Category: animation

After 12 weeks of learning fundamental animation in this unit, I noticed the enjoyable way of using reference videos and hand-drawn planning poses to block and polish them in Maya. Here is the polished work combination from this term:

In addition, here is my further development of the body mechanics animation over the Christmas holiday by following the last week’s feedback:

Overall, for this unit I organize my files by creating weekly ‘project’, therefore it could help me to find reference videos and play blasts easily:

I have used the website sync sketch to upload my weekly progression and then receive the feedback.

I have understood most of the 12 principles of animation and applied them into my work, and I am looking forward to learn more of them in the future:

I have been delivered the basic knowledge of ‘X,Y,Z’ in Maya, and it helped me to think through blocking an animation:

The setting of blocking (instead of polishing the spline) an animation:

I have trying to train myself to ‘keep thinking the invisible curve’ when I am adjusting key poses, or making plans of a rigged character in the animation:

I have touched the plug-in Animbot and its Mirror tool in the walk cycle animation and found them to be quite useful:

I understood the importance of weight shift, the leg tends to be straight when the same side of the hip receives more weight:

For the animation in Maya, I could also exaggerate key poses to make them follow the animation principles and make them visually look more powerful and convincing:

This week I have concentrated on adjusting some key poses from my blocking of the body mechanics animation.

The screenshots below point out the direction of the weight shift at the beginning of the animation:

Overall, the movement of the animating rig should follow like a bouncing ball with an invisible curve, and it should always carry on moving forward by relating back to the reference video.

Also, by exaggerating the movement of each key pose, it’s easier to see the upper body of the rig is behaving similar to the pendulum animation, where the hip is mainly dragging the upper part to complete this jump.

After the highest point of the jump, I keep the hip in the middle to keep the animation simple and keep the dummy has a stable landing on the ground.

I was trying to play the timing of key frames to build up a pendulum feeling of the rig’s upper body:

When the body quickly landing the ground, I stretched the length of it by following the bouncing ball:

When the body fully reached the ground, I squashed its middle length by following the bouncing ball:

Here is my polishing animation from this week with its side view:

Here is my polishing animation from this week with its three-quarter view:

Due to the direct drawing of tracing on reference was not allowed, I have updated my sketch for the body mechanic animation:

This week we have been focused on how to build up an animation structure by using geos and parent constraints with the body rig:

After we have had a rough structure, we build up different selection sets to adjust keys of the rig body:

Beside my hand-drawn reference, I have also used the video reference to adjust key poses in this animation blocking:

Here is my outcome for this week’s jump:

In this week, I have kept polishing the animation from the last few weeks to make them looking better with the notes left from the lecturer and animator from the Siggraph event.

For the walking cycle in the side view, there are still some knee pops happening, therefore by rotating the rotation Z of the walker rig and adjusting its foot roll, I tried to fix them:

I keyed the whole rig for three frames before I adjusted any specific frame on the middle, to make sure the change won’t infect the other two.

For the weight shift I have been given advise of making the walker’s foot hold longer when it’s lifting up on the frame 25 and making a curve for it:

Also to make it more fluent, I keep the hip of the rig moving in the end without too many frames being keyed:

Also, this week we have started planning the animation of the body mechanics, here are some notes I have done in the class:

Here is the reference video I have shot in class with my class mate after editing in premiere pro:

I mainly worked on the planning by using the edited reference video in the Photoshop with drawings on top to analysis its body mechanics, and here is my result:

In addition, I have tried to set up cameras in maya by using my reference and the image plane.

In this week, I have kept working on polishing the weight shift and the walk cycle.

First of all, for the walk cycle, I have made the movement of the body looking more fluent, by following the note given by the lecturer:

I then add toe roll to one of the feet in this walking cycle:

To achieve the fluent knee bend of the animation, I have decrease and increase the rotation X between the down pose and the up pose:

By adjusting the foot position, I try to let the movement to build up curves:

I will wait to receive more feedback from this Friday.

For the weight shift I have mainly checked the starting point of the hip to follow the movement of the feet and the distance of them, I tried to adjust the graph editor to make the movement more fluent:

In Tuesday night, I have also went to the event of Siggraph and receiving feedback from other industrial animators, have noticed I shouldn’t let the movement of it suddenly stopped at the middle, but keep the curve fluent in the graph editor:

In this week’s session, we have mainly focused on correcting the walk cycle blocking, and then polishing it, and correcting a few poses left from the polished side weightshift.

Here is the polished animation graph editor:

From this week’s notes left by the lecturer, I have noticed when the ball is walking, its body part should always not be in the middle except all the contact poses.

