Video Reference Practice (Homework #5)
Here are some files that we’ll use today to discuss video reference to help with animating tricky shots.
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Lip-Sync Links
We’ll be talking about some face-animation and lip-sync concepts today — audio files should be .wav or .aiff (and still may not load if encoded in a standard that Maya does not recognize).- Here are slides for today’s discussion.
- Here are some files we may use for example.
- Here’s one website that has a collection of movie quotes in .wav format.
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Fall 2014 Project #2: Character Animation Skills
Two well animated shots:- Walk cycle animated to indicate an emotion, mood, or performance (happy, sad, sneak, gallop, run, etcetera). See chapter 5 in Character Animation Fundamentals as well as The Animator’s Survival Kit for more information and examples. Work to convey your chosen mood here — avoid just keyframing and calling it something after the fact.
- Performance Piece with Lip-Sync: Choose a favorite line from a film or game or record your own dialogue. Have your character act a performance that somehow connects to the dialogue — be creative! Convey as much emotion through primary animation moving down to secondary, then key-frame lip-sync performance to the dialogue for the final touches along with facial animation to convey the full emotion of the acting.
- Walk cycle animated to indicate an emotion, mood, or performance (happy, sad, sneak, gallop, run, etcetera). See chapter 5 in Character Animation Fundamentals as well as The Animator’s Survival Kit for more information and examples. Work to convey your chosen mood here — avoid just keyframing and calling it something after the fact.
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Today’s class: Animation Workflow, Walk Cycles, and Production Setup
We’ll discuss production setup with Shotgun a bit today as well as workflow for animating a shot, then work through a walk-cycle example.
Here’s a very basic example of a walk-cycle, a fundamental animation exercise. Read chapter 5 in Character Animation Fundamentals as well as refer to The Animator’s Survival Kit or other texts for good references. Here are some excerpts. Grab these, and do not share outside of the class. (I’m going to take the link down soon).
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Shotgun Setup
Things are getting setup for both productions on Shotgun. In the meantime, you can login and check-out the sample Big Buck Bunny project. -
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Fall 2014 Homework #4: Dive
- Read chapter 4 in both the Character Animation book and HTCM book.
- Animate the dive from chapter 4 of the Character Animation text.
- Use either the Goon, Groggy, or Hotel T Zombie.
- Add interesting environment details, lighting, and shading that render to create a high-quality scene.
- Render an image sequence and assemble to a 1280×720 h.264 movie file.
- Submit to your Dropbox by Wednesday, October 15.
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Hotel Transylvania Zombie Rig!
Sony Pictures Animation and Imageworks through IPAX have offered up one of their feature-film rigs for your fun (and possible contest entries). This is good timing for this class, as you can use it in any of your upcoming homework or projects! Also, here’s a link to a video where animator Chad Stewart steps through the Zombie rig.
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No Class Meeting Monday, October 6
As mentioned in the email, there will be no class meeting today. We should have a regular class meeting on Wednesday. For today, please watch these two videos that offer some good information about animating a lift movement in Maya, also using constraints to help the character’s hands move relative to a prop (rather than a prop relative to a hand). Make sure that you have completed all homework and web exercises up to this point before class on Wednesday and bring any questions about animation work in Maya so far. Also, production crew — bring list of assets, any updates to concept art, and any updates to storyboards and animatics. We’ll plan to setup things in Shotgun on Wednesday for the productions. For bonus credit, after watching the videos above, complete another lift movement using parent constraints for prop movement using a rig other than the Goon or Groggy. (It could be another rig included from the book downloads, or a free Maya rig from creativecrash.com). -
Web Exercise #3
There will be no class meeting on Friday, October 3. In lieu of meeting, complete the following:- Finish any remaining animation that you need to do on the web-exercises from earlier in the week and post the rendered or play-blasted movies as detailed.
- Develop your best version from Web Exercise #2 into the full lift animation for your homework #3 including all of the body movement, secondary animation, and prop movement. (If you do not wish to key-frame the object to follow the character’s hand or hands, which can be quite tricky, you may wish to look ahead a few chapters in the HTCM book for the chapters about props and parent-constraints where examples are given for parent-constraining a prop to a character’s hand to help it move along together).
- Prepare, finish, and post any remaining work from your web exercises and homework by Monday at class time and also have your movies ready to present in class.