In Week 19 of Advanced 3D Computer Animation, Professor Ting Liu guided me into the spline and polish stage of my advanced dialogue animation. Based on the previous week review, I focused on refining motion quality, improving timing flow, and adding detailed performance elements such as lip sync, overlap, and secondary motion. The goal was to move the blocking animation into a smoother and more realistic final form.
Step 1: Developing the Animation
I added full lip sync to match the dialogue, which required careful frame-by-frame adjustment to align mouth shapes with sound timing. I also improved overlap across the body, including chest, arms, and head movements. To strengthen the narrative, I introduced a beach environment for the first half of the animation and a room environment for the second half. This helped separate emotional phases and improve visual storytelling.
Step 2: Rendering the Animation
I presented the rendered version of my advanced animation shot. I prepared two variations of the character, one version with hair and another version without hair. I created both because I wanted to compare which version reads better in terms of silhouette, expression clarity, and overall visual balance. I used this presentation stage to evaluate how the character design affects performance readability and final output quality.
a) Without Hair
b) With Hair
Step 3: Receiving the feedback
After submitting my animation, I received encouraging feedback from Professor Ting that:
“The animation is improving clearly compared to the previous animations.”
“The render quality is strong and some sections are already well polished but rest few areas still need refinement to reach final quality.”
“Eye blinking needs to feel more natural instead of appearing timed or mechanical.”
“Add more subtle breathing to the character to make the performance feel alive and continuous.”
Step 4: Redeveloping the Animation
I adjusted the animation based on this feedback. I refined the eye blinking timing to avoid repetitive patterns and added subtle chest movement to simulate breathing. I also continued improving facial timing in lip sync to make speech feel more connected to emotion rather than only mouth movement.
From this stage, I understood that polish is not only about smoothing animation curves but about adding small life details that make performance believable. I focused more on continuity of motion, micro facial changes, and environmental consistency between scenes.