Assignment #2:
Forward Jump Part 1

Assigned: Thursday, Jan 13th, 2011
Due: Thursday, Jan 20th at 3:00 PM

Resources:

• Muybridge human jump from a side view (taken from The Animator's Survival Kit)
• This week's Basic Guy rig - and all the scripts
• Dave's example character sheet for thumbnail drawing
• Dave's example pose research sheet (testing to see which pose works best for anticipation)
• Twinning explanation/example

Part 1: Forward Jump

For this part of the assignment you will be creating a planning sheet for a forward jump using the specified key poses. The character will start in a neutral standing position, jump with forward momentum, then land and settle into a neutral standing position. The feet must also take-off from and land on the ground at the same time (also known as a symmetrical jump). Planning sheets make the entire animation process faster and easier; they are invaluable tools for visualizing and planning your motion even before you get into Maya. When drawing your planning sheets, you will want to try to make your poses as interesting as possible and avoid twinning. You can find an example of the poses we want you to draw from The Animator's Survival Kit here.

What to do:

1. On one or more sheets of paper sketch out several "research" poses. Try drawing different variations of each jump pose to see what works and what doesn't. Don't worry about perfection. These sketches can be rough as you are only experimenting at this stage. You are only required to turn in one sheet of research, though it is encouraged you do more. Here is an example of pose research.
2. Draw out a planning sheet for the standing jump, using only the following poses:
   
   
   • Start and end with a neutral pose
   1. Anticipation (squash)
   2. Jump (stretch), contact with the ground
   3. Mid-air (squash)
   4. Fall (stretch), contract with the ground
   5. Recovery (squash)
   
   Check out this example of a jump planning sheet from a previous year. Note that though this is the optimal level of detail, your planning sheet at the minimum just needs to be enough to convey poses and lines of action.

Part 2: Forward Jump Posing

Now that you have a planning sheet it's time to start posing. You will be using a version of the basic guy rig from last quarter. As before some of the controls/attributes that you will not need to worry about are locked and hidden. This will help you to better focus on the poses themselves without worrying about some of the finer details.

You can find this week's rig here.

Rig Notes:

• Since you won't need to do any facial animation for this assignment the face controls are disabled.
• The rig's arms are locked into FK this time. This is because in certain actions likes jumps and walks, it is much easier to do overlap and follow-through in the arms by using FK.
• There are some minor squash and stretch switches that are disabled as well.

Getting the Basic Guy rig scripts into Maya:

1. Download Basic_Guy_week2.zip and unzip the archive.
2. The actual rig file is in the Basic_Guy_week2\scenes
3. Navigate to Libraries\Documents. "Libraries" can be found in the file tree to the left of an open file browser. You will be dragging files into subfolders of the maya-x64 folder.
4. Move bgWin.mel from Basic_Guy_week2\scripts to maya\2011-x64\scripts
5. Move shelf_BasicGuy.mel from Basic_Guy_week2\shelves to maya\2011-x64\prefs\shelves
6. Move all .dib files from Basic_Guy_week2\icons to maya\2011-x64\prefs\icons
7. Open the Basic Guy rig. There should be a shelf labeled "Basic Guy".

What to do:

1. Pose the basic guy rig directly from your planning sheet in an orthographic side view. There should only be the seven poses specified above (two of which are neutral). Set Maya to stepped mode. The poses should be in order with about 10 frames between each pose. We are not worrying about timing. Also don't do any inbetween/break-down poses. Make these seven, particularly the inner five, as perfect as you can!
2. Draw CV curves over each of the poses indicating motion arcs. Just use the Create CV Curve Tool in the orthographic view you are posing from.
3. Give us two playblasts, with and without the motion arc curves visible, so we can review the poses.

Turn-in Checklist:

• MOTION CHECK-IN:
  • Planning sheet and research sheet
  • At least two or more poses in Maya
  
  
• Use .ma and not .mb
• Please name your files lastname_firstname_assignmentnumber_partnumber_filename.* (example: doe_john_a1_p2_character_ball.ma)
• Part 1: One or more "research" sheets and one planning sheet with only the seven specified poses (neutral, anticipation, jump, mid-air, fall, recovery, and neutral).
• Part 2: Two playblasts from an orthographic side view in Maya. One with and one without the motion arcs visible. Don't worry about the jump's timing, but give each pose enough time for us to get a good look at them.
• Part 2: One Maya file of your standing jump.