Week 13: Mechanical Arm Animation

Process

For this exercise, I've followed the instructions as closely as possible as I'm afraid that if there was any mistake while following the instructions, I would need to redo the entire animation. The instructions given inside the Autodesk Help was pretty easy to understand and follow. I would need to create a skeleton for the robot in order for me to move it as if there were joints. 

For the animation, there was clear instructions of what translate I should put on which key which for which part. It was pretty simple. I just had to make sure that I don't make a mistake in putting in the values and mistaking the frame numbers. 

Reflection

Overall, I feel that this animation is quite simple as there were clear instructions of what I should do. The margin for error is quite small too. The only problem I faced while doing the animation was picking up the boxes. It has something to do with the constraints and blend parent. The instructions given in AutoDesk did not mention anything about blend parent. After seeking consultation and help from my tutor, I am finally able to pick up my box!

Week 12: Lab 1 & 2 Exercise 2

      1)  Do you need to be able to draw well to create good 2D animation? Explain your view.

      No, I feel that 2D drawing is less detailed compared to 3D drawing, therefore there isn't a need to be able to draw well to create 2D animations. 2D artwork portrays lesser detail as compared to 3D and therefore it would be easier to create a good 2D animation. 

      2) Do you need to be able to draw well to create good 3D animation? Explain your view.

      I personally feel that being able to draw well will definitely produce a good 3D animation, but it does not mean that not being able to draw will produce a bad one. As long as the animator follows the principles of animation closely, even an average looking piece of drawing will look nice when animated. Being able to draw is like a bonus. An animator can animate another artist's work. I also feel that drawing and animator is two different things. A good animator might not be able to draw well and a good artist might not be able to animate well. The skills needed for each field are different after all.

      3) What do you think would separate a piece of poor animation from a piece of good animation? In other words, how would you go about deciding if a piece of animation is good or bad?

      It all depends on whether the animator have applied the 12 basic principles of animation in his/her animation. I will go about deciding whether a piece of animation is good or bad by first looking at the principles. How many principles out of 12, have the animator applied in his animation will greatly determine whether is it good or bad. For example: A comparison between a ball bouncing off the ground with squash and stretch effect and the one without. Which one will be a better animation?

      4) In 2D animation, you need to be very aware of timing at a frame by frame level, using timing charts and other techniques - but for 3D animation, this is handled using the graph editor, which is more concerned with manipulating rates of change over time.

Does this affect how you approach your animation work? Explain.

It will not affect how am I approaching my animation work because I'm going to learn them both and apply them during my work exercises.

5)  Give a brief critique of Maya as an animation tool. Don't just say Maya makes animation difficult, or easy, or that you need to learn a lot of stuff to use Maya - explain what Maya does well and not so well in terms of creating animation.

I feel that the graph editor makes it very easier for me to edit my 3D animation. With the time slider and play back controls in Maya, it allows me to check my animation work even when I am doing it. I can also edit frame by frame. 

Week 11 E-Learning: Keyframing

Exercise 1

Bouncing A Ball In Maya

PROCESS

Firstly, I need to create a playback range of 1 to 72 as stated in the tutorial. I entered 72 in the Playback End Time box. It will play 24 frames a second, thus giving me 3 seconds of animation.With this, I will then be able to start working on my animation!

Next, I clicked the Go To Start button to go to the start of the playback range. This will set the current frame to 1. 

In order to make the ball move to the other side of the green field, I would have to set keys. I selected the ball and press the hot key 'S'. This will set a key at frame 1 for all transform attributes of the ball. There will also be a red line appearing at frame 1 which tells you that a key is already set.

After that, I moved on to frame 72 using the Time Slider, and move the ball to the other then of the green field. With the ball still selected, I press the hot key 'S' again. This will set the ball at frame 72. (the exact same thing but the ball is now at the other end of the field and on frame 72)

When I go to the start time and play the animation, the ball will move across the field from the starting point(frame 1) to the ending point(frame 72). However, the ball travels through the red fence still.

