1.1 3D Computer Animation Fundamentals

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Lip Sync Task Brief For this challenge, I had to make a short (one line), 3-10 second, lip syncing performance animation. Beginning with the mouth animation, then the face, head and body animation will follow. By doing this I will be taking the audio clip (from a movie) out of the context that it was …

Lip Sync and Performance Read More »

Shape of The Mouth Issues to Look Out For Too weak mouth movement. Or too strong. Out of sync with the audio, in terms of timing. Doesn’t fit the mood or emphasis that the audio has. The dialogue/audio always comes before the animation. Try to exaggerate the mouth shape on the rig character. Like with …

Phonemes, Visemes, Lip Syncing, and Facial Animation Theoretic Read More »

Advanced Body Mechanics / Anatomy and Movement Working towards a final animation: 1) Building upon your blocked out animation, add breakdown/ in-between poses to help complete arcs (motion) and give rhythm to the animation. 2) Convert you stepped animation to Spline and clean up your curves in the Graph Editor (be careful not to over …

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These include: Switching between IK and FK controls, mid animation. Contacts and locators – e.g. the feet land from a jump, planted to the floor. Holding onto objects in animation Fixing popping in knees and elbows. What are Character sets? Switching between IK and FK To switch between IK and FK, you should first mark …

Learning New Methods/ Techniques in Maya Read More »

When collecting video reference, there are many specifications, do’s and don’t, that will make it better, and more suitable to use as reference for your animation. There is either recorded or secondarily found. Reference with multiple views are more usable, for example, front, side and perspective. Ensuring that the subject is in centre frame, despite …

Collecting Reference Footage Read More »

Reference Footage Notes When creating reference footage for your animation, you should not stick to it 100%. Otherwise you might as well rotoscope it. It is better to get primary references, as long as your skill level and time allows it, second hand footage cannot be controlled by you. Therefore, you can’t alter it or …

Rigs and Body Mechanics Read More »

While all animation has certain styles that portray the character’s personality and emotional psychology in that situation, the type of rig and the extent of which the movements are exaggerated all contribute to the appearance of an animation. If the rig looks like so, then you can clearly see sideways hip rotation and the height …

Walk Cycle Read More »

This challenge entailed completing a (fox-like) ball animation, hopping between platforms, with a tail flip. The animation principles involved are overlap, follow through, secondary action, arcs and squash and stretch. Fox and Tail Animation Tutorial Body Step-by-Step Steps to make a hopping fox between the platforms. Key frame start X- axis animated movement first. 0-8-16-17 …

Hopping Fox and Tail Animation Read More »

Within this task, I have produced a physically realistic chain swinging animation. Research The exact style, speed, distance and volume of the chain swing will depend on the chain’s weight, length, material texture, gravity and outside influences (e.g. wind). For example, the animation above shows a heavier weight that my own, as well as having …

Chain Swinging Animation Read More »

Posing Rigs in Animation These are the final renders and in-scene screenshots from the posing challenge. This task focused on the practical application of positioning the anatomy of a rigged character while using a real-world figure in an image as a reference. The research for this task is on my blog about solid drawing, posing, …

Pose Animation Read More »

I thought about what kind of bouncing ball animation I should make. The options were cartoony (moves of own volition and energy), the realistic (natural laws of physics applied) or somewhere in-between. I chose the last one. An animation where the ball has a sense of gravity but has enough power to move around the …

Bouncing Ball Obstacle Course Read More »

The Bouncing Ball Animation is Determined By: Arcs path of action momentum timing key drawings In-between drawings Weight, speed Substance of an object Frame Count: The up down frame count starts at 10 (it takes 10 frames for the ball to go up 12 units and 10 frames to go down), and decreases by 1 …

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1. Squash and Stretch Speed changes the object depending on the mass. The mass, momentum, speed and weight all determine how much squash and stretch an object has. The amount the object squashes and stretches is determined by its mass. Softer objects will squash more (e.g. water balloon) than stiffer objects (e.g. cannon ball). Volume …

12 Principles of Animation Read More »

Within this blog post, I will analysis the different types of physics within animation, these consist of reality physics, movie physics and cartoon physics. This gives context on what type of animation you are trying to make. MOVIE Physics https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kNqc5Hrh0M&t=141s Within this clip (please skip to T: 2:20s), from The Hobbit: The Battle of the …

Physics in Animation Read More »