Hence here is what I have corrected for mainly the front view:

From there is no value on transform X of the main body in its up pose:

To give itself a slightly move by following the last pose:

Which allows its body part to build up loops in its animation blocking and polishing one:

I have also corrected the weight shift from week6, I noticed from the lecturer’s notes, when the foot is reaching the ground, we should keep it flat (with no foot roll or toe roll):

And when the foot is lifting up, we can hold it for longer:

I also tried to add more movements onto its body to build up curves when it’s doing its jobs:

The lecturer’s notes of pushing its body more through the force of the movement:

In this week’s session, we concentrated on improving last week’s sidewalk, making it polished, and started blocking a walking cycle by using the same rig. In the sidewalk correction, I have noticed the main body of the rig would lean on the straight leg side when it plans to move, otherwise, it will fall down without the natural support.

Here are my notes taken for planning out the blocking of the walk cycle by following the lecturer recording and the tutorial below:

In my notes, I have emphasized a few main points through keying the walk cycle blocking, such as the rotation direction of the main body in different stages and how the foot moves when it’s stepping forward. By combining the assignment given by the lecturer, here is my plan:

It is also important to know that the foot break should always be 100 throughout the entire animation, and instead of touching the toe roll, we should key the foot roll directly.

Due to this walk cycle having a lot of mirroring poses, the lecturer in the recording has introduced the plug-in called Animbot, by adding it to my Maya, it speeds up my workflow:

Foot swing in my blocking animation:

In the passing pose, feet are way further out, therefore to increase the number in transformation X.

The curve of the body movement in my blocking:

In this week, I start leaning knowledges of the weight shifting in animation. Here are some notes I have taken after reading the Animator Survival Kit:

To structure my blocking of the Weight Shift animation, I have followed the tutorial in the Youtube and the tutorial recorded by the lecturer.

There are some notes I have taken through learning the video:

At the beginning of the progression, I have built up a MEL bottom for my rig:

The peeling off pose I tried to learn with the rig:

I noticed it’s always to check the pose of the rig through the side view:

The foot shifting pose I tried to learn:

I have been taught the importance of looking at the arc of each joint of the rig in the animation:

Here is my first practice through learning the Weight Shift from George’s tutorial:

By noticing I want to learn more details of building the blocking, I started learning the video below:

In this video I have noticed a few important points:

• The squash and stretch can be applied when the ball is moving down and up.
• The position of the ball in this rig is moving drastically during the weight shift.
• There should be an invisible line formed of each part of the rig in my animation.
• when the foot is landing, the Y axis is reaching 0.
• I can add foot roll and toe roll in specific time in my animation.
• Playing the delay of some specific frames can create some specific effect in my animation.

After my two attempts of blocking the animation, here is my final result of this week:

Eventually I have also made some poses through using the character rig by following the walking reference online:

In this week’s session, I fixed some poses from last week’s assignment and learned to turn my blocking animation into a spline. Here is my polished blocking play blast:

And here is my note written from the session:

While developing the tail animation, I found it important to understand how the tail can possibly follow the motion trail of the bouncing ball (body), and how the motion trail in Maya guides the movement of the animation:

In the blocking stage, I found it important to check if all the keys were not in a linear line (even for the distance):

In the end of the animation process, I can clean up the graph editor to make the curve much clear:

A few quick notes from the class:

1. Anticipation is the movement before a main movement.
2. Anticipation is building up for force.
3. All movements build up by either internal or external strength.
4. Anticipation is the easiest way to build up an internal energy and triggers a movement to happen.
5. An object in motion always stays in motion, except it has been stopped by another energy.

The below screenshot shows the setting of making blocking for these two weeks blocking:

Making bottom to control the rig:

Combining with this online tutorial, it supports me to work on the blocking of the tail animation:

This tutorial mainly has 4 parts to demonstrate:

1. Blocking of the bouncing ball animation
2. Blocking of the tail animation
3. fixing the distance of the animation with the landing keys
4. fixing the rotation of the animation

The first photo below shows the graph editor of the blocking made for the body part of the rig at the beginning, which shows when the ball reaches the peak it will speed up. On the contrary, it will slow down when it’s off the floor or lands on the floor. The second photo below shows there will be a pause when the ball lands on the floor and when it restarts bouncing again, at this moment, the ball is squashing and stretching. #

There are a few main blocking poses of the tail shown through the tutorial, and I made screenshots of them. They include the tail shape when the rig is in its starting pose, the tail when it’s off the floor, and the tail when it’s on the pack; oppositely they also show how the tail rig changes when it’s landing on the floor.

This photo below shows a new bouncing circulation starts:

The z-axis in the animation graph editor indicates the distance the rig jumps in this animation (from the side view), however, there is a pause between each bounce, therefore there should be non-changed part in the z-axis as well to avoid the sliding.

In the rotation part though, we need to keep the graph in linear as this action has no pause, the rig keeps doing it during the animation.

Here is my planning draft for the blocking and knowledge learnt from the above tutorial: