I start to study UE4 recently. Matinee is powerful Director Tool like Edit program . It's good news for our team. We could make the cinematic animation in game without script. I really admire our Game Designer . They made 300 scenes in game with script !!
Yesterday ,it's the first time i feel the power of typhoon is powerful. My house is too old to proof the rain . Heavy rain Outside, small rain inside. In my childhood, i just want a typhoon day, but recent years, the damage of typhoon is so heavy. Now ,i just only hope everyone be careful and safe.
Multiple Oscar winning film editor & sound designer Walter Murch‘s distinguished 50-year career reads like a ‘best of’ list of feature films. His work as both editor and sound designer on classic films such as Apocalypse Now, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Ghost, The Godfather II & III, The English Patient and the Talented Mr Ripleymean his word is virtually gospel when it comes to filmmaking. He has been the subject of numerous books and documentaries over the years and was also the first filmmaker awarded an Academy Award for editing on a digital system (Avid). Not one to rest on his laurels however, Murch is slated to edit Disney’s next animated classic Tomorrowland and he also spends time mentoring with the Rolex Mentors & Protégés program (pictured above with protégé Sara Fgaier).
Within Murch’s book In the blink of an eye: A perspective on film editing he discusses something he calls the ‘Rule of Six‘.
由於Murch的書 In the blink of an eye: A perspective on film editing ，他討論到他所稱之為六條規則。
Six elements to building the story within the edit, which he describes as a list of priorities:
六個要素與剪輯建立故事，他敘述這清單的優先順序。
“What I’m suggesting is a list of priorities. If you have to give up something, don’t ever give up emotion before story. Don’t give up story before rhythm, don’t give up rhythm before eye-trace, don’t give up eye-trace before planarity, and don’t give up planarity before spatial continuity.” (i)
These priorities can be used as a formative plan for your edit or a guideline to follow that ensures your edit keeps your audience invested in the film.
“The ideal cutis one that satisfies all the following six criteria at once.”
"最理想的剪輯是同時滿足這六項標準"
Walter Murch working on the sound design of ‘Apocalype Now’.
1. Emotion
How will this cut affect the audience emotionally at this particular moment in the film?
Telling the emotion of the story is the single most important part when it comes to editing. When we make a cut we need to consider if that edit is true to the emotion of the story.
Ask yourself does this cut add to that emotion or subtract from it?
It is important to consider if the cut is distracting the audience from the emotion of the story, Murch believes that emotion “is the thing that you should try to preserve at all costs”,
“How do you want the audience to feel? If they are feeling what you want them to feel all the way through the film, you’ve done about as much as you can ever do. What they finally remember is not the editing, not the camerawork, not the performances, not even the story—it’s how they felt.” (i)
Does the edit move the story forward in a meaningful way?
Each cut you make needs to advance the story. Don’t let the edit become bogged in subplot (if it isn’t essential) if the scene isn’t advancing the story, cut it.
Remember what Faulkner says “Kill all your darlings” (yes, he’s talking about writing but it’s also true in filmmaking).
If the story isn’t advancing, its confusing or worse boring your audience.
Like music, editing must have a beat, a rhythm to it. Timing is everything.
“it occurs at a moment that is rhythmically interesting and ‘right'”
If the rhythm is off, your edit will look sloppy, a bad cut can be ‘jarring’ to an audience. Try to keep the cut tight and interesting.
These top three – emotion, story, rhythm – are essential to get right.
“Now, in practice, you will find that those top three things on the list…are extremely tightly connected. The forces that bind them together are like the bonds between the protons and neutrons in the nucleus of the atom. Those are, by far, the tightest bonds, and the forces connecting the lower three grow progressively weaker as you go down the list.”
How does the cut affect the location and movement of the audience’s focus in that particular film?
You should always be aware of where in the frame you want your audience to look, and cut accordingly. Match the movement from one side of the screen to the other, or for a transition, matching the frame shape or symbol, e.g. Murch when editing Apocalypse Now uses the repetition of symbol, from a rotating ceiling fan to helicopters.
Break the screen into four quadrants, and try to keep the movement in one of those quadrants. For instance, if your character is reaching from the top left quadrant, and his eyes are focused to the right lower quadrant that is where your audience’s focus will naturally move after the cut.
Remember to edit on movement and to match the action, keeping the continuity as close as possible.
記住剪輯行為並且要匹配動作，保持持續性，盡可能接近。
5. Two Dimensional Place of Screen
Is the axis followed properly?
Make sure your cuts follow the axis (180º line). This will keep the action along it’s correct path of motion and maintain the continuity. Looking at your quadrants again, be sure the movement flows along the same path, for example a car leaving the left side of frame, would enter again via the right. Sticking to the 180º line (I’ll explain this more below) allows the audience to keep track of the spatial place of characters and objects in your film.
Using a reverse-angle in the preceding shot would be disconcerting to the audience, due to crossing the 180º line
使用一個反轉角度，在之前的鏡頭將會讓觀眾不安，因為他跨越了180度線
6. Three Dimensional Space
螢幕的三度空間
Is the cut true to established physical and spacial relationships?
這個剪輯是否真實建立物理與空間的關係?
During shooting the 180º rule states that you draw an imaginary in between your characters and keep the camera on just one side of that line, this is true for editing also.
This rule should always be adhered to, unless you purposely break it. Breaking the 180º line works really well if you want your audience feeling confused, or to disorientate them.
A great example of which is Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, scattered throughout are reverse-angle wide shots between characters, the freezer door opens from both sides of frame (from one cut to the next), even the architecture of the set makes no sense with doorways to rooms that spatially would be somewhere mid-air above stair ways. Even the managers office (where Jack is interviewed) has a window with a view to outside despite it being located in the middle of the hotel/set.
一個很棒的例子就是Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining(鬼店)， 透過反轉角度的寬鏡頭在角色之間，冷凍櫃門打開從另一邊(從這Cut到下一cut),即使場景結構設置沒有意義，從走道到房間，空間上應該某個地方是中空的。即使經理辦公室(jack面試的所在)，有一個可以看外面景致的窗戶，儘管它的位置在旅館中間。
Kubrick crossed the 180º line many times through out ‘The Shining’
The point is, stick to the 180º rule, and spatially your edit will work, unless you really want to mess with your audience’s minds
重點就是，遵循180度規則，然後空間地運用你的剪輯將會有效，除非你真的想要混淆你的觀眾心理。
Murch likes to edit standing up (copyright Rolex)
Murch states that above all else emotion is the most vital element, beyond that the top three should really be at the forefront of the edit. He even assigned values to each rule and its relevant importance.
“The values I put after each item are slightly tongue-in-cheek,” he writes, “but not completely: Notice that the top two on the list (emotion and story) are worth far more than the bottom four (rhythm, eye-trace, planarity, spatial continuity, and when you come right down to it, under most circumstances, the top of the list—emotion—is worth more than all five of the things underneath it.”
“If you find you have to sacrifice [any one] certain of those six things to make a cut, sacrifice your way up, item by item, from the bottom.” (i)
"如果你發現你必須犧牲這6項中的其一去剪輯，從底下開始著手吧!
1. Emotion (51%)
2. Story (23%)
3. Rhythm (10%)
4. Eye Trace (7%)
5. 2D Place of Screen (5%)
6. 3D Space (4%)
Below are two important videos of Murch.
The first is a short video of him explaining the ‘Rule of Six’ in his own words and the second is a masterclass from Murch discussing his body of work, from editing on the Steenbeck to the latest technical advancements in film editing and “examine the salient technical, artistic, and philosophical differences between the post-production of a theatrical scripted film and a feature-length documentary”.
