cse490 Computer Animation Autumn 2002

 

Project 4 : Basic Motion

Date Assigned: Tuesday, November 19, 2002
Critique Date: Thursday, November 21, 2002
Date Due: Tuesday, November 26, 2002
Reading: O'Rourke Chapter 3, pages 147-184

This assignment is about timing, weight, and squash-and-stretch. Your task is to animate a bouncing ball three times, emphasizing the difference in weight between each of three types of ball. You will work in the same group, giving each other feedback as you go. By the date this project is due, everyone in your group should be comfortable with keyframe animation in Maya, as well as path animation, and the basic principles of cartoon physics.

Getting started

Complete the bouncing ball tutorial. There will be 2 printed copies in the lab. Please do not remove these from the lab. Read the "Animating with Paths" section of the Online Help in Maya (choose "Animation" from the "Using Maya" section, then choose "Animating with Paths").


What to do
I. bouncing ball (YOU MUST HAVE REFERENCES AND BRING THEM TO CLASS!!!!)
1. Create a sphere with the default shading and lighting. Create one short animation (less than 4 seconds) that show the difference between the following types of balls bouncing:
  • A normal ball (e.g. rubber ball).
  • A light ball (e.g. beach ball).
  • A heavy ball (e.g. bowling ball, or a ball with VERY minimal bounce).
Each student will animate ALL THREE BOUNCING BALLS. For this part of the bouncing ball assignment the balls should bounce IN PLACE until they lose momentum. You will use explicit keyframe animation for this part of the project.

2. Now animate ALL THREE BALLS, bouncing in a scene in a clear and understandable way with SOME forward motion using EXPLICIT KEYFRAMING. Please be careful not to add force so much as direction.

3. Animate ONE BALL (of your choice) bouncing with SOME forward motion using PATH ANIMATION.
II. expressive motion
Turn one of the balls above into a character with intent. Have the ball change its mind about what it's doing. Convey that mental decision using only the ball's motion.
What we're looking for
    I. This is a warm-up to get you thinking about weight, timing, and squash-and-stretch. Each animation should unmistakably convey the type of ball using only its motion.  Compare notes with your teammates as you go: discuss the different kinds of motion, and try to figure out the single most important aspect that distinguishes one ball from another.

    You will be turning in a playblast of the bouncing ball with both shading and wireframe turned on. However, do NOT create any textures or render your scene as anything other than a playblast!

    II. For this part, try to think of a reason for the ball's action. If it suddenly decides to bounce in another direction, is it because it sees something it likes, or something it's afraid of? Also, think about how the ball feels about what it's doing. Is it excited, bored, exhausted? You may use a simple set for this part if it helps tell the story, but again you may NOT use extra lights or textures.

Turn in

Each person will turn in playblasts of each of their animations (four total) into your TURN_IN/proj4 directory in your folder. Please only turn in playblasts and not .mb files.

  1. Animation of bouncing balls in place.
  2. Animation of bouncing balls moving forward using explicit keyframing.
  3. Animation of ONE ball moving forward using path animation.
  4. Animation of the expressive bouncing ball
Saving out a playblast:

Go to Window-Playblast...*  Change the option for Viewer to 'Movieplayer', change the Display size to "Custom" and enter 360 and 240 for the two values.  Change the scale to "1.00", and check "Save to File".  Enter the name of the file to be saved in the "Movie File" line (eg.  "jilano_zig-zag"), and click on "Playblast".  The resulting .avi file will be placed in your current project's "images" subdirectory.