Animation Principles.doc and/or http://www.artof3d.com/feature.htm
- Squash and stretch
- Anticipation
- Staging
- Pose-to-pose action & straight-ahead action
- Follow-through action & overlapping action
- Slow-in and slow-out
- Arcs
- Secondary action
- Timing
- Exaggeration
- Solid modeling and rigging, or Solid Drawing
- Character personality, Appeal
Part 1: Bouncing Balls from Reference
Similar to last quarter you will choose two balls, which we will provide, with distinctly different physical properties such as light versus heavy. The greater contrast in the type of bounces they have the better.
Unlike last quarter, you will be taking video reference of each ball, and use this reference to create your planning sheets.
(Planning sheet examples found
HERE and
HERE). Make sure you animate at 30 frames per second. These settings can be found in your preferences under 'Settings' and 'Timeline'.
Download the old ball rig HERE.
Download the new ball rig HERE.
Find last quarter's bouncing ball tutorial HERE.
What to do:
- (OPTIONAL) Take video reference of each ball bouncing individually. Don't put any downward force on the ball, simply drop it from a still position and let gravity do the work.
You will also want to do a version of reference with some forward momentum. However, you do not want to just throw the ball as hard as you can. Remember: You want to take this
reference in a way that will be most useful to you, so a still camera with a good view of the ball would probably be best.
- (OPTIONAL) Draw out planning sheets for each ball using your video reference.
- Animate both balls bouncing with forward momentum in an orthographic side view. Keep in mind animation principles like squash and stretch, slow-in slow-out, timing, and
arcs. Also keep in mind that you are animating a "normal" bouncing ball that doesn't have a mind of its own. So, for example, you generally shouldn't see squash and stretch when playing at full speed,
but you should be able to feel it. Squash and stretch that spans too many frames (and is too extreme) will make it look like the ball is willing itself to jump, and that's not what we want to see for this part of the assignment.
Part 2: Bouncing Ball with Character
This will be similar to last quarter's animating a "ball with intent and emotion" assignment, but with a few constraints to make your objective more clear.
What to do:
Unlike Part 1 where you showed how two lifeless balls might bounce in comparison to each other based solely on physical properties,
for Part 2 you will show how a "living" ball might bounce/act given an emotional state. Here's what we are looking for:
- Animate a ball as if it were a living character. You are not required to tell a story this time.
- It should express one of four possible emotions: Happy, Sad, Angry, or Frightened.
- The ball needs to bounce, it can't just emote on the ground. The manner in which it bounces, what it does inbetween each bounce, and what it does in the air will help it express emotion.
General Animation and Maya Tips:
- Your planning sheet should have everything you will need to know. You should, in theory, be able to animate without ever referring back to your reference - just to your planning sheet.
- Start with your key poses first! Get those right, then add breakdowns (keys further defining the motion between your keyframes) as you need them.
- When working on key poses for your ball you will want to key the main, squash, and rotate controls all on the same frame. If you stagger their keys
(meaning, for example, that the squash and stretch control's keys don't line up with the main control's keys), figuring out which key goes to which pose will
become frustrating later, and in general slow down the workflow.
- Make sure keys don't land on partial frames (for example, frame 3.14). If this happens it is usually the result of key scaling. To fix partial framed keys, select
all of the problem keys in the timeline, right-click hold on the selection, and choose "Snap".
- Try not to spend too much time in the Graph Editor. Focus on what your animation looks like, not what the curves look like. Don't be afraid to add more keys or breakdowns.
- Save iterations! You especially want to save an iteration when all of your key poses are set, before moving on to clean up the graph editor and adding in-betweens (basically another word for "breakdowns).
Playblasting:
Playblasts are Maya's way of creating a preview of your animation that runs in real time, and is much faster to create than a render. Go to Window > Playblast > OptionBox. Change the option for Viewer to 'Movieplayer', change the Display size to "Custom" and enter 640 and 480 for the two values. Change the scale to "1.00", and check "Save to File" and name it appropriately.
IMPORT NOTES: The point of playblasts are to get a good preview of your animation. This means that you should hide everything that clutters the screen, and set the camera up to get a good view of your motion (you don't want the camera so far away that your bouncing ball it just a dot!)
You will want to hide the heads up display information by going to Display->Heads Up Display and unchecking everything in the list. You will also want to hide all of the animation controls. Since these controls
are usually NURBs curves, go to the panel menu and uncheck Show->NURBS Curves.
Turn-in Checklist:
- Use .ma and not .mb
- Please name your files lastname_firstname_assignmentnumber_partnumber_filename.* (example: doe_john_a1_p2_character_ball.ma)
- Turn your files into production4\cse490j_wi09_turn-in\assignment_#1
- Part 1: (OPTIONAL) Two or more reference videos.
- Part 1: (OPTIONAL) Two planning sheets.
- Part 1: Two playblasts that can be orthographic or perspective views. One for each bouncing ball.
- Part 1: Two Maya files. One for each bouncing ball.
- Part 2: One playblast that can be either an orthographic side view or perspective, just give us the best view.
- Part 2: One Maya file.
