the later stage due to the difference in FPS[10]. For example, if the frame rate is changed to 25, turnon the Auto Key switch.

Movement is the core of making an animation. To makean animation lively, the characters’ movements must be

Figure 2: Character model of Immortal Academy.

Figure 3: Architectural model of Immortal College.

Figure 4: Architectural scene layout drawing of Immortal College.

Figure 5: Part of the storyboard script of Immortal Academy.

Figure 6: A screenshot of the dynamic submirror of ImmortalAcademy (1).

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smooth and natural and conform to certain laws. Time pointand spatial amplitude are two basic animation elements [11].

Each joint of the animated character is controlled by thecontroller made of the cv curve. We adjust the rotation anddisplacement of the controller to make the animation. Theproduction of each joint of the character does not start andend at the same time. Generally, the root joint drives theperipheral joints. Making the delay is more in line with thelaw of motion, so that the animation is more realistic. Themovement curve is sleek and regular. If a character’s move-ment is to be flexible and vivid, the key frame must be offset.Simply put that the key frames of the root joints remainunchanged and the subsequent peripheral joints select allthe key frames and move to the back of the timeline. Inthe movement of a character, all bones will produce move-ment and inertia. They are different in amplitude, direction,speed, and sequence. The production of 3D animationshould pay special attention to the rationality of movement.Therefore, there should be no rigid movement or joints thatdo not move at all. There is a thought pattern that affects thewhole body.

With the deepening of animation production, we have toconsider the application of the law of motion. For example, Iwant an object to fall from point A to point B and thenbounce up, k key frames on the timeline according to therequired time. We can call point B where the ball falls as alanding point. This landing point will be smoothed off bydefault, so the ball moves at a constant speed without chang-ing and adjusting. But combined with the animation law, Ato B is a process of descending and accelerating. When thelanding point reaches the highest speed, the ball suddenlybounces and the speed close to A drops to the lowest point.Then, the distance between A and B is far and near and thelength of time that the ball moves is the key factor that deter-mines whether the animation is good or bad [12–14]. On thetimeline, first use Tangents-stepped mode to grasp the keyframe of the big rhythm; then, you can select all frames,

right-click on the timeline, and select the Tangents-Autocommand to make the action more soft and natural andadjust the animation curve at the same time.

Under normal circumstances, the computer calculatesthe transition of animation at a uniform speed. The resultof this calculation is not what we want, so Maya also pro-vides us with a tool to control the transition of motion,which is the “curve editor” as shown in Figure 10.

The animation curve is a kind of line graphics thatreflects the state of movement properties over time. Expe-rienced animators can complete perfect animation produc-tion based on the curve. The smoothness of the animationcurve plays a particularly important role in the quality ofan animation. In the Maya animation curve editor, theyellow dot that can be edited is the “key frame.” The curveconnecting each key frame is usually called “FunctionCurves.” The selected key frame can be moved up anddown by the middle mouse button, and the tangent handlediagram can also be used to control the curve shapebetween the key frame and the key frame to change theanimation rhythm.

The best way to correctly express the action language ofthe characters in the animation is to take pictures of theirperformances in the form of mobile phone videos. Secondly,you can refer to the action performance fragments in famousmovies and these performances will be used as material ref-erences in the production of character animation. When youencounter difficulties in animation production and cannotproceed, the best way is to perform those actions in frontof the mirror and analyze them in detail: one standing up,one raising one’s hand, and so on. There are many fightingscenes in the creation and production of “Immortal Acad-emy.” We can perform simple actions by ourselves, but wecan refer to martial arts teaching videos and many animatedmovies for complex professional actions such as leap, hit,and backflip.

