IN3D Project2 Part1 (Self-Critique)

Self-Critique

I give myself a 70% for the success of my animation.

Upon completing the animation, I feel that I haven't done enough, so I kept editing and re-rendering. Rendering takes quite a while and it built up my patience along the way too, like how I kept telling myself that every editing is worth it, because it will make the animation better than the previous one after reviewing. Somehow I think that the lack of confidence in my work is because my animation is not my actual storyboard, but rather a modified storyboard to fit in to the desired duration.

But despite that, I still put in my very best in animating out the bipolar emotions, which is the main focus of the whole animation because it is the name of the robot. Since the emotions are one of the key factor, I decided to render set of frames from different angles, and even zoom in on Bipolar to show various emotions portrayed. Rendering from different angles is pretty tedious because of the waiting time, saving and finding out which keyframes to use.

I also tried adding in sound effect with iMovie to make the animation video less dull, but I don't know if it's a good thing, that is the reason why I embedded 2 videos, one with sound effects and one without.

IN3D Project2 Part2 (Final)

Final Outcome

With sound effect:

***

Without sound effect:

***

Application of Animation Principles

1. Timing
2. Exaggeration
3. Ease in and ease out
4. Anticipation
5. Squash and stretch

Timing is applied at KF230, before the arm is lifted up at KF250, there are 20 KFs of being stationery. It is also KF600 to KF620. A lot of timing animation princinples are used while animating the second box.

Exaggeration is shown at while animating the last box, from KF990 to KF1050. Bipolar is crazy at that time, doing exaggerated actions to show that it is crazy.

Ease in and ease out is present at most parts of the animation.

Anticipation is being shown while animating the second box, while Bipolar was being reluctant to lift the box, audience will anticipate what will happen next.

Squash and stretch is applied at the last part of the animation while Bipolar was showing its happiness by going up and down.

IN3D Project2 Part2 (Progression)

Progression

First of all is the rigging process. I removed all constraints and duplicated the boxes by leaving a Translate X: 15 spacing between each box.

Initially I thought that I would animated all 6 boxes, hence I set constraints for all 6 of them by following Week 13's tutorial.

After which I realised that animating 6 boxes will drag the whole animation too long, hence I placed 3 boxes at the platform first. The position of the 3 boxes are like how I had planned in my storyboard. I also removed the constraints for the 3 boxes that are on the platform because I'm not going to animate them.

After making sure that everything is in place and making sure that all the constraints are working like how they are supposed to be, I saved the file as a rig file and saved the file again for animation. This acts as a backup plan, to make sure that even if the animation doesn't work, I can always refer back to my rigged file to check on the constraints.

Starting the animation with the first box, it should be moving at a constant speed because that's how I wanted my storyboard to go. It is to show that my robot is normal at the start. So the keyframes are placed as such. In order to pick up the first box successfully at eg. KF23, the ArmControl W1 must be set at 1 when it is at KF22. On top of that, the ArmControl W1 must be set at 0 when it is KF21. This is because if 0 is not set at KF21, then the box will be flying when the ArmControl starts moving even before KF22.

Same goes for swivel base, going at a normal constant speed. Basically everything about the first box is all about constant speed to show that robots acts in an orderly manner with everything in place.

To further make the uniform speed and the 'robot' feel more obvious, I edited the graph editor by incorporating linear tangents to the peak and valley.

The robot starts feeling tired and reluctant during the second box. In order to show the tired and reluctant feeling, I set the keyframes far apart to make the robot do each action longer.

As shown on the time slider, the time taken to pick up the second box is clearly very long. Which is the most important factor to portray tired and reluctantcy.

And lastly, the last box was animated very quickly, with keyframes very close to one another. But before that, the robot had a short pause after the robot just touched the box, this is to show that the robot suddenly go crazy. Crazy as in bipolar, as suggested by the robot's name, Bipolar. After the robot finish stacking up the last box, excitement and happiness is shown on the robot with big actions, but looks fun instead of being mad.

After the animation is done, I added in additional cube to contain the animation so that there will be nice walls around.

I also added in lightings around so that the video will not look dark after rendering.

Besides that, the platform and conveyor's belt textures are added in too for it to look better.

Last but not least, I view Flim Gate and Resolution Gate too. The reason why I chosed Resolution Gate too, is because I realised that Flim Gate alone is not enough. Resolution Gate allows me to know the exact size when it is being rendered.

IN3D Project2 (Research)

Research

I went on and searched for more of lamp videos to get a rough idea of animating emotions with robots which I found them to be pretty useful.

To do list for Project 2 Animation

To do:

*modelling > rigging > animation

Animate stacking of 2 or 3 boxes (as 1 column or a row) from a moving queue

1. Remove all the parent constrains from 1 box
2. Duplicate the box OR enlarge platform
3. Parent constrain the boxes again.

Tips

1. Parent Constrain 1
- ArmControl + Box = Arm W0 = 1 (Constrain Node)
2. Rotate Swivel Base (Rotate Y = 100)
3. Parent Constrain 2
- Platform + Box = Platform W1 = 1 (Constrain Node)
4. Turn off - Platform W1 = 0
5. Rotate Swivel Base back to Original Position (Rotate Y = 0)
6. Reset to Rest Position for box
7. Turn off - Arm W0 = 0

IN3D Project2 Part1

Character

Name of the robot: Bipolar

Bipolar is a introvert robot with a bipolar disorder, as suggested from its name. It is hardworking and has been happily stacking boxes all its life. As the years go by, Bipolar becomes slower in actions and gets tired of its life. One day, Bipolar woke up in the morning as usual, but feeling really terrible with its bipolar disorder acting up.

Should I go to work today? I am feeling unwell and pretty sick of the mundane routine of stacking boxes, but thinking of all the happy times I had while working, I guess I should go. Maybe I will feel better when I am at work. Okay I have made up my mind, I am going to work right away!

Storyboard

There is a long line of brown boxes, as if on a conveyor belt. The robot lifts the box at the head of the queue and stacks it in a pile at its side. Once the robot has finished stacking a box, the rest of the boxes move forward one place, and the process is repeated. However, the robot seems tired of its work, as if unfulfilled in life. The robot wants to rebel and break free! The robot start stacking the boxes in its own likings, and the next minute you see a mini pyramid forming out of the boxes.

IN3D Week14 Lab2

To create shadow
1. Create a rendering Camera
Panel > Perspective > Camera 1
View > Camera Settings > Flim Gate

2. Get back to Perspective
Create lights > Directional light (sunlight)
Create lights > Point light (cast shadow)
Attribute > Shadows Tab
(For reflection > )

3. Render Settings

IN3D Week13 Lab 1 & 2

Lecture for Exercise 2

Tip - Rigging
Always rig in any orthographic view (never use perspective, use side view instead)

Parenting
1. Select childobj.
2. Shift select parentobj
3. Press P to parents

(All in Hypergraph - Hiearchy)

Unparent
1. Select Child
2. Edit > Unparent

Forward Kinematics (FK)
Inverse Kinematics (IK)

Always reset tool

ikHandle is always done using translation instead of rotation.

Select object then select joint then click 'P' to parent to join them.

Process

Exercise 3
1) Animate the box moving at a linear speed past the robot.

2) Animate the crane lifting the box.

There’s no need to worry about the principles of animation – treat this is a purely mechanical, robotic movement. Later, you’ll be adding some life and personality.

Reflection

There are so much to prepare for before the start of an actual animation. Parenting and constraining can be really confusing, but after going through the tutorial, I think I am a little clearer now.

Exercise 4
Discuss the following questions on your weblog.

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.

Do NOT say because the small lamp is playing with a ball, or that its name is Luxo Jr. – you should be looking at the animation, how the lamps move and emote (emote means to express emotions).

First example, small lamp is "younger" because it hop while the big lamp only slide to move around. This shows that the small lamp is young and full of energy.

Second example, small lamp has more joints than the big lamp and the small lamp uses all the joints while it is moving, while the big lamp moves very limited.

Third example, small lamp has more exaggerated movements than big lamp. When both the lamps are "kicking" the ball, it is shown that the small lamp swings more than the big lamp.

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

When Luxo Jr is happy and excited, the movement timing is fast and catchy. There are also sudden and fast movements that Luxo Jr did while he was excited. But when the ball is deflated, the movements and timing become slow and then fast again when Luxo Jr found a bigger ball.

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.

When the chain is created, it allows the whole chain to move in the same direction from the top to the last joint at the bottom.

IN3D Week13 Lab1 & 2

Exercise 1
Adding lighting to cast a shadow on the ball.

Process

Basically, it's just creating lights to cast a shadow on the ball. Add directional light, then add point light. Directional light is known as the sunlight while point light is known as the lamp light.

Also add in the sky texture to the hemisphere to contain the ball.

Here is the final outcome of the bouncing ball with shadow.

Reflection

This exercise is quite straightforward with the guidance of our tutor. However, if I were to do it on my own, I will be unsure of the exact spot to place the lights and requires trial and error.

IN3D Week12 Lab1 & 2

Exercise 2
From your (still very) basic experience with 2D and 3D animation, discuss the following questions on your weblog.

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

Yes, since it is 2D animation, drawing well is essential. I remember those days when I was young, I would draw stickmen on the corner of a textbook on every page and flip the book quickly and watch the stickman animate on its own, but that's just a 'for fun' animation. A good 2D animation to me, is like disney movies and I watched before the making of disney movies, it's not easy drawing out everything that is needed in a frame for the entire movie.

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

With softwares like Autodesk Maya, 3D animation can be easily made by setting keyframes and constraints. The storyboard do not have to look good, just the main idea of the animation will do, hence I think that you do not need to be able to draw well to create good 3D animations.

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?

For me, a good animation would mean that each and every frame has been well thought out and displayed out smoothly without knowing that there are done out in frame by frame. Which means considering all the minor details such as blinking of eyes and normal breathing in and out can be seen from animating a person. While a bad animation would show little or none of the ones mentioned in the good piece of 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.

Yes it does affect me in some way or another. Because by using graph editor, it sort of means there is mathematics elements involved which kinda makes animation more serious. For myself, I don't like the subject math, and I thought by going to poly can make me escape from math, but no. We still had to take computing mathematics while we were in year 1 and now animation has math and physics elements in it. This somehow adds on to the stress.

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 think that Maya is a pretty powerful tool considering the fact that it is able to make animations as well, and that's if one knows how to use it, and I mean knows how to use every tool. Switching from 2D animation software, Pencil to a 3D animation tool, Maya, I think that the onion skin tool is useful to me and Maya can incorporate this in as well. Maya is good in a way that there are many shortcuts to use, such as pressing on 's' to set keyframe is so much easier than setting keyframes in Pencil software.

IN3D Week11 Lab2

1. Translate Y = 5-6 bounces
2. Translate X = 30 units
    First keyframe to last keyframe
    Translate Z
3. Squash Handle
4. Rotate of ball grps
    First keyframe to last keyframe

Translate X to become straight line:

Either delete the middle points
OR
Break Tangent then press on Linear Tangents

Process

Firstly, start off my creating the ball and ground, afterwhich group the ball twice for translate and rotate. Then create squash1handle too and parent it to the group.

Next, start by adjusting the translate values and keyframing them.

Then, adjust the squash factor to a positive value to stretch the ball before it lands on the ground.

When it is on the ground, it should be squashed like that. Hence the squash factor should be a negative value.

The ball should return to its original state when it is on the peak.

When the ball is about to stop, there should not be any squash added to it because it lost the energy.

After everything is done, rotate the ball and add in lights.

And flim gate.

Final outcome of the squash & stretch:

Reflection

This exercise was though for me because I didn't understand the process of doing it initially, because I was confused by the previous exercise of keyframing everything at the start. Hence I had to redo it a lot of times before getting it right.

IN3D Week11 Lab1

Exercise 1
http://download.autodesk.com/us/maya/2011help/index.html

Process

Setting keyframes by pressing the shortcut 's'.

Using the graph editor

Always press the move tool, then use the middle mouse button to move the tangent.

My Translate X is in a funny shaped line.

In order to make it a straight line: Either delete the middle points OR Break Tangent then press on Linear Tangent.

For the valley of the curves of Translate Y, it should be sharp, so it is necessary to do the same way as Translate X which is to break tangent and click on linear tangent

Here's the video after using Window > Playblast to save it.

Exercise 2

Use what you have learned in Exercise 1 to create a Maya animation of your bouncing ball from Week 1.

Just focus on the timing, so don’t worry about adding squash and stretch – you’ll do that in the next lab.

Reflection

The assigning keyframes part is easy, just positioning the ball and set key. It was the part whereby adjusting the graph with the graph editor which is difficult to understand.

IN3D Week10 Lab2

Exercise 2
Answer the following questions on your weblog by next week:

1. What is ease-in ease-out in reference to animation?
2. What does frames-per-second mean?
3. The spacing of the ticks in the animation chart below is for an object bouncing with linear speed over 12 frames - draw a similar chart, but with ease-in and ease-out.

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

By having easing in and out in animations, it makes the animation move in a more realistic manner, which deals with the spacing of the inbetween drawings between the start and end or vice versa. By easing in, it will make the tween motion start out slowly and then quickly speed up at the end of the animation. By easing out, it will make the tween motion start out quickly and then slow down as it comes to the end of the animation.

2. What does frames-per-second mean?

Frames per second (fps) refers to the frame rate or frame frequency. It is the rate which an animation produces unique consecutive images known as frames.

3. Animation chart of an object bouncing with linear speed with ease-in and ease out.

IN3D Week10 Lab2

Exercise 1a
1. Timing -> Realism -> Exaggeration
2. Keyframe (KF) : Start & Stop (min 2 KF)
3. Plan your animation

Keyframe concept is actually important because it makes everything easier.

