Unit 12: Character Animation
Ball Animations
Rig Testing
Facial expressions/head turn
Climbing stairs
Lifting a weight
Bouncy
Bouncy and heavy
Bouncy, heavy and balloon
Anticipation
This animation firstly shows the bouncy ball on its own which is the first ball that I created and animated.
Here is the animation for the bouncy and heavy ball together as I decided to keep them together to compare them instead of making them separate files or animating them separately.
This animation includes all three balls, and just like the animation before I decided to keep them all together instead of having them separate to compare them and show the difference between all of them at the same time.
Here I used the basic humanoid model that can be taken from the Maya content browser and used auto rig on it. Then I created a small ball and made it go towards it, which gave me the chance to animate the face looking towards it in anticipation and then moving its hand in the direction the ball is headed to be able to catch it.
We were given a rig called the Eleven rig which we could use to make more detailed animations including facial expressions. This is an example animation of which facial expressions could be achieved with this rig.
This animation is the initial animation I made for climbing stairs. It is not detailed as at this point I had only animated the stair climbing part and not other body parts to make it look more realistic and humanlike.
However, in this second animation I used a different animation as reference to try and make mine look more realistic and decided to animate the back and the arms to add more movement to the rig.
Here I animated the Eleven rig picking up a rig. Instead of starting next to the weight I decided to animate it walking up to it. Once it walked up to it I decided to animate it taking a step back to lift the weight as many people do because they walk up too close to it. To animate the weight lifting part I decided to constrain the weight to the hands so that it would moved when they moved. However, I had to change this setting on the frame before when it was going to move so that it didn't move alongside the hands throughout the whole animation and only moved when I wanted it to.
Animation Idea
I am going to use the famous "Over 9000" scene from Dragon Ball Z to create an animation based on the audio from it.I chose this scene because I believe that the tone in which the phrases are said is in angered, which is a strong emotion that can be effectively expressed through facial expressions and body motions.
The rig I will use for my animation is "Max for Maya", which I found at the 11 second club. I chose this rig over the rig we were given and were originally using because it is a more functional rig and it allows more control over what the character does, as it has a wider variety of features.
Animation
Start
Line 1
Line 2
Line 3
Final render
Final playblast
Animation Style Research
Monsters inc
Despicable Me
Pocoyo
Blend shapes
Graph editor
Constrain experimentation
Evaluation
The goal of this project was to learn about the basics of animation and create a final animation with facial expressions based on a short audio clip. The part that I enjoyed the most of this project was doing each animation as I enjoyed figuring out how I had to do every movement as well as how to make it look realistic. Throughout this project I learned about animating in Maya and using rigs to create animations. I also learned how to use real movements as reference to make the movements seem more natural and realistic instead of static and robotic. I didn't experience many problems if any at all as I understood the animation process well and didn't struggle with any of the animations I created. If I could start over I would develop my final animation and add some more expressions to the bodies and expressions of both characters, as well as maybe look for some more detailed rigs to increase the overall quality of the final animation of this project.
Monsters Inc has the most complex animation, as it deals with creatures instead of humans and is more difficult to recreate. The animation is fluid and natural despite being creatures that do not exist, and its complexity can be shown through the variety of different creatures that can be seen as well as the complexity of some of the models, such as the main character Sully and his fur, which I found out through research that his fur was difficult to get to move correctly when animating. This animation is mostly aimed at a young audience.
Despicable Me has the most realistic animation of the three animations that I have researched, as it deals mostly with humans and thus is not as complex to animate as Monsters Inc, yet still has certain complexity to it. Despicable Me is an animation that is aimed at a young audience.
Pocoyo has the most simple animation style out of the three animations that I have researched. As it is aimed at a really young audience, its animation is really simple and does not have the level of complexity that the others have.