Based on the principle of animation production andreferring to a large number of movies, the adjustment of ani-mation is summarized as follows:

(1) Key frame: when the character is in motion, the pos-ture changes in turning and displacement. This pos-ture is called a key frame, which is equivalent to the“original painting” in a two-dimensional animation.When we are making key frames, we need to makeeach frame clear and obvious contrast. A good keyframe is half the success of an animation and is thekey to smooth motion. First of all, a good key frameaction must conform to the character’s performanceand plot development; reflect the character’s back-ground, personality, and habits; and conform to thebasic movement laws and balance of power. Then,a good key frame pose should be aesthetic and tryto be exaggerated and intriguing but it is not just asimple extrusion deformation, as shown in Figure 11

(2) The “twelve rules” of animation: anyone who doesanimation knows Disney’s twelve golden rules. Inthe creation of this short film, we learned and

Figure 7: A screenshot of the dynamic submirror of ImmortalAcademy (2).

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studied the application of the “twelve rules” in 3Danimation, which made us avoid many detours.The predecessors of animation masters havesummed up a lot of valuable experience and tech-niques, which have a great influence and inspirationon us [15]

(3) Animation curve editor: the animation curve editoris an important tool for postadjustment of animationactions. It can polish the animation to make theaction more smooth and natural [16, 17]

In animation, the law of motion is very important[18–20]. For animation production, it is not enough to justmove smoothly. What we have to do is to attract the atten-tion of the audience [21–23], so animation needs to useexaggeration, humor, and other techniques to increase theeye-catching point. If the walking and running of the charac-ters in an animation are exactly the same as in real life, it willbe less interesting. In the production process, we also need tocapture the key frames of the action to make the charactersmore tense [24].

3.5. Postproduction. In order to achieve stunning visualperformance, it is necessary to go through the film andtelevision postproduction process. Film and television post-production can save shooting costs and sometimes evenachieve effects that cannot be achieved by shooting [18].The later work is mainly to illuminate the scene and use sur-face light, parallel light, and other light sources to simulaterealistic light sources, illuminate the scene, and give thescene color temperature [19, 20]. Based on the lighting lay-out specification, the Arnold renderer is boldly adopted asshown in Figure 12. Adjust the lighting parameters throughcontinuous testing and rendering. Use the motion blur effectto render a better picture effect. Three-sided auxiliary lightsources are used to make the characters more three dimen-sional and rich in layers. Due to the large amount of render-ing tasks, innovative methods were used to render part of thestudio’s computers online and use the rendering farm Dead-line8 to connect as shown in Figure 13. As an emergingapplication in the field of high-performance computing, ren-dering has the characteristics of computationally intensiveand data-intensive applications and rendering farms canperform large-scale and fast rendering [21].

Finally, based on the postproduction requirements offilm and television, we rendered multiple shots in layersand used a lot of special effects in the short film. Throughspecial effect plug-ins in After Effects, it is combined withspecial effects and a large number of parameters are adjustedto achieve good animation effects. Then, it is graded and out-put as a video file in H.264 format. Put the video files in Pre-miere for dubbing and sound effects. In the end, the overallcolor is compared and the output is rendered [22–24].

Figure 8: Layout of the Immortal Academy lens.

Figure 9: Timeline.

Figure 10: Curve editor diagram.

Figure 11: Tangent handle diagram.

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4. Conclusion

When the conventional 3D human body animation visualexperience system is visually displayed, the user can onlyinput a small amount of control data and cannot integratebig data. For this reason, a 3D human body animation visualexperience system based on machine learning is designed.The hardware design focuses on optimizing the three-dimensional scanning device, and other hardware equip-ment continues to use conventional system equipment. Onthe basis of hardware design, reconfirm the position, pro-portion, and corner information of the 3D human bodyand introduce machine learning algorithms [25, 26] tofuse the visual experience data with user data, completethe visual experience data filling, and optimize the visualperception contrast after filling, thereby realizing the soft-ware design. Design simulation experiments to analyzethe performance of the 3D human animation visual expe-rience system under different data input. The experimentalresults show that the designed system can integrate a largeamount of input data, while the conventional system canonly accommodate part of the execution data, whichproves that the designed system effectively solves the prob-lems of the conventional system.

Data Availability

The dataset used to support the findings of this study isavailable from the corresponding author upon request.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Jiangsu Education Depart-ment Project: “research on the cultural inheritance ofdialects in Jiangsu province based on MG animation” (no.2018SJA0394).

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Figure 12: Arnold renderer interface and commands.

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