28/01/13 - Bones

In todays session we learnt about animation using Bones and Kinematics. Both of these allow for easier, faster and much smoother animation than would be possible through manipulation of each bone individually.

We were presented with a demonstration of where problems can arise, in this case creating a simple walk animation for one leg without a kinematic solver. We were shown how to create bones and how subsequent bones in a chain are subject to their parents movement. We were then shown how you'd go about animating a set-up like this; through a painstaking process of gradual movement and keyframing for both bones in the leg. The result was less than ideal. We were tasked with attempting the same thing ourselves.

After we had all tried our best, unsatisfactorily, we were introduced to Kinematic Solvers. These allow you to create a fixed point on a chain of bones around which they will maneuver.


There are two types of kinematics:

1) Forward Kinematics (FK)

- Controls bone chain from the top-down

2) Inverse Kinematics (IK)

- Controls bone chain from bottom-up

We were then instructed with the setting up of a Kinematic solver and asked to do the same task of animating the leg, the results speak for themselves:

As you can see the non-kinematic leg (left) pales in comparison to the smooth bend of the kinematic leg (right)

Overlapping Action (Tail)

Chain of bones (Forward kinematics)

Animate rotation

Looks mechanical and unnatural

Offset the rotation by one frame for each bone in the chain

Result gives weight and realism to movement

Making further changes to individual bones can create believable and interesting movements

Bunny Rig

Co-ordinate system (Gimbal/View/Parent)

Example of a well rigged model that uses controls for easy animation.

21/01/13 - "Football! YEAH"

In today's session we created an animation for a football. Our lesson started with a demonstration of how to change the view-port to a setup more suitable for our needs:

From the standard 4 view-ports we have gone to this two view-port setup which includes a perspective view and the graph editor, which lets you view all your animation keyframes and even manipulate them, allowing you to make adjustments to an animation without having to enter the 3D workspace.

The animation we made was simply a ball flying into view and bouncing on the floor. We learnt about adjusting the animation curves for objects, given that animations tend to be created with an 'ease-in, ease-out' curve which was unsuitable in this instance. The football needed to both enter the scene at a constant speed, as well as maintaining its speed when it bounced, for this we had to use a linear curve, meaning it was constant.

This animation demonstrates one of the principles mentioned in the previous post: Bounce and Stretch.

14/01/13 - 12 Principles of Animation

Today we were introduced to some fundamental techniques that can be applied to our animations to make them more believable, through the 12 principles of animation. We were shown several videos demonstrating some but not all of these principles, after which we were asked to research more into these principles, here's what i found:

The 12 Principles of Animation

The 12 Principles of Animation are a set of principles that examine the ways in which an animation can be created in a believable and emotionally appealing way. The principles were introduced by two Disney animators, Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas, who studied the work of Disney animators from the 1930s and on to create their book titled, "The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation". These principles were, and to this day still are relevant to anyone animating their work, be it hand-drawn or digital.

Below you can see a list of these principles with a brief explanation of each found next to it:

Squash and Stretch

Squash and stretch are fundamental techniques used by animators to give their subjects weigh and flexibility.

Anticipation

Anticipation is something that can sometimes be overlooked by less experienced animators (myself included.) It is the crouch before the jump, the back-swing before the golfer hit's the ball. The anticipation refers to the 'preparation' of a subject to perform an action.

Staging

Staging references the same principles used in film and theatre, to keep the audiences attention focussed on what is important. This is done through many variables such as the camera angle, focus, the subject position and more.

Straight Ahead Action and Pose to Pose


Straight ahead action refers to the creation of an animation frame-by-frame, allowing in drawn animation for more fluidity when compared to the results achieved by the second type; Pose to pose. This technique uses 'keyframed' animations that will then have their intermediate frames "filled in". Computer animation tends to use Pose to pose as the blank frames can be filled in automatically.  

Follow-Through and Overlapping Action


Follow through is the tendency for parts of a subject to continue moving after the subject itself has stopped, ie. long hair flowing in front of a character who comes to a sudden halt when running. Overlapping action refers to exactly what it says, the overlapping of various actions such as hair following the movement of the character it's attached to as they run.  

Slow in and Slow out


This refers to the need for objects to accelerate and decelerate from their movements. The frame distribution for a character jumping in the air will be more dense at the beginning and end of the jump, emphasising the easing in and easing out of the action.

Arcs


Arcs can be found in most actions, meaning that to make a convincing animation this will need to be taken into account.

Secondary Animation


Secondary animation is any extra detail you can give to an animation that adds to it, without taking emphasis away from the primary action. Like having a character who's sad, walking along with their head bent forward. This animation would be emphasised by reflecting the characters sadness through their facial expression, or through having their arms hang loosely from their shoulders.

Timing


Timing refers to the number of frames allotted to an action. The number of frames affects the speed of the action and in turn, the believability of said action, although of course a lack of realism is sometimes the aim when animating.

Exaggeration


Exaggeration is a tool used by animators to create a more interesting style of movement for their subject, taking the way such an objects realistic movement and exaggerating it. This can be useful for conveying emotions and moods as well.

Solid Design


Solid design simply refers to an animator having the knowledge necessary to create realistic animations. Things like taking into account the weight, scale, and shape of a character are all things that an animator should be familiar with.

Appeal

Appeal is exactly that, the appeal that a character has with it's audience. Animation can play a key part in the appeal of a character, exaggeration making a characters motives more apparent is one way.

These are all excellent things to know when creating an animation, and i believe now knowing about these, that i will see great improvements in what i will be able to achieve in my animations.

07/01/13

In our first taste of 3d animation we were introduced to the basics of animating using Autodesks 3DS Max 2013.

We were shown the Autokey function, which as may be fairly obvious, automatically creates animation keyframes whenever you change the frame number and alter some property of your object. After which we were asked to create a sphere and animate it moving around. We then 'linked' some more spheres we had used to create 'eyes' for our spheres, using the Link button, found in the top-left of the default Max layout. This allowed the eyes to stay with our creatures, along the animation path we had already created for what had become our 'body' sphere. You can see a screenshot of what my screen looked like when we'd finished below.

We were then shown how to render our scenes to an avi video and asked to do the same for our own animations. This is simply a process of going into the render settings and setting it to render a batch of frames rather than a single image.

After this we were walked through the creation of the basic shape of a freight container, this renewed previous knowledge we had gained last year on using the inset and extrude tools. Here's the result:

After this we were asked to animate the doors opening and closing, i created something a little more complex than that, but only after i'd restarted the program due to it being unable to change the pivot points that would allow the doors to rotate as if on a hinge.

Finally we were shown how to unwrap our shipping containers, then tasked with doing the same thing ourselves, this was something else that we were shown how to do last year but as always i was grateful for the recap. Through the process of Flat Mapping the UVs, exporting them to an image then painting over them i was able to create the (admittedly, due to my over enthusiasm for the animating parts, slightly rushed) result you see below.

Once again we rendered the results:

Having dabbled in animation before (though not for a long time), i found this session to be a great way to rekindle my interest in the area.