Sword in the stone brief. Concentrating on the sword, Excalibur, instead of Arthur. Set in a forest (possibly Hampstead) early morning, different shots, possibly on the last shot an actor (who will play Arthur) walking towards the stone.
Introduction to 3D Animation: The bouncing ball
During our first lesson of character animation, we were first introduced to the basics of 3D animation in Maya. We were shown the animation controls (Framerate menu, Loop, Cached playback, Auto key and Animation preferences). Animation wouldn't be possible for keys, when you want to save a movement you have hay to key it in. To practice what we had learnt we started with a sphere.
To make a bouncing ball with our sphere, we first keyed our timeline at frame one by pressing"S" on the keyboard and then again at the end of the timeline once we had moved the ball horizontally on the axis Z to another point.
Then for every other frame I would put a keyframe for when the ball was high and then when the ball touched the ground so it would look like the ball was bouncing up and down. Then in the graph editor I selected all the upward motion keys so that they could be pushed a bit closer to the downward keys to simulate the effect of gravity on the object. (The video on the bottom left is before I applied this effect and the video on the bottom right is after).
I would then soften the points in the graph editor to give the ball more of a smooth bounce. I did try to use the Editable Motion Trail, however it didn't do what I wanted it to do. So instead I did everything manually. Here is the final clip of my animation of a bouncy ball before texture.
Lattice deformer, ‘Sack of flour’ and Arm Rig
This week, we concentrated on moving the sack of flour in a humanistic way. Moving a sack is extremely known in the animation world especially in Disney movies. The 3d model of the sack was rigged, and we had to explore the stretch and squash principle of animation and pose it. For the second exercise, we had to model an arm and by parenting every cube to another (or using the hypergraph Hierarchy) then animating it into different poses and then into a short animated clip.
Inverse Kinematics
For this Exercise, we were working with an inverse Kenetic rig (or IK rig). When you move the hand the rest of the arm should follow. I rigged the hand into a shaka shake and animated it.
Then for the second exercise I modeled some very rectangular legs and created a rig and connected everything to the hips. Again I animated it into a pose and then animated a short clip of it jumping.
Posing And Head Turn
This week we got to experiment with the eleven rig provided to us. I posed him into the John Travolta's famous pose from the 1977 film Saturday Night Fever by bringing the right arm up and placing the left one on his tilted hip.
For the second exercise we had to experiment with head poses. By rigging the head to turn from right to left we were able to do the actual head turn. Then by rigging the eyes we could do some blinking.
For our first assessment we had to do a small clip of a bouncy ball using basic weight mechanics. Firstly I modeled a wall and some sort of plank so that the ball could fall off of it and bounce of the wall. Secondly, I gathered reference for the ball, I based my ball off of a basketball. When a basketball falls, it does have a bounce but not like a tennis ball. By key framing the movements of the ball then opening the graph editor and curving the top of the arc in the graph which represents when the ball is in the air. It gave the ball a smoother feel. I also played around with the timing, the timing of the ball would differ every time it hit the ground and bounced back up and when it would bounce off the wall. Once i felt everything was "perfect", I then textured everything and lit the space (even though it seems extremely dark once I rendered it out).
Reference for the ball
Walk
This week, we discovered the animated walk cycle. By using a diagram of a walk cycle, we were able to recreate the walking movement within Maya by place the legs on the right key frames.
Assignment 2:Character Animation
For assignment 2 I wanted to animate my character to pick up a weight and lift it on top of his head. I did this by key framing a walk cycle so he could reach the weights. then I animated him into a squat position. By using locators and a parent constraint, I was able to connect the weights to the hand and to follow the flow of the hand movement. I also made sure that the character blinked and moved his head to show that my character is a human and not just a rig. By going over the graph editor, I was able to check and change the smoothness and the speed of certain keyed movements. I then textured the scene with Aistandardsurface and then added the lights to create depth and shadows.
Assignment 3:Animating to an 11 second sound clip
For my third assignment, I took a 11 second clip from the 11secondclub.com/ website. After debating out a few, I decided to go with the August 2012 winner "Lived my dream". When listening to this clip, I already imagined what I wanted to do. I wanted to have two characters, one a bit older like a father figure living through his memories and getting excited about the all days and the second a young child just minding his own business and getting annoyed at his dad for bringing up the old days ... again.
So I brought in two elevenrigs and built a "room", I rigged both rigs differently, even though you can't see the father that much, they are blinking at different times. I also made sure only one of the rigs were talking instead of both.I wanted to the kid to be playing with something so I decided to make it a ball, I always made sure he had a bit of attitude (the eye roll) because I wanted to show he was annoyed at hearing his dad go on.
Whereas for the dad I wanted to make him very theatrical hence why he is moving his hands around and the big grin at the end.
For the lighting, I wanted to make it dark but I think I could have gone a bit brighter, I like how the dad is lightened but not the kid. However it does look like they are kinda on a stage so it could be a hint to the dad's past.
For the textures, I worked all in the hypershade in Maya, I wanted the floor to be wood so the kid's ball could roll off, and I wanted the walls to be very child like. I also changed the appearances of both characters to differentiate between them. I then rendered it out and brought it into premiere pro.