Here it is.

Well, here's my final!

It took a little bit of time, but I added a background, and put it through Final Cut to speed portions up and others down a little to make it look good. I think it came out fairly well, although I would have like to make another one before the final, because I know what I'm doing now. But this one came out pretty good!

For the final....

Okay, so for my final project, I'm going to create a short animation with a LowMan doing a kata, which is a sort of dance using martial arts. He'll have a weapon (likely a sword) and go through the motions of attacks, ending with the sheathing of the blade.

I don't think it will look too realistic, because the movements I've been putting into Maya seem to come out a little choppy. However, I've been working to smooth them out. It seems to be working some, but it's taking a lot of time to keyframe each and every movement.

Next is the camera. I think, rather than a camera moving around him, I'll just set the camera up to move backward as he advances, and have the aim set at his location the whole time. It should work more than well enough to get the idea across well.

Basic Character Animation

For this assignment, along the ideas for my final, I imported the LowMan rig, and set it up to do a simple reverse punch. It came out surprisingly well, actually.

Ideas for Final

So, for my final, I was really at a loss for what to do. I've been pretty consistently bad at modelling, so I knew, at the very least, that wasn't what I wanted to focus on. After the class where we learned the basics of animation with the LowMan model, I've put my focus on that. It seems, despite how terrible I was at modelling and the like, I'm fairly good at manipulating the pre-rigged models.

For the final, I planned to have two LowMan models duking it out in a fight, whether it was bare-handed, or with weapons of some sort, I wasn't really sure when I first decided to do it. However, upon some experimentation with the models, I couldn't get a second LowMan into the program without duplicating the first one. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a way to duplicate the first one in such a way that I could manipulate them separately, accurately, and efficiently.

In the end, I have decided to have one LowMan doing a kata, which is essentially a set of moves that flow together in a sequence. I've been working with a LowMan with a sword, and programmed a long string of attacks that flow fairly well. However, there are some parts that look bad, and I had trouble with some of the movements so I have decided to try making a second one. I'll display both finished animations for my final.

Midterm, finished

STORYBOARD

 Start- Look at TV

 Turn Right, Look toward table

 Turn Left, Look at Lamp

 Zoom in on lamp

 Dial turns one click, lamp brightens

  Dial turns two clicks, lamp brightens

  Dial turns third click, lamp brightens

 Camera turns back to see seat

Camera sits back down on seat, settles, looks at TV

Note: no sound throughout.

Midterm ideas

So, I was originally going to set up a somewhat large landscape and have the camera go through and "see the sites". However, as I started the camera work, I encountered trouble with the aiming of the camera, and decided the models I made weren't up to par and I wasn't satisfied. So, I scrapped that and I'm working with the lamp I posted before now.

I plan to make a full room, with a TV, table and chair, along with the lamp. The camera will move around, and zoom in on the lamp's turn dial. It will turn the lamp on, and the lamp will (obviously) get brighter. The camera will then turn around and sit back down, facing the TV.

LAMP!!!!

ITS A LAMP!!!!

Bouncing Ball Tutorial Pt. 2

So the new assignment was to recreate the bouncing ball tutorial and change some things, or add some things, and play with the system. I did just that, by adding some ball rotation and and some other extras.

That is a rendered screen from the animation, with lights and shadows added. I have two spotlights in place from two exact opposite views that cross on the hoop. For things that you can't actually see from a still, the green/red fire is a normal fire effect. Also, the ball has a cat face that says "meow" under it.

The hoop is rotating 90 degrees every ten seconds, and is placed so that the ball still goes through it without touching the hoop. Also, the ball rotates forward 90 degrees every few seconds at a rate that looks natural. At the end of the animation, the ball hits the wall and begins spinning back the other way, rolling towards the hoop, with the correct direction of spin. Also not seen in this shot is the ramp that the ball starts on. Instead of simply a bouncing character like the original tutorial gives, this is a normal ball that rolls off of a ramp into the scene. The whole scene can be seen here:

The first screen shot is without the effect of lighting, so the whole setup is visible, while the second shows the scene with the lighting effects.

Bouncing Ball Tutorial

So the first assignment we had to do was make a bouncing ball that went through a static hoop. Since we did it in class, the tutorial was pretty easy. Making the ball and such was simple enough, and the animation using keyframes is a relatively easy concept to grasp once you have a handle on the idea.

After I was done, I decided to continue playing with the program, and added a few more things. To start, rather than have the ball begin on the ground, I added a ramp that it roles off of, onto the floor to begin the bounce. Then, I gave the hoop keyframes to rotate around. Then, to keep a bit of realism, the bouncing of the ball fades into a roll. I also added a wall at the end that the ball runs into and bounces back the other way.

Around this point, the lack of rotation of the ball bugged me, so I added in keyframes to make the ball rotate. I made sure to make the ball rotate back the other way once it ran into the wall. The rotation, however, screwed up the deformer, so I took it out. Here are some screen shots from different angles of the finished product.