Week 1 - Introduction
During the first session we learnt the basics of animation in Maya, from the time slider to creating and editing key frames. The above images show motion trails and the graph editor. These are both tools that can be used when animating to get more control and visualization.
The focus of the first exercise was to gain an understanding of basic animation techniques, using things like squash and stretch, and timing. These techniques can be used to create realistic and believable animation, timing helps give a sense of mass and squash and stretch helps to sell motion.
Playblasts of the two animation exercises:
Week 2 - Obstacle Course
Using a rigged sphere that has controls for squash and stretch, as well as rotation and transformation, I created an animation of a ball interacting with a basic environment. The above animation was lit and rendered with Arnold.
Above is a playblast of the animation, you can also see the motion trail created by the animation.
Week 3 - Sack of Flour and Arm Rig
We were given a rigged flour sack model. The controls on the model allowed us to manipulate various parts of the model, this enabled us to bring the model to life by animating the various parts of the sack. I decided to animate the sack leaning over a wall and looking around. I also animated the camera to follow the 'head' movements of the sack, this accentuated the animation slightly.
Next we created a simple arm rig. To do this we placed a variety of cube primitives to form the shape of a hand and fingers, we then moved the pivot points of the objects to the correct place. Then we parented the pieces together, having the upper arm as the parent of all the pieces, with the forearm being the parent of the hand and all the fingers and so on. The animation focuses on using the follow through technique, using this technique gives the animation a smoother more realistic look.
Week 4 - IK Rigs
The above animation was created using an arm and hand rig that uses Inverse kinematics. The screenshot and animations below show a simple IK setup.
Week 5 - Posing & Head turn
For this and following weeks we have used the 'Eleven' rig, this is an opensource rig available online. It has controls that are commonly seen on characters used in industry, including a simple facial rig.
The renders above are of various poses, the idea of this pose exercise was to familiarise ourselves with the rig and its controls.
The above animation is of a simple head turn. While animating this sequence I concentrated on adding a good amount of secondary motion/animation, these small details, such as a blink or a slight head movement, add to the realism of the animation.
Week 6 - Walk cycle
The aim of this weeks task was to create a simple walk cycle using the Eleven rig. Using reference images like the one below ensured that we included all of the parts that make up a walk. I am pleased with the outcome as I managed to include some character to the animation as well as the basic walk.
Week 7&8 - Weight Lifting
The aim of this weeks task was to create an animation of a character lifting any kind of weight. The challenge with this was depicting the mass of an object solely through animation. Below is a handful of examples of my final animation.
I am pleased with the outcome of this task, as I believe that I successfully portrayed a character interacting with a heavy object. It was interesting using various techniques to create the illusion of a heavy object.
11 Second Animation
For this assignment we had to choose an 11 second clip to animate to. I chose the November 2019 11 second club competition sound clip. Below is the final animation and a breakdown of the animation process.
After picking the sound clip (Transcript: Voice 1: Could you sit down please?
Voice 2: I, I, I, I want to. I’m trying.
Voice 1: Could you try harder?
Voice 2: Ah, yes. Oh, okay. I’ll just use, ah, this trash can. There’s, you know, there’s … hardly any trash in there at all.) I decided on an scene in an office, with the person sitting at the desk asking someone to sit down when there isn't another chair in the office. With the idea in place I started by modelling the environment that the animation would take place in. I built the environment and models in Maya and used Substance Painter for some of the textures, below are a few screenshots showing this process.
Before animating I planned and setup the camera positions and moves, this allowed me to save some time when animating, as when a character wasn't in shot they wouldn't need to be animated. I then began animating, I worked through the sound clip chronologically, initially blocking out the movements of characters, then going on to add detail and character. Another upside of having the camera moves setup was that I could move the characters around with the need for a walk cycle, or taking too much time away from actions more important to the story.
The final stage of the animation process was to lip sync with the audio. I decided to do this separate from the motion so that I would be fully focused on each, rather than worrying about both at the same time. I used the phoneme chart below to help with the lip syncing. The key to the lip syncing was making sure not to use every phoneme for every word and letter, rather moving between them and focusing on the letters that were accentuated in the audio.
