Here is a better video quality of my Animation.

Due to not being able to use normal rendering and playblast instead, the quality is not what i expected. i will try to upload a better quality version of this animation after i find the fault.

Starting out doing this animation project, i got no clue on how to organize the scene and i don’t know what to do. With the base file of my lab exercise of the arm and proper planning with the sketch, i manage to come out  with the flow of the animation on how it suppose to be. BUT with just the scenario it is not enough, i have to try and error to get the correct effect and timing in order to make my animation looks real.

During this process i learn how to apply the principles of animation in my project, i apply the technique of squash and stretch of the box , ease in and ease out from the transition for the jumping box, the timing where the arm catches the box and when the arm misses the box when the box flip trying to avoid being pick up, exaggerating of the box jumping and the pushing out of the red box.

At first when started doing the movement of the box was easy as i learn it from the lab session, i only need to set key on different key frame to make the box move, but when it comes to the spinning of base i need to adjust the graph to make the base turning correct, on the graph editor and timing of the animation. It is not as easy as what i think, i went to do research and repeat those lab exercise in order to know how to parent and set constrain.

The problem i face when doing this project is i can’t open file from other computer when i did it on mine!!! adjusting the the graph editor, set parent for arm, box and platform. getting the correct timing is also a contributing factor slowing down the process of doing my project.

This project definitely boost my animating skills and experience. I managed to learnt a lot from it. Peer evaluating, getting help from classmates and asking lecturers played an important role in order for me to complete this assignment. As classmate we look out for errors for each other and helped out in our difficulties.

Scenario 4 Overview

Character –” Liner-T”

Liner-T was busy stacking boxes on the conveyor belt, however, once Liner-T had finished stacking a box, the remaining boxes do not move forward, instead the boxes came to live and move in reverse direction to avoid being pick up by Liner-T. when Liner-T catches nothing, Liner-T try to pick up the box again, yet again the box move in reverse direction to avoid being pick up. NOW Liner-T gets frustrated! Liner-T this time being clever and move one step ahead in order to catch the moving box.

Exercise 1

watching pixar short: luxo jr. Looking at how the use of animation can show emotion, the age, their current action.

Exercise 2

In this tutorial i learn how to create skeleton and use inverse kinematics which allow me to link the arms of the robot together when the arms is moving. Making the arms move down in a motion and grab the box and move it onto the platform.

Exercise 3

I added in another twist for this exercise, by making the box to move at a distance passing through the robot arms. when the box and the arms intersect, the robot arms will pick up the box and move it onto the platform.

Exercise 4

1)  Apart from their different sizes, it is obvious from Luxo Jr. that the big lamp is “older” and that the small lamp is “younger”.
How is this communicated by the animation? Give at least THREE examples.

• Their movement, the small lamp is more energetic then the big lamp.
• The big lamp reaction show not interested in playing ball, where as the small lamp i totally interested in playing.
• When the smaller lamp going after the ball, it came to a stop and take a look at the big lamp like asking for permission to get the ball or communicate with the big lamp to ask where is the ball.

2)  Give an example from Luxo Jr of how timing is used for comic effect. Explain how the timing decisions contribute to the humor.

Timing must be good in order to show the exaggeration of the ball inflating and the sadness of the young lamp with the brightness of the light.

3)   When you create a joint chain, these form a hierarchy, with the first joint at the top and the last joint at the bottom. Explain why this is necessary for the joints to work properly.

If the joint chain is mess up, the movement of the arm will not move correctly, so when the joint chain from the top to the last, the skeleton created will follow the same direction of where is is moving.

Exercise 1

With the help of the tutorial i know how to make the bouncing ball look more realistic, adding in colors, floor image. Breaking the tangent helps to make the ball drop and bounce up at a sharper angle. I also adjust the squash and smash(deformers) effect on the ball, so that the ball when drop on impact will change its shape. After clearing the important part of the tutorial, i am left with the lighting, adding in lighting effects will show the shadow effect and make the ball look more realistic.

Exercise 2

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

In my point of view, i do not need to be able to draw well in order to create good 2D animation, i only need the idea and how to use the tool of maya and when i master the tool, i can create a good 2D animation easily. With the help of those maya drawing tool, “drawing” became a child play.

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

Same for question 1, i do not need to draw well in order to create good 3D animation. In maya 3D, i could use those drawing tools combining with the idea, i can come out with a 3D animation even though my art and craft drawing is not that good.