以下是兩支Murch重要的影片 第一支是他在解釋 ‘Rule of Six’。 第二支是大師講座，來自Murch討論他的作品，從剪接台到最新的科技的剪輯進步，並且審視這突出的技術性，藝術性和哲學性，在後製的戲劇腳本電影和長篇紀錄片的不一樣。
They’re a great chance to listen to a master filmmaker discussing his art.
The last two days have been spent doing the mouth, setting the Y motion for the head and finally polishing everything. 過去2天花時間去做嘴巴，為頭部設定Y位移並且最後把每件物件裝上去。
Tabatha is pretty much completed! Aside from a few extra features like different hair and her hat that I will be adding later.
Tabatha是相當複雜的，除了一些的特徵，像是不一樣的頭髮，和我等下要加她的帽子。
Here is how the teeth look underneath the mouth! Thank god people have lips.
這裡是牙齒在嘴巴下方的樣子，感謝上蒼人們有嘴唇!
You can really see how all the work pays off now. With the various motions you set up you can create pretty much any expression you want!
你真的可以看到所有的辛苦現在得到回報。因為你設定的各種動態，你可以創造出相當多你想要的表情。
These are some expressions to test the various extremes she can emote in. Some may be a bit out of character, but it’s so fun to see the various facial expressions you can make her do that it’s sometimes hard to stop!
You can test your model with mouse tracking in Live2D’s model viewer.
你可以用滑鼠追蹤，在live 2D測試你的模型。
I’m quite pleased with how she came out!
我很高興她就這樣完成了!
Thanks again for all the interest and I hope you will look forward to seeing Tabatha in action in our future trailers and finally the game! We’ll be posting more blogs like these in the future, the next ones will be about the background and the story of Herald. Look out for these in the coming weeks!
The eyebrows gave me a bit of a headache at the start because I had to find the right hierarchy to put them in. I ended up with 14 deformers divided over 4 texture parts. The blue parts are the actual texture image.
Welcome to deformer hell. This wiggly brow is what all that work boils down to!
歡迎來到變形地獄，這個抖動的眉毛就是這所有工作的徵結!
You know that thing you do when you draw an expression and your face automatically mimics it without you realizing it? Working on this makes me do the same thing. Needless to say, my eyebrows hurt now. I might still add a bit of shadow parts to emphasize the frown later on. Not only the eyebrows but also the eyes are very important when conveying emotion. The eyes are often underestimated. Simply raising the lower eyelids works wonders for showing giddiness or anxiousness. 你知道的，當你畫了一個表情並且你的臉自動模仿他，而你沒有意識到?做這件工作，也讓我同樣幹了這事。不用說，我的眉毛現在受傷了，我也許還要增加一些陰影來強調皺眉。不只眉毛，眼睛在表現情緒也是很重要。眼睛通常被低估，只要升起下眼瞼就會有輕率或焦慮的神奇效果。
Blinking is next! This is a bit tricky to get right. As you may have seen in the texture sheet, I drew closed eyelids to move on top of the open eye. I also added an eyeline that is an exact match with the upper eyelid line. This is done to smooth out the blending between the open upper lid and the closed upper lid. It’s very hard to keep the dark eyeline from jagging up when deforming the lid for animation, so the single eyeline lies on top to make sure it looks correct.
Making characters blink is always one of my favorite parts in the animation process. Something so little can already add so much life. 讓角色眨眼是我在做動畫過程中，最喜歡的一部分。有些東西很細微就可以增加更多生命力。
Next up, the mouth and finishing up the head movement! 下一步，嘴巴和把整個頭部運動完成!
