Assignment #3: Asymmetrical Box Jump

1. Squash and stretch
   • Example: bouncing ball - without | with
2. Anticipation
   • Example: punch - without | with
3. Staging
4. Pose-to-pose action & straight-ahead action
   • Pose-to-pose action example: Lt. Dan jump
5. Follow-through action & overlapping action
   • Overlapping action example: three-linked pendulum - without | with
   • Follow-through/overlap example: Lt. Dan tail jump (see tail on landing)
6. Slow-in and slow-out
   • Example: pendulum stopping - without | with
7. Arcs
   • Example: simple head turn
8. Secondary action
9. Timing
   • Example: Lt. Dan jump - bad timing | good timing (or at the least better timing)
10. Exaggeration
11. Solid modeling and rigging, or Solid Drawing
12. Character personality, Appeal

Part 1: Video Reference

Grab a camera and film yourself jumping onto and off of a box or platform. The jump should be asymmetrical, meaning your feet need leave the ground at different times but you can land with your feet together. It will be a lot easier to partner up and take each other's reference, plus it's a lot more fun. It's a good idea to take multiple reference videos from different angles and views, you won't be able to catch all the movements from one camera angle. Even if you just take a side and front view, the small details you pick up from them will help your animation immensly.

What to do:

1. Take video reference of yourself doing an asymmetrical jump onto and off of a box or platform, starting and ending with a standing position. If possible, jump as high as you can while also jumping forward. You will get much better movement in your arms and legs making it easier to see key poses and motion arcs for your planning sheets.
2. Retrieve the video from the camera and put it in with your homework files. Scrub through the videos several times and watch your own motion, you'll catch things each time you wouldn't notice without reference!

Part 2: Asymmetrical Box Jump

Last week you set the key poses in Maya for a standing jump. This week you will be doing the same for an asymmetrical box jump, however you will also move on to complete the animation by adding inbetweens and splining. Make sure you have good reference for this assignment. It could mean the difference between stiff motion or smooth and flowing animation. You will want to review your video reference exhaustively. How do different parts of the body move relative to each other? How does your body weight shift thoughout the different stages of jumping? It is perfectly acceptable to scrub through your video reference in Quicktime and stop at certain points to help yourself in drawing poses for your planning sheets.

Once you have planned out your key poses, start blocking them out in Maya. Like with the standing jump don't worry about timing at first. When you are done with your key poses, move on to timing them out. If your timing or poses are off and you start working on inbetweens, you will have to fix all of the inbetweens as well!

When you feel good about your poses/timing and think you are ready to move on to inbetweening, get a second opinon. This is a very important step in the iterative process that is animation. Sometimes you will get so far into animating that you essentially have tunnel vision. A second pair of eyes will notice things that you may have missed, providing valuable input on improving your motion if not an alternative point of view. Remember that although your TAs are there to help you there are plenty of other people in the lab as well. Feedback from multiple perspectives is always incredibly useful.

After you filter through the feedback and adjust your key poses, you can then move on to inbetweening - and then eventually to splining. If at any point you aren't sure about some part of your motion, and even if you are, don't be afraid to grab someone and ask "how does this look?" Feedback and iteration will continue to be important parts of the process, no matter what stage of the animation you're at.

What to do:

1. (OPTIONAL, but highly recommended) Draw up a quick planning sheet with the aid of video reference.
2. Animate two asymmetrical jumps: one onto a box and one off of the same box. Each jump should be in a separate Maya file. Start and end with a standing pose for both of them (remember to settle into the end pose). Remember not to just jump into Maya and do everything all at once. Planning makes good, clean animation. Also don't forget that you are animating with the same rig you used in project 2, except this time he is jumping on and off a box or platform. We are still looking for mechanics, arcs, and the understanding of the basic principles. We are not looking for any acting pieces yet.

    

Part 3: Motion Review

From now on we are requiring each person to attend an individual motion review meeting every Tuesday/Wednesday so we can provide feedback on the current assignment. You don't have to have everything 100% finished or perfect, but keep in mind that the further you are on your motion, the more useful information we can provide.

What to do:

1. All you need to do is attend the meeting. It will probably be held in the normal lecture room. Meeting times are here. Again, your motion doesn't have to be perfect - we are doing this to help you improve what you have at that point.
2. The only thing we require is that you at least have a version of your key poses blocked out.

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 you will want to key all of the controls on the same frame. If you stagger their 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 inbetweens (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)
• Part 1: Two or more reference videos.
• Part 2: (OPTIONAL, but highly recommended) Planning sheets.
• Part 2: Three playblasts for each jump: side, front, and perspective. This comes out to a total of six playblasts.
• Part 2: Two Maya files. One for the jump onto the box, and one for the jump off of the box.