NJ AAUG Meeting

I attended the New Jersey Autodesk Animation Users Group meeting on October 22 and found a lot of the things that were discussed very interesting, though most of them were far over my head. It seemed as though everybody there had far more experience than I have with animation, though I found a lot of the concepts interesting and they made me want to experiment a lot more with using other programs to composite animations and add to them. I hope some day I will be able to get to a skill level of some of the people who showed their work and participated in the discussions at the meeting.

Lowman vs. Lowman Final Documentation

Abstract:

For my final project I used lights, camera animation and detailed animation of the Lowman rig to have two people fighting one another.

Production Log:

This project started as a simple animation of the Lowman rig punching and it quickly evolved into something more. After animating a couple more punches, I decided it would be fun and interesting to have two Lowmen fighting one another (or at least have one get beat up by another). The first step was to finish animating the first Lowman, who would be the eventual winner of the bout. As this project required very little modeling from, I was able to start animating from the beginning. After some hours working on making the first Lowman's punches look realistic, I added in an uppercut and a kick that required a lot of tweaking to look smooth. I then added in a stance animation of Lowman bobbing up and down with his hands up, ready to fight in between these animations to add more motion and more realism.

However, without anyone to fight, Lowman was just practicing his punches and kicks. So I copied the Lowman I had and pasted him facing off against the first Lowman. I had to delete most of the animations from the second Lowman as he would simply mirror the first. Then came the hard part: making this second Lowman realistically react to the first's attacks. The first step was to have Lowman's head bob back when he was punched as well as his body arching with each blow. Having the rig move so it looked like he was being hit required numerous deletions and reworks to get it to look just right. I had each blow have more and more effect on the Lowman and made it so that after each hit, he would be knocked back even more and even slouch in fatigue lower and lower. This ended with the second Lowman clearly unable to fight after the first's uppercut and then with him being knocked down and out by the first's final kick. Definitely the hardest part of the animation was getting the second Lowman to fall realistically. This required the most retries and the most thinking in terms of what looks real and wnat actually works for animation. Numerous tests of how far the keyframe for the fall should be from the keyframe of him getting initially hit were done and I had to keyframe his individual limbs to flop down after his body hit the floor.

After this, I simply added details. The first was the camera swooping around the two Lowmen fighting. To do this, I created a three-point arc around the Lowmen and had it move closer to them towards the end of the animation. I then created a camera, positioned it and constrained it's aim on the first Lowman so it would always be focusing on the fight. Then I attached the camera to the arc and with a few tweaks I had a camera movement around the fight.

Then, I added in the simple building they were in. To do this, I created a plane for them to stand on and a box to show as walls around them. I then added in soft ambient lighting and a spot light overhead for a more dramatic effect. Lastly, I colored the first Lowman red and the second Blue simply for aesthetic value and rendered the animation with a slight motion blur.

Self-Evaluation:
My animation is short and I think if I had a lot of extra time I could have modeled my own models and rigged them to fight like this. The problem is that I scrapped another idea in the middle in order to work on this fight scene. I wish I was able to make the Lowmen look more different and perhaps add in a more detailed-looking environment around them. I am fairly happy with how it looks so far though and hope to do more work on it in the future to add to the scene.

Lowman vs. Lowman

Flying Monster Midterm Documentation

Abstract:
My midterm project consisted mostly of modeling a small, blue, flying monster. I then animated the monster to flap its wings, glide and do a loop in the air before gliding off-screen.

Production Log:
I started off working on this project with a NURBS sphere. Using CVs, I then molded the sphere into the monster. I started by dipping the mouth into the sphere and pulling wings out of the sides. I also pulled horns and a tail from the sphere as well as molded a brow and a spine-like bone structure on the monsters back. With a good amount of fine-tuning, I had a pretty good shape of what the monster would look like in a basic state.

I then added things like a nose--which I also molded to have nostrils--eyes, teeth and a tongue. These received a good amount of work in order to add character to the monster. For instance, I scaled the teeth to go back into the mouth as well as scaled out fangs. I used CVs to change the tongue so that it looked more like an actual tongue and less like a squashed sphere. I also gave the eyes lower eyelids for detail. After this, I added material attributes to the monster, like lambert for its skin and phong for its eyes and teeth so that they shined. I also added a blue color to its skin and nose to add a little more character. On top of this, I put effects on the eyes of the creature so that they would glow red once rendered.

Once I was finished tweaking the model, I got to work animating it. I started by having the monster bob up and down in a floating motion. I then manipulated CVs and used keyframes to make it flap its wings with the bobbing motion. The wings required that I use the move, scale and rotate tools for a realistic flapping motion. In order to give more life to the monster, I also made it rotate forward when in a downward motion and backward when in an upward motion. In addition, I made the mouth move slightly, though it is difficult to see in the animation. Lastly, I animated the tail to bob in time with the wing flaps; the monsters way of keeping balance, one might imagine.

I then used more keyframes to have the monster pause in mid-air and glide forward into a loop. The glide, simply required using the rotate and move tools, but the loop was much more complex. In order to get the loop to be one smooth motion, I needed to make sure the speed into the loop was accurate, which meant placing accurate keyframes. I manipulated the pivot of the grouped monster model in order to have it spin around it and set keyframes that would not slow down the animation. I animated the monster to slightly flap its wings downward in mid-loop to add another layer of realism to its flight. I then animated the monster's exit from the loop, which took some work to keep it from looking too jagged and quick.

After this, I added in the background and spot lights to mimic the beams of light seen in the background. If you look carefully, you can see a shadow move across the monster's back as it passes from one beam of light to the next. I tried to make this subtle and in-tune with the background. I then placed the camera to get the best view of the monster's flight and rendered the project.

Self-Evaluation:
After finishing work on the animation, I find myself a little disappointed in the length of the animation. I think that if I had worked faster (maybe if I knew the program a little better) I might have been able to get more work done and add in extra scenes of animation. Hopefully I can make some additions later on and extend the length of the animation. I also wish I was able to make the monster a little more realistic in terms of its model. I would like to have known how to add in realistic looking hair. Also, building the model with a rig would have benefited me greatly when animating. Some of my limitations came directly out of the fact that I was only using a NURBS model.

Flying Monster Model

Bear Monster with Sword Model

Bouncing Ball