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.