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?

The inter changing timing transaction of the animation can determine weather it is a poor/good animation.
To make good animation your timing must be accurate in order for the animation to take place

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.

Yes it affect my approach to my work, because i would find by using the graph editor my animation is more realistic and i could control the flow. For example a bouncing ball, i could use the graph editor to set how sharp the ball is going to land and thus make the bouncing ball flow more realistic.

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.

For the first time when i touch maya i find it confusing to use as there are too many functions for me to work on, although most of the key is helpful in creating animation, i still find maya hard to use. After learning the tutorial online on some animation functions, i roughly know the basic of making a realistic animation. Like the angle and lighting.

 

1) Why is squash and stretch so useful in animation?

By adding in squash and stretch into animations makes the animation more realistic and lively.

2) Think of a situation in which extreme squash and stretch could be applied to a character – try to be original.

When a soft-toy being roll over by any hard object.

3) Think of an animation example where squash and stretch would NOT be appropriate

When a hard object fall from high ground there won’t be alot of squash and stretch.

4) If squash and stretch doesn’t really happen so obviously in real life, why do you think is it so effective in animation?
(Look at the title of Disney animator Ollie Johnston’s famous book about animation – do an Amazon search … there’s a clue in the title!)

I find squash and stretch so effective because in animation, any type of situation is possible, its like a illusion or space that create life with different type of actions.

Reflections about Adding Squash and Stretch to a Ball :

Frankly speaking, i find this document not clear enough to begin with, most of the time i am stuck at certain part of the tutorial, which i had to ask my classmate for help. With the urge of wanting to know more about adding squash and stretch i when to youtube website to look at some tutorial that teaches squash and stretch to a ball.

This is one of the research i did, covering on how to animate a ball bouncing across the screen with squash and stretch. Covers setting in the basic keys in the timeline going up and down in Y, adding X translation, then rotation, and then adjusting tangents in the graph editor. Shows how to make a playblast when you’re done.

With the help of Autodesk maya online help tutorials i manage to come out with the bounching ball from 1 end to another. I learn quite a few things along the session, mainly keyframes and graph editior, set driven key, path animation, how to do nonlinear animation with trax and inverse kinematics.

For exercise i focus more on the timing and sharpness of the bounce.

Dropping of beach ball with a little bit of squash and stretch.

Dropping of bowling ball.

In this lab i learn how to set frame, animating the ball to do dropping effect, proper frame rate and positioning of ball will greatly affect the animation of the ball.

Squat down, jump as high as you can go, then land on the ground (it’s better if the person has long hair)
Principle of Animation :  squash and stretch when he squat and jump

Stand some distance away, run towards camera, then come to a sudden stop just in front of the camera (with your whole body still in frame)

Principle of Animation : Follow through and over lapping action

Drop a ball and film it bouncing a few times

Principle of Animation : Anticipation waiting for the ball to bounch finish.

Stand with a partner about 3 metres apart and throw a ball to each other a few times

Principle of Animation : Follow through motion when the 2 guy throwing the ball repeatedly

Repeat the ball throwing action, but this time make it bounce once on the ground before it is caught

Principle of Animation : Follow Through and Overlapping Action when he catch the ball after bounch

Running with bag on shoulder

Principle of Animation : Follow Through and Overlapping Action

Repeat the ball throwing action, but this time try to surprise your partner by pretending to throw the ball a few times before you actually do!

Principle of Animation : Follow Through and Overlapping Action & secondary action

We presented this video of surprising your partner by pretending to throw the ball a few times before you actually do, because we find that there is a few principle of animation in it, mainly anticipation by youliang to catch the ball from raymond, follow through and overlapping motion by raymond when throwing the ball, Arcs motion patch of the action.

Here is a good example of principle of animation demonstrated by ice age character

Another example of principle of animation, Staging, anticipation, squash and stretch, Exaggeration, Timing and Motion, Follow Through and Overlapping action perform by the cat.

When i was tasked to do model of a object i was worried because i know there are limited toys in my house, so i went home and search and i found a motor car. At first i thought modeling a car was easy, but i was wrong. starting out was thinking of just using CV curve tool to create everything because i could take picture of the motor car and paste it on the plane. When i try it out, the outcome is not that great. so i went to do some research by watching some youtube video on motor modeling. After watching those video i find out that the way easiest way to do was to capture multiple view of the object and paste in plane and draw to nearly excact size and shape.

And i use CV curve tool to draw the side image and extrude it out to be a polygon then fill hole.

then i go to face and pull to enlarge the size of the car to match the orginal object.

So i have finally done my body. Follow by the car  wheel i went to watch some youtube video again.
The way they(youtube) teaches us is to create a long rectangle polygon and sub division it to many lines, after that they use bend to make it look like the tier. After that they use hollow cylinder to create the inner rim.

BUT for me i decide to use another way to create the wheel. i use the hollow cylinder and another solid cylinder .then use multiple rectangle to form a cross shape and place it in  the middle of the wheel to form the sub dicvision of the car.

I find that  this method is much easier and i think the wheel look nice. so i just duplicate this wheel for the rest of my wheel. There one more thing i want to find out is how to put picture on the car itself and making it look real. youtube video didn’t really help me much, so i remember there 1 video posted on olive that i could reference, the video is UV Mapping basic geometry (detailed).swf. so i apply what i have learn onto my car.

Basically that is all i have research on. Some of the smooth lighting and rendering i ask my classmate for help.

Self-Critique

 

I find that the car i model has a 85% similar compare to the orginal motorcar as some of the details i did not perfect it like the front bumper of the car. i did try moving some of the vertex and sfhiting the angel and pulling off the faces it didn’t came out to be like the front bumper of the orginal car. Although i did put the picture up for the car, but i still find it abit off its orginal size. So as for the wheel as well its not totally alike.
The part of the motor car which i like most is the window, spoiler and the spring on top on the car(helix), i had it model till 99.99% look alike and i am happy with what i have done for this model. Starting out without the knowledge of maya and creating a car model that could look so cool. i think i have done a good job on it. I would rate myself 7.5/10 as i think i can still improve on the little details which i have miss out and spend more time on researching and trial and error instead of thinking on how to start would be better.
I will spend more time focusing on modeling instead of thinking and reading and i hope that i could create a model which look totally like the orginal.

Introduction…

During the race between the 2 rats, a blue car swift past and taunt them with his rear car light. In order to finish the race they need to beat the blue car before they can reach the finish line. Could they overcome the obstacle and get to the finish line?

Pre-work thinking –  Base on the car model, i will start out from using the CV curve line tool to draw the outline of the car, using extrude to make it become an object. Boolean:difference to make the hole of the wheel, using helix to make the top spring. touching the edge with BLevel to make the car look more round.

Working process – I start by creating a plane > Blinn > color > File, then i insert the picture of the side view of the car to start off with CV Curve tool to draw the outline of the car.

This picture is already half done on the texturing and outline.

After the outline is done i did the wheel next as i believe it is the easiest of the car. I created multiple Cylinder to make the wheel,  i created a base circle,

then i create another circle and a star so that i can difference the wheel, and a circle in the middle of the wheel.

outcome of the wheel.

Then i did the window of the car. Using the polygon cube and adjusting the vertex to match the picture.

I duplicate these window for the other side of the car.

This i for the front and back of the car.

Finishing the window, i did the spoiler. I use 2 polygon to make the spoiler, then i adjust the angel to make them fit with each other.

After that i combine them together.

And did some texturing to add colors for the car.

After some texturing i find it boring without having picture on it. So i went to research on how to use hypershare and the UV texturing editor that allow me to put image on the car.

I even go into the very detail of the bottom of the car. with those carved on and off words.

After placing picture i did some rendering.

This is the final outcome after rendering with some sunlight lighting.

REFERENCE

Doing this Project is kind of time consuming. But i learn lots of stuff, like how to go into hypershade/pers view, pers/uv texturing editor for placing of images. There are many obstacle i faced like for instance the front and back side of car which i need to make it slightly slanted instead of straight, for this problem i asked around my classmate and got an answer out from them. secondly is the in-depth details of the motor car, its hard for me to photocopy all mini details to perfect, so i tried my best to modify and create the car as much look alike as possible. overall i find this project interesting, i learnt alot of stuff, but if i had more time and knowledge i could create a better motor car out.

Here are some links i research on.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYG11YpKuc0 – Creating 3D text
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=md8E3mm8ge0 – Bending reference
 
3. SHADERS & TEXTURING > LAB MATERIALS > LAB 1 > PART 1 > SWINBURNE UNIVERSITY VIDEOS>
Maya Texturing – UV Mapping basic geometry (detailed).swf – Putting images reference