To make the ball fly over the fence, I would need to set another key in between the frames.

I go to frame 33(around half of 72), whereby the ball will be in the middle of the fence. I positioned the ball slightly above the fence and set a key using the hot key 'S' again. When I play back, the ball will now travel above the fence in an arc rather than just passing through it. 

In order to make a ball bounce, I moved to frame 50 and its when the ball sits somewhere in the middle of the right side of the green field. I positioned the ball so that it touches the ground and set a key. 

I go to frame 60 next. This time I moved the ball up again but lower than the height of the red fence. The ball will bounce after it crosses the red fence. However it looks unnatural and look more like sliding it off the ground and then flying up. 

I then use the graph editor taught in the tutorial to sharpen my curves and make my bouncing look more natural and realistic. 

I click the Graph Editor under Windows -> Animation Editors. From here I can edit the points and tangent or the curves at frame 50. There are also helpful functions such as Tangent > Linear and Break Tangents. 

After all the tweaking from the graph editor, the ball now bounces more smoothly and naturally. 

Reflections

This lesson of animation is fun and easy to follow. It taught me on the basics of animation which includes setting key frames and using the graph editor. 

The part that amazes me the most is how using the graph editor to edit the tangents and curves could affect how the ball bounce behavior. It totally made the ball looked much more natural and realistic, which is what an animation is looking for. 

Over all, I feel that all these basics will be very vital towards my animation work in the future.  

Exercise 2

Bowling Ball Animation In Maya

This exercise is somewhat similar to lesson 1 except the bouncing behavior. This is because bowling ball has lesser bounce as its pretty heavy. The bounce will be weaker overall.

Squash & Stretch - Creating a Rig using Deformer

Firstly, I created a polygon sphere and grouped it twice using the Ctrl-G shortcut. Then I go to the Outliner window and changed the group names to translate_ball_gp and rotate_ball_gp respectively. 

I'm now going to create the rig by using a deformer. I selected the translate_gp_ball group and Create Deformer > Nonlinear > Squash. Now there will have a green line in the middle of the sphere. In the Outliner window, there will be also a handle called squash1Handle.

Next, I will parent the squash1Handle to the translate_ball_gp group. In order to do this, I select the handle first, press Ctrl and select the translate_ball_gp group in the Outliner. Next I will just have to press "p" key to parent the group.

 

After that, I will need to lock away the unused channel attributes in the channel box for each group. For the translate_ball_gp group, I won't need to change rotation, scale or visibility for the group. I will be locking them by Shift Selecting them all as shown above and right click. Then I will select the Lock Selected.

Similarly I will be doing the same to my rotate_ball_gp, locking Translate, Scale and Visibility channel attributes and locking all attributes for ball as the attributes are not used.

I locked all channels except for rotate for squash1Handle. Under inputs, I changed the value of Max Expand Pos to 0.01. This will affect the deformation shape of the object and 0.01 is the lowest value for this attribute. The Factor value in squash1 of Inputs will affect the animation of the squash and stretch effect of a bouncing ball. As I am only using the Factor value, I am locking the rest of the values too.

Squash & Stretch - Animation

Firstly, I simply created a ground plane for my ball to bounce. Next, I'm going to animate the bouncing ball.

I prepared my timeline to enable more frames to be seen so that keyframes can be setup for the bouncing ball animation.

I clicked frame 1 of the time line, then select translate_ball_gp. I then key in the selected values - Translate X = - 12, Translate Y = 5 and  Translate Z = 0 and pressed "S' key. This will set a keyframe at frame 1.

At frame 100, I changed the Translate X to 12 and Translate Y to around 1.127(where the ball is touching the ground).

Keyframe No.	Translate X	Translate Y
1	-12	5
12	-9	0.5 (ground)
25	-6.1	3.9
37	-3	0.5
50	-0.2	2.8
62	2.7	0.5
75	6	1.6
87	8.8	0.5
100	12	0.5

I followed this table here except for the value of ground being 1.127 instead of 0.5. I tweaked the animation using the Graph Editor by flattening and breaking of tangent of the peak and the valley of the curves to make it look more realistic due to gravity.

I adjusted the factor value under squash1Handle in the Outliner to created either an exaggerated stretched or squashed ball. Note that adjusting values greater than 1 or lesser than -1 for stretch and squash will create an over-exaggeration in the animation.

To show the rotation of the ball, I selected the rotate_ball_gp group. At frame 1, I set a keyframe with Rotate Z value of 0. Then I set another keyframe at Frame 100 with a Rotate Z value of -1200. I gave the ball a color shader by assigning a Checker 2D texture to it. Here is the playblast video.

Week 10: Animation

Lab 1 Exercise 2

This is the video I filmed with my friends during the Lab 1 Exercise 2. This video demonstrates some principles of animation. Firstly, it demonstrates Staging. Notice our background acts like a stage for us to pass the ball to each other. If the background is replaced with a plain white screen, there would not be a stage anymore.

Secondly, this also demonstrates Arcs. Notice how our hands are positioned and move when we throw the ball. These actions occur along an arched trajectory. We are moving our forearm by rotating a joint, in an arc.

Reflection
Learning these twelve principles of animation will greatly enhance and make a difference to an animation without them. These principles will make the animation look more realistic and entertaining. Some exaggeration are also applied to make the audience laugh.


Lab 1 Exercise 3

The entire video has a stage, which is that backyard or their garden.


[1.20 ~ 1.21] Anticipation is demonstrated here as the person has a diving posture. It prepares the audience for an action such as diving.

[1:50 ~ 1:59] Squash and Stretch is demonstrated here with the balloon squashing and stretching. With the help of slow-motion, the squash and stretch effect appears to be much more obvious than usual without slow-motion.

[2:38 ~ 3:04] This is also another good scene of Squash and Stretch.

Every time they attempted to jump on the huge balloon, there will be follow through and overlapping actions in their hair and their clothes.

There is also a slow-in and slow-out during their jump in slow-mo.

Timing is also displayed during the slow-motion scene whereby there are lesser frames during the first half of the slow-mo and towards them hitting the ball, the frames increased and it displays more frames per second and thus letting us have a better view of whats happening in that split second.

Reflection
After doing this exercise, I have learnt that even principles of animation can be applied to real life. However exaggeration is difficult to apply in real life videos as compared to cartoon. However I feel that cartoons that applied the principles will definitely make it stand out. It all boils down to how efficiently we apply these principles to our future work.

Week 10: Lab 2 Exercise 1:

An animation of a heavy bowling ball bouncing
A heavy bowling has minimal or no squash and stretch as the bowling ball is often made from a solid or a very hard kind of material. This video shows a bowling ball bouncing.

Bowling Ball Animation Chart

Throwing The Ball Up And Down In Real Life

Animation Chart For Throwing Ball Up And Down

Throwing The Ball Up And Down In Animation


Animation <- Click the link plox

Exercise 2

What is ease-in ease-out reference to animation?

It is a way to make my animations move in a more life-like manner is to vary the rate at which they move.

What does frames-per-second mean?

It means how many frames are displayed per second. More frames per second means smoother animation and lesser frames per seconds would be the opposite. 

Why is squash and stretch so useful in animation?
A squash and stretch makes the ball look more realistic. A ball will not stay the same shape when it hits the grounds and bounces off(with an exception to some like bowling ball). It also provides some entertainment for the eyes. A ball that does not change shape while bouncing throughout a video will be kind of like a ball  floating in my opinion.

Think of a situation in which extreme squash and stretch could be applied to a character - try to be original.
A cartoon character trapped inside a manufacturing factory, with lots of machinery squashing and stretching the product to try and fit inside a can.


Think of an animation example where squash and stretch would NOT be appropriate.
An animation with solids objects in reference to real life such as metal chains. Metal chains will not be appropriate, even in cartoons to apply squash and stretch because it is just not possible.