Tweening = in-between.

Keyframes are at 1, 7, 12, 17, 21, 25, 28, 31.

Exercise 1b
Animating a heavy bowing ball

i. Create an animation chart for your chosen ball. Draw the keyframes, with squash and stretch. (How much squash and stretch would be appropriate for a bowling ball, so you think?)

ii. Create an animation using Pencil for your chosen ball (the drawings don't have to be so good - just focus on the basic animation)

Exercise 1c
Select one of your videos from Lab 1.

i. Create an animation chart for this action - you don't need to draw the human figure, but if you do for reference, stick man poses will be ok.

ii. Now try to do a rough animation of this action in Pencil.

The chosen video from Lab 1 is the first video, which is to squat down, jump as high as you can go, then land on the ground.

Chosen video:

My rough animation:

Reflection

It is fun to do simple animation like that, but I believe that it can be better if I made more frames for the accuracy. Although the stickman animation is not the same as the original video, but the idea of the squat and jump is there, as you can see there is the stretch and squash element in it.

IN3D Week10 Lab1

Exercise 3
Find a video clip or scene that demonstrates at least 6 of the 12 principles of animation. You may refer to one scene that demonstrates all principles, or refer to different clips for different principles (it’s up to you). In your weblog, discuss how the video(s) demonstrate the principles that you have chosen.

The chosen video clip is

I edited the video clip by adding in captions during the video clip to show the principles of animation.

Discussion

I noticed that squash & stretch was used a lot in particular, in scenes such as excitement and exaggeration. I am not so sure if I put in the "Staging" correctly, but I am sure that the main characters are Spongebob Squarepants and Krusty Krab. A lot of exaggeration to the facial features have been made as well, because this is a cartoon. Usually, squash & stretch, exaggeration and anticipation work very closely together.

IN3D Week10 Lab1

Animation Visualisation
Exercise 1 & 2

1. Squat down, jump as high as you can go, then land on the ground

Squash & Stretch
Timing & Motion

2. Stand some distance away, run towards camera, then come to a sudden stop just in front of the camera

Anticipation
Straight ahead and pose to pose animation

3. Repeat actions 1 and 2, but this time with a bag hanging from your shoulder

Squash & Stretch
Anticipation
Follow through and Overlapping Action
Straight ahead and pose to pose animation

4. Do a robot dance or chicken dance 

Appeal

5. Pretend to get really really really (!) angry, then pretend to punch your friend standing in front of you

Exaggeration
Anticipation

6. Drop a ball and film it bouncing a few times

Anticipation

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

Anticipation
Exaggeration

Reflection

While we were filming the video clips, all of us were reluctant to be in the video, but overall it was fun filming together. I had also edited the video clips to emphasize more on the important principles of animation. We did not do the Activities #7 and #8 because none of us had a ball that is able to bounce.

Reference

http://www.traptcg.com/content/12-principles-animation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCRiIwmoJ4E&feature=related

IN3D Project1 Part2 (Progression)

Firstly, I add in the image planes to the front and side view.

Next, I created a cube and smoothen it with the smooth tool.

And I change the view to the front view and the mode to Vertex to model the head by moving the vertices.

I created more edges by inserting edge loops for the hello kitty ears to be more precise.

This is half of the head done.

And I remove the undone portion, by region selecting and deleting the faces.

I duplicate special and combine both of them together and deleted the overlapping vertices.

Moving on to the side view to position it.

Because the ears needs volume, and the length is not uniform, hence I had to pick out the vertices one by one to adjust it.

The body was created with the Pencil Curve tool and moving the vertices.

Next, I revolved it.

Using the align tool, I aligned the head and the body accordingly, to have them in the center.

For the buttons of the clothes, I created them with cylinder.

The legs are made up of cylinder and sphere, I also aligned them with the align tool.

After positioning both of the legs...

The hands are also made up of both cylinder and sphere, but I moved the vertices a little for the cylinder.

The bow is formed by putting together 3 cylinders, I did it with the top view before rotating it to fit the head.

The eyes and nose of the hello kitty are similarly created with cylinders.

For the hole detail of hello kitty clothes, I had to make the body convert from a NURBS to a Polygon.

Next, I boolean difference it, but something wasn't right, I cannot make a hole. Instead, the hole became what I got, which is not what I wanted, but I just used that portion and make it red.

Moving on the the hello kitty's whiskers, I picked out some edges from the hello kitty's head and extrude it.

This is what it looked like after extruding.

After everything is done, I used the smooth tool to smoothen out the entire model.

Lastly, I added some spotlight around.