Advanced Modeling and Animation

Week 1

Teacher ask us to introduce ourselves and download this app.

Week 2

In this class, the teacher carefully guided us through the process of using Blender to design a skyscraper-like device. The clear and detailed instructions helped me discover many new modeling techniques and deepen my understanding of 3D design.

Here are the thing that i made.

Week 3

In this class, the teacher introduced us to the concept of alignment and guided us through the process of rendering and coloring. At first, we had no idea what to do, but with the teacher’s step-by-step instruction, we gradually became familiar with the software. Under their guidance, we learned how to apply these techniques, and the following are the works I created during this class.

Week 4

In today's class, the teacher had us create a new file and design it with a different floor.

Week 5
Write homework.

Week 6

1. Level Sequence – The Animation Tool

A Level Sequence in Unreal Engine is like a timeline for animations.

It helps us control how objects, cameras, or characters move over time — similar to how we animate things in After Effects.

There are two main parts:

Level Sequence Asset – stores the animation data

Level Sequence Actor – plays it in the level

Its basically the “director” of the scene

2. How to Create an Animation

We learned how to create a simple animation step by step:

Create a new Level Sequence
Add an object from the World Outliner
Set the animation duration and keyframes
Drag the sequence into the level
Turn on Pause at End so it stays at the last frame

When I saw my object moving in the scene, it felt amazing — like bringing my design to life.

3. Making It Interactive with a Trigger Box

Next, we made the animation respond to the player.

For example, we animated a Vertical Door that opens when the player walks near and closes when they walk away.

We used a Trigger Box and Blueprints to do this:

Use On Actor Begin Overlap to play the animation

Use On End Overlap to play it in reverse

It was so fun to see how the game reacts to the player’s actions. It made me realize that good design is not just visual — it’s about interaction.

4. Interacting with Shaders

In the second part, we learned how to make materials react too.

By using Blueprints, we can change shader parameters when the player interacts.

Example:

When the player enters the Trigger Box → Speed = 0.5 → texture moves

When they leave → Speed = 0.0 → texture stops

I used to think shaders were only for looks, but now I see they can respond to users, just like animations.

5. What I Learned

This class showed me that Unreal Engine isn’t just for programmers — it’s also for designers like me.

With Blueprints, I can tell visual stories without coding.

Next time, I want to create a small interactive scene — maybe a wall that changes color when people approach, or a door that reacts to sound.

That's the beauty of interactive design: turning art into

an experience.

Week 7

For our second assignment in Advanced Modelling & Animation, we were asked to create something really fun — an animated theme park ride with interactive shaders inside a real-time 3D environment. The whole project is worth 30% of our grade, so yeah… it’s a big one.The main idea is to combine motion, visuals, and interaction to make a small but immersive “mini experience.” We’ll be using Unreal Engine, and the tools on the menu are Blueprints, Timelines, and Level Sequences. Basically, we need to make the rides move, react, and feel alive — whether it’s spinning wheels, moving tracks, or some crazy futuristic animatronics.On top of that, we also have to build interactive shaders. These are materials that change when something happens — like glowing when the ride starts, shifting textures based on lighting, or even reacting to the player pressing a button. It’s all about making the scene feel dynamic and alive.When everything’s done, we’ll record a gameplay video showing both the animations and the shader effects. The video is what we’ll actually submit for grading.

Week 8

Teacher told us to write homework.

Week 9

Teacher said this class will change the time.

Week 10

The first thing I learned was how to create a Control Rig directly from a Skeletal Mesh. By right-clicking a mesh in the Content Browser and selecting Create → Control Rig, Unreal automatically generates a new asset named “*_CtrlRig”.

This makes it very easy to start building animation tools without leaving the engine.

Opening the Control Rig Editor allowed me to explore the full skeleton hierarchy and understand how bones are organized inside a character.

Inside the Rig Hierarchy, I learned how to create a control for any bone simply by right-clicking it and selecting New Control.

This automatically generates:

a controller positioned on the bone
a matching name with the “_ctrl” suffix

To make the controls more visually readable, I could modify the Control Shape, adjusting its type, scale, and offset. This is extremely helpful for animators so they can clearly see what they're grabbing.

The biggest takeaway for me was understanding how a control actually drives a bone:

Drag the control into the Rig Graph → choose Get Control
Drag the bone in → choose Set Bone
Connect the transform output from the control to the transform input for the bone
Connect the Forwards Solve execution pin to the Set Bone node

Once connected, moving the control in the viewport moves the character’s bone in real time.

This simple but powerful node-based setup helped me understand how rig logic works inside UE.

The second half of the guide introduced Modular Rig, which is a much faster and more auomated way to rig an entire character.

