Principles of animation

Anticipation
The movement of the body shows a natural way of gaining momentum.Before people throw a ball or an item, the body would slightly turn to gain the force and the speed of the object.

Creating Holds

Exaggeration
Exaggeration is action that are loud, violent and wild.It is mostly used when there's a great impact or force being put on an object.In this video, it shows that the 'slapping' is a very powerful force that creates an great impact.

Follow-Through
Momentum will carry parts of the body past the stopping point.In this case, it would be the ponytail that swings from left to right.The ponytail does'nt stop at the same time when she stops.

Overshoot
This shows overshoot as she throws her arms out before pointing out her fingers.The arm will anticipate the move before the action starts.

                                          

Squash and stretch
When there are force exerted to the ball, it will 'squash'. If there's a gravity pull, the ball will stretch.Even if we can't see the squashing and stretching with our own eyes,this principle creates an impactful effect to a bouncing ball.

                                         

Secondary Action

Silhouettes
This is one of the fundamentals of good posing.If an action is presented so that its outline is clear,it's actions will be clear as well.One advantage of using this principle, human's eye tends to catch contrast easily.Therefore, silhouettes can get attention of people with no doubt.

Strong line of action
It would look much more convincing when the body arcs back when throwing the ball than just the arm swinging.It can create the of power being put into when throwing the ball.

Exercise 4 (Pixar Lamps)

1)  Apart from their different sizes, it is obvious from Luxo Jr. that the big lamp is “older” and that the small lamp is “younger”.

How is this communicated by the animation? Give at least THREE examples.

- The 'younger' lamp is more active and faster in its actions.

-The 'older' lamp does not shift it's position as much as the 'young' lamp.

-The 'younger' lamp rotates and move its joints more than the 'older' lamp,more bends.(stretch out and inwards)

2)  Give an example from Luxo Jr of how timing is used for comic effect. Explain how the timing decisions contribute to the humour.

     An example will be the part when the 'young' lamp rolls out another bigger ball to play. It is because, the audience will know what will happen to the ball later on after seeing what it did to the first ball.The 'older' lamp then look towards the screen and shook its head telling how active and playful the 'young' lamp is even after its first ball was inflated. 

3)   When you create a joint chain, these form a hierarchy, with the first joint at the top and the last joint at the bottom. Explain why this is necessary for the joints to work properly.

This is necessary because when join chain is created, it will form a nested hierarchy.With the top selected as the first joint, the hierarchy will be at the top most as that will be the area that is going to animate most.

What is hypergraph: hierarchy for?

An example of a hypergraph: hierarchy is shown above

The Hypergraph is a picture of the nodes and their connections in Maya. A complex scene can look like a very intricate web of these connections. When you really need to know how a network of nodes isconnected, the Hypergraph gives you the most detailed view. There are two ways to view the Hypergraph, the hierarchy view and the connections view:

The hierarchy view shows the relationships between nodes as a tree structure.
The connections view shows how the nodes are connected as a web.You can have more than one Hypergraph window open at the same time, but you are still looking at the same scene with the same nodes and connections.

Week 13 Robot arm rigging

Video 1

Video 2

Using the guide of Maya, I've learnt how to animate a mechanical 'crane' in a proper way by using 'skeleton' tool such as the joint tool and IK handle tool , constrain, parenting objects using the Hypergraph : hierarchy, entering the correct keyframe on the timeline so that it can animate just like a normal crane. It was done in a way, relating to a real-life object. In this case, a mechanical arm or a crane used to lift up objects.

Hierarchy Hypergraph of the mechanical arm when collapsed.

Hierarchy Hypergraph of the mechanical arm when expanded.

This also indicate the objects that was parented by the other.

Toy Room

Rendered scene of a toy room.

For my toy room, the scene outside the window was created using a plane with a file mapping. This look like as if there is a garden outside the room/house. Lightings such as point light are used in my room to create the lighting effects.

Hypershade window.

These are all the shades, textures and mappings that are used by the objects in the scene.

Week 12 Beach Ball

Beach ball bouncing on wooden planks animation.

This exercise had taught me on several new things such as setting up a camera view (viewport camera), ramp mapping, bump mapping,lighting and rendering,dope sheet and more.In my opinion, this rendering and animation is one of the most convincing as compared to the others.Although it took quite some time for me to complete this exercise, I am very happy with the outcome.

Image used for file mapping

Image used for bump mapping

Above are the source images used for the wooden plane. Instead of using the 'wood' texture in the 2D map category, I used the file map instead. The second image shown above was used for bump mapping. Bump mapping is used to create protrusion or projection from a flat surface. In this case, bump mapping was used to create the carves and engraves of the wood.

3D Week 11

3D Tennis Ball

This is an animation of a tennis ball going over the net.

This is an animation of a tennis ball going over the net and then bounce off the court.

3D Bouncing Ball

An animation of a bouncing ball with a squash and stretch effect.

1) Why is squash and stretch so useful in animation?
Squash and stretch are very useful in animation because it allows the animation to look even more realistic.The factors for the squash and stretch can determine the animation to look real or cartoon.

2) Think of a situation in which extreme squash and stretch could be applied to a character - try to be original.
A situation in which extreme squash and stretch could be applied to a character will be when the character is jumping or hopping.For example, a bunny that hops across the garden. It will be stretched when in the air and squashed when it hops to the ground.

3) Think of an animation example where squash and stretch would NOT be appropriate

An example will be when a ball is rolling on the ground.This situation does not require a squash and stretch effect as there are no force or pressure that is exerted to the ground.

4) If squash and stretch doesn't really happen so obviously in real life, why do you think is it so effective in animation? 

We could not really see the squash and stretch effect in real life.But in animation, it is so effective because it creates an illusion of force being exerted to the ground(squash) and gravity pull to the air(stretch).