Herald - An Interactive Period Drama 募資頁面 After all the preparation work I did the last two days, it’s now time for the fun part. Did I say fun? I meant the hardest and most tedious part, but also the most rewarding in the end! 結束我過去兩天的準備工作之後，現在是最有趣的部分了，我是說有趣嗎? 我覺得最困難和最無聊的部分，但也是最後能得到回報。
Yesterday I set up all the texture parts with their deformers, making sure they are in the right hierarchy and also in the right draw order [like stacked objects in Illustrator]. If you did not properly name your drawing layers before, using this program will force you to become very organized, otherwise it’s simply impossible to keep track of what and where everything is. You’re going to have to switch between all the different layers, a lot. 昨天我把所有的貼圖都用變形器設置完成，確定他們都在對的階層和對的順序(像是在以拉裡面物件前後的順序)。如果你之前沒有取名字，這套軟體會迫使你變得有條理，否則，這真的不可能持續追蹤每件事的一切。你將會需要在所有不一樣的層級轉換。 With everything set up, I can start working on the movements I want Tabatha to be able to make. With live2D you have many possibilities, but I chose to limit the movements of Herald’s portraits somewhat because of the detailed painting style my portraits are in. I did this mainly to reduce the uncanny valley feeling these kind of animations can sometimes give you if they move too much. 每個物件設定後，我可以開始致力我想Tabatha做的動作，使用live2d你會有許多可能性，但我還是限制herald肖像的動態，有些是因為我肖像的繪畫風格。我主要要減少恐怖谷理論的感覺，這種動作有時候會在他們動太多時出現。 By far, setting up the head movement takes the longest and is the hardest to get right, so naturally I chose to start with that. Things are going to look very weird and well…deformed for a while. 目前為止，設定頭部運動最花時間，也是最難使它正確。所以很自然地我選擇從頭開始作，事情將會從看起來很怪 ~~恩.......再變形一下好了。
Starting with the head turn on the X axis, I set up how many keyframes I want, and then on each keyframe placing, deforming and tweaking every facial feature until it looks right. It’s at this phase that I learned that being a meticulous perfectionist can actually be a good thing. Also, lots of patience! It really comes down to tiny details, if only a small thing is off your animation will look weird. So you have to be hyper aware of every detail and how it’s moving and deforming along the grid.
After the X axis head turn started to look somewhat decent, I quickly did the eye rotation, which is easy to do in comparison. I start with the X axis again, then after that is set up, adding the keyframes to the Y axis and linking it to the X. Thus you get this fun 9 point keyframe square.
This phase takes the longest time, so there will be no update tomorrow. I will return coming Friday with some more fun and freaky looking gifs, as I continue to add movement to her!
Herald - An Interactive Period Drama 募資頁面 First of all, thanks for all the positive reactions so far! I hope you enjoy the rest of the series. I must warn you though, things are going to get a bit weird. 首先，感謝目前所有的熱情回應! 我希望你們可以更熱衷在這系列，我必須警告你一下，事情將會有點詭異。 Today I prepared Tabatha’s texture map, which looks like an assembly box for a freaky paper doll of some kind, which is pretty much exactly what it is! 今天我準備了 Tabatha 的貼圖，它看起來類似那種奇異紙娃娃的零件箱，但它的確是這樣沒錯!
With the previous portrait I did, I was able to copy a large amount of animations I had already created, so I tried to do that again this time, unfortunately that didn’t really turn out as planned.
Just take my word for it, it was the stuff of nightmares, especially with all the animations of the previous portrait still intact.
就如我說言，它真的是一場惡夢，尤其是所有的之前的肖像動畫依舊紋風不動。
It would take more time to fix this up then to just start from scratch, so I started with a clean slate!
單單從頭開始比花時間去修理還要耗時，所以我開始清理零件。
After loading the texture in Live2D, the next step is to draw these elaborate webs over every single piece of your image. The way the web is placed is very important as it determines how well you will be able to manipulate the pieces later on. The more elaborate the web, the more control you have over it.
After that is all done, it’s time to put Tabatha back together. Using a guide image as reference, I again placed every part of the portrait back on the canvas, basically re-creating what I had in my original painting program.
Almost to the fun stuff, but not quite there yet. In order to manipulate the webs I drew over the parts in more detail, you add deformers to the mix. These are grids that work much like the Transform > Distort function in Photoshop. Again, going over every part you want to animate, adding deformers, linking the texture parts to them and placing them in the right hierarchy.