Instead of creating controls one by one, I can drag pre-built rig modules onto the mesh. These modules include:

Spine
Neck
Legs
Feet
Shoulders
Arms
Fingers

By dragging each module onto the corresponding socket, Unreal automatically connects everything, generating a clean and professional rig structure.

This system is extremely useful for students like me who don’t have time to manually build a full rig from scratch.

Thought

This guide gave me a clearer understanding of how Unreal Engine handles character rigging internally. Learning both the manual Control Rig workflow and the Modular Rig system helped me appreciate the balance between flexibility and automation.

For a design student working with animation or interactive experiences, these tools make character setup much more accessible and efficient. I feel more confident now in creating my own rigs or improving existing ones for my future projects.

Week 11

What I Learned About Light Baking in 3D Environments: A Design Student’s Blog Reflection

As a second-year design student exploring 3D environments, I recently studied the fundamentals of baking lights. Even though lighting is something we often take for granted when viewing 3D scenes, this lesson showed me how technical—and essential—it is for creating believable and optimized environments. Here’s what I learned from the lecture.

1. The Basic Principles of Lighting Design

Before diving into light baking, the PPT first explained the core concepts of lighting. These principles shape how we perceive mood, depth, and atmosphere:

Contrast – the relationship between bright and dark areas

Color temperature – warm vs. cool lighting to set emotional tone

Light direction – affects shadows, depth, and visual focus

Intensity – brightness that can highlight or subtly shape forms

These ideas reminded me that lighting isn't only technical—it’s also artistic.

2. What Light Baking Actually Is

Light baking is the process of precomputing lighting information and storing it in:

lightmaps

vertex colors

or other data textures

I learned that the main purpose is performance optimization. Instead of calculating lighting every frame (which is expensive), the engine can read the pre-baked data directly. This is especially useful for static environments like architecture visualizations or game levels.

3. Different Types of Lighting Involved in Baking

The PPT introduced multiple lighting components that can be baked:

Direct lighting – from actual light sources

Indirect lighting (Global Illumination) – bounced light from surfaces

Shadows – soft or hard, created from static objects

Ambient Occlusion (AO) – subtle darkness in creases and corners

Understanding these components helped me see how baking produces more realistic visuals by capturing how light behaves in real life.

4. Texture Mapping in Light Baking

Texture mapping is essential because baked lighting is stored inside textures. I learned about different types of maps:

Diffuse maps – base colors

Normal maps – small surface detail

Lightmaps – where baked lighting actually lives

This part clarified why clean UVs and proper texture resolution matter so much—bad UVs = ugly lighting.

5. Setting Up a Scene for Light Baking

Before baking lights, the model and scene need proper preparation:

(1) Preparing the 3D Model

UV unwrapping the model into clean, non-overlapping UVs

Ensuring texture resolution is high enough

Maintaining good mesh density for accurate results

(2) Configuring the Lighting Rig

Placing lights with intention

Adjusting intensity for the right exposure

Choosing color temperature to fit the mood

This section taught me that technical setup is just as important as aesthetic lighting.

Conclusion

The biggest thing I gained from this lecture is a deeper appreciation for how baked lighting brings realism and performance together. As a design student, understanding this process helps me create scenes that are not only beautiful but also efficient in real-time applications. From UV unwrapping to configuring light rigs, every step contributes to the final immersive experience.

I now feel more confident approaching lighting for 3D environments, especially in game engines where performance matters. Light baking is definitely a skill I’ll continue developing in future projects.

Week 12-14

Over the past three weeks, the main focus of the class was completing and refining our previous assignments. Through this process, I realized that there were still several issues in my earlier work, both in terms of functionality and overall design. Based on the teacher’s feedback, I revisited the assignment and made a series of improvements to address these problems.

At the teacher’s request, I then imported my revised work into a new game mode and further optimized it to fit the overall structure of the game. This step was particularly challenging for me, as it was very different from the previous assignments. Unlike earlier tasks that followed strict guidelines, this assignment allowed for a high level of creative freedom and required us to design systems that directly interacted with gameplay mechanics.

Because the assignment was closely related to game development and allowed for self-creation, I found it much more engaging. As someone who is interested in games, this type of task was naturally more appealing and motivating for me. It encouraged me to think not only about technical implementation, but also about player experience and game balance.

Overall, this assignment increased my interest in the course. The challenge of integrating my work into a functional game system pushed me out of my comfort zone and helped me develop new problem-solving skills. As a result, I became more motivated to invest time and effort into this project, with the goal of achieving a strong final result in this course.

Here are my final project video.

Search This Blog

HE KEHUA 0379795