Homework #4: Dive
Animate the dive exercise (starting on page 199 in the Character Animation book). Now due by Monday at the start of class.
-
-
Walk Cycle
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 quickly, and please do not share outside of the class. I’m going to take the link down soon. -
-
Useful Links
- Character animation book online extras.
- HTCM book resources including goon and groggy rigs.
- Other sources of free rigs to consider: 1-Second Club, Creative Crash, and Lester Bank’s blog post.
- Free tools for exporting movie files from image sequences (mileage may vary): Sequimago (Mac), Framed X (Mac), VirtualDub (PC). You can also use Quicktime Pro 7, Final Cut Pro, Premiere Pro, After Effects, etc. (set still image duration to 1 frame) or even the powerhouse Windows Movie Maker (set rate to 1/24 sec per frame) — some of these may still be installed in the lab (but this summer things may be a bit iffy on the extra installs down there).
-
Summer 2014: Homework #3
Read:- Chapter 3 on the graph editor in How to Cheat in Maya 2013.
- Chapter 6 on rigs in How to Cheat in Maya 2013.
- Chapter 3 on basic character movement in Character Animation Fundamentals.
- Download the rigs from the HowToCheatInMaya.com site (3D Assets Rig at the top of the files/chapters list).
- Read through chapter 6 on rigs as above and experiment with the controls (some translate, some rotate, etc). Also, make sure to check the forward kinematics / inverse kinematics discussion (and possibly read Maya help, etc) in chapter 6.
- Animate the “lift” exercise from chapter 3 in Character Animation Fundamentals using either the goon rig or groggy rig from the How to Cheat in Maya rigs that you downloaded. (It’s not necessary, but you may find chapter 5 in HTCM on constraints useful for a parent constraint to help with the object tracking the hands).
- Add some interest to your clip with a floor, shaders, lighting, and polished render settings. Render your image sequence and create a 1280 x 720 h.264 .mov file. Include this movie file in the movies folder of your Maya project folder and upload the Maya project folder (delete old scene files and image sequences) to your Dropbox submission for 320_LASTNAME_H3 folder. [Again, create rendered image sequences to assemble into .mov file, if possible, but playblast if you don't remember this or haven't covered it, yet].
-
Productions…
And the choices are… well, you’ll just have to wait until class tomorrow. ;-) -
Summer 2014: Homework #2
Read:- Chapters 1-2 in How to Cheat in Maya that discusses basic Maya animation, splines and tangents for making animation changes in the Graph Editor.
- Chapters 1-2 in Character Animation that discusses basic animation, matter, weight, and timing.
- Choose two or three of the ball movements (or splash) from chapter 2 in Character Animation. Complete one as a hand-drawn animation (this is only an optional bonus for summer) and the other two (required for summer) as 3D animations in Maya. Use the graph editor to work on your timing. Attempt through your key-framing and graph-editing to use as many of the principles of animation discussed in class (and ch 1 of How To…).
- Place your three 1280×720 h.264 .mov files in your 320_LASTNAME_H2 Dropbox folder. This time, also include your Maya project folder (but make sure to remove all but your most recent Maya scene file and any extra renders, etc. before submitting). [Render image sequences and create .mov files, if possible, but if you have trouble with this, generate a Playblast .mov file using the “save to file” option under Window->Playblast.
-
Summer 2014: Dropbox Invites
Invites have been sent, so you should have received two shared folder invites. One with your name that you’ll share just for submitting assignments by placing them in that folder. Call them LASTNAME_320_H1, LASTNAME_320_P1, etc. The second invite is for the group production folder that we’ll use very shortly to organize assets if needed. Some of this may be handled by Shotgun, though. You’ll have your accounts set up for that in the next couple days. If you haven’t received the invites, check your inbox (and/or spam folder) carefully and let me know in class tomorrow (Wed). -
Dropbox and Shotgun
We’ll be using two resources to manage our production this session:- Dropbox will be used both to submit assignments and coordinate production assets as needed. We’ll discuss setting up accounts for this tomorrow.
- Shotgun will be used for our production pipeline management. Our site is digitalarts.shotgunstudio.com — I’ll need to get everyone setup in this, too, before we can start using it. Hopefully tomorrow as well.
-
Summer 2014: Project 1
Here is a story packet guide to be discussed in class, and here are some notes for roughly what we’ll cover before the first quiz this Thursday. Complete the following:- Complete, post, and submit via Dropbox your story pack, consisting of the following:
- — A .pdf file that includes the title, premise, and treatment. (All programs on MacOS may print to PDF. On Windows, use Acrobat or a free program such as CutePDF).
- — The same file (or another .pdf) should include the script with proper industry formatting (consider something like Trelby if needed).
- — The same file (or another .pdf) should include the shot list with framing descriptions and also storyboard illustrations (with 16:9 or 1.85 aspect-ratio frames, one per page). For bonus, also complete overheads for each scene.
- — The same file (or another .pdf) should also include at least one color-key per scene.
- — (optional summer bonus) A movie file (1280 x 720 H.264 Quicktime .mov) that contains the animatic with possibly rough sound and/or dialogue.
- (All of the above should be in one folder named 320_YOURLASTNAME_P1_STORYTITLE with clearly named documents).
- [Optional bonus assignment for summer] Create a web portfolio space of some kind to post media developed for this course and that could be used afterwards to show your work. You may create your own site using HTML, CSS, etc. and host it on your student web space or use some third party setup that could include hosts such as Carbonmade. It may be simple, now, but work to make it a clean and professional portfolio-style site rather than a blog, etc.
- Complete, post, and submit via Dropbox your story pack, consisting of the following: