This tutorial I found is not really a proper tutorial but seeing that it is Maya and it has helped, I feel that I should share this.
Basically, this video shows us how to change the hotkey for each function. This was extremely useful to me as initially, I was constantly pressing R, only to get the rescale tool when in reality, I wanted the rotate tool. After finding this, I swapped the rescale and rotate hotkeys and now, with the rotate tool being on R, work is much easier for me as I do not unintentionally rescale my work like before.
Light! This in my opinion is what makes models look more life-like. Although it was a very short tutorial, it was effective enough to tell me that directional light creates light in a certain direction which causes objects to cast a shadow accordingly. Having seen this, I gave it a try on Maya and this was what I managed to do.
Also, another good find was that by press T, I could have two areas of movement, the light and the point of aim.
Initially, I had no clue that text could be created on maya. I had an assignment in other subjects that required me to model a product.
And due to this lack of information, the product's name had to be typed outside of the created model. It is only recently did I come across this video that taught me that text could be written on Maya. Not only that, but these text could be textured as well which was another plus side to it. It was a good find but I hoped that I had found it sooner so that I could have done my product modeling better.
While searching youtube for ways to move the camera, I came across this video and I was surprised that this was possible. He simply parent a circle and a camera and he could spin the camera. I had to immediately try this out and this was what I did.
It is nothing fancy but here I learnt a little more about the tricks of parenting. Unfortunately, I was unable to use this new technique for my assignment but nonetheless it was a great find and I am sure that it will come in handy in future.
it made me come up with my idea of changing the camera position various times within a small period of time to create that "shaking" effect.
I am unsure if it was my lack of memory but I feel that thanks to this video, I was to come up with that idea and use it in my animation and I feel that I should share it.
For my assignment, I did scenario four. I continued on from my week 13 work and eventually came up with this piece of work. Basically, seeing that it was a robot arm, I kept the starting really robotic and in a way, "not natural" as I wanted to really portray the arm as a robot. It is only when a problem is faced did I want the movements to be more natural, as if the robot pretends to be a robot when doing its usual task.
Process
As mentioned before, I continued from where I left off in week 13. Having said so, from there on, i added three more boxes as seen at point 1, as well as another box which will actually be hidden, which will appear mid-way through the animation, as seen at point 2. The reason i did not put the box along the same Translate X axis as the first lifted box is because I wanted it to appear mid-way through and if i aligned it, the box would appear from a very far distance which was inappropriate for this context.
Also, I set the resolution of my camera to 640 x 320 as instructed by my teacher. To add on, I zoomed in quite a bit so that the box's movements is hidden a little at the start of the animation. By doing this, I feel that I have created a sense of anticipation as the audience would only see the robot arm moving but, because the box is not seen at that point in time, they will be curious of what will happen thus, anticipate for the action that will follow up.
This is the view when the camera has zoomed out. From this, it sets the stage for the audience, allow them to understand the situation as well as what is going to happen.
Also, as mentioned above, the other box is able to enter the scene normally unlike if it were aligned with the Translate X of the first box for, if it were aligned, the box would have already been seen when the camera first zooms out.
After that, the steps were quite straight-forward. First, I set various key frames to give the animation its key poses.
The cargo arm
The box
As for the camera, where I also set frames to give it that zooming out effect, I had areas where the camera would shake to exaggerate the situation of that time, to give audience's a greater sense of the atmosphere and in a way, make it more appealing. To do this, I set numerous key frames, moving the camera in a random direction each time, as seen below.
After setting all the key frames, I then proceed to trying to make the animation more natural. For the starting, I did not change anything as I wanted to keep that robotic feel to make it seem like the robot is only pretending to be robotic when it can actually move normally later on. For the following frames after the first 180, I edited the graph editor by smoothing out certain areas as well as defining other ones.
Here I added a frame(red curve) and tweaked it till it had a nicer curve so as to give the cargo-box and ease-in effect. I did not do an ease out for this particular box as the camera will not be facing the box at that point of time.
Another example of the edits in graph editor. Here, I wanted the cargo box to seem like it was forcefully hitting the cargo belt, being so, the action was fast and thus, I made it more pointed.
Followed by slightly giving it a curve at each end of the frame to have that ease-out ease-in effect.
Overall, that is how I did my animation. I finished things off by texturing the boxes and the plane, as well as removed the sightings of "ArmControl", "camera1", etc, from the playblast file so that it looked nicer and more professional.
Critic
On the positive side, I feel that my animation is fairly interesting and fun to watch. I am surprised with myself for using the ability to moved the camera to my advantage, by giving my animation an earthquake-like effect. I felt that this aspect made my work very unique and allowed me to create that humorous spark as well as a slight exaggeration to create that kick of drama and appeal. Also, in terms of timing, I am quite satisfied with my work as, being someone who aims for perfect timing, such as when movies are watched and a particular scene occurs at the right time, not too early, not too late, I consider my work to be quite well thought out, taking into account that I am still a rookie at animation. The change of events seem to happen at the correct time and although there we a little off points, such as when the cargo box turns to look at the crashed box,which I felt was too fast, it was quite good.
However, on the negative side of things, I feel that there were many ways that I could improve my animation.
Firstly, I should give my magnet the squash-and-stretch effect when picking up the box. Initially, I thought that since it was a magnet, it should be a firm structure but after having a look at my friend's work, I realize that adding this effect in would greatly improve my animation.
Also, I should add a stretch-effect to the box when it speeds out of the scene. Now, the box simply speeds out of screen, keeping its shape. If I stretched it a little as it speeds out, it further shows the "intensity" of how fast it was traveling which would make the crash more believable.
To add on, my animation on a whole was not very smooth. By having several fast movements in my animation, like the robotic arm hitting the cargo belt and the box speeding out, I wanted to create actions that were abrupt and sudden and by doing that, it was difficult to create those actions but still maintain a smooth animation. I am certain that this is possible to accomplished but unfortunately, my lack of animation skills created a blockage to this accomplishment.
In all, my animation is focused mainly on timing and camera skills where the timing of each event and change of event made the animation, in my opinion, good, while the camera skills made it funny due to the exaggerations created from it. Also, through "shaking" the camera, I was able to create stronger looking effects that I feel squash-and-stretch could not.
Reflection
Like all animation, in my opinion, this assignment was easy but difficult to perfect. Having gone through this process, I am amazed and scared of the work animators have to go through. It was very easy to set key poses for each element at various time frames but timing them was hard. Being someone that critics movies based on the timing of scenes a well as the timing between each scene transaction, I was very critical with myself and worked hard to achieve the timing I wanted. Even now, although my animation is satisfactory to me, it is only after considering that I am a rookie in animation. What shocks me is that animators have work that go on for minutes while my animation was only seconds.
Also, I feel that there much that I can still learn about animation, namely that of the technical aspects, like squash-and-stretch effects. Despite creating exaggeration by using the camera, it is an irony that I was unwilling to create exaggeration by using squash-and-stretch not because I was unable to, but rather, because I felt that in real life, cargo boxes cannot be squashed and flattened for they are metal and solid. This applies for the magnet too. Being so, I decided to create stage effect rather than item effects, where I shook the camera instead of squash the magnet to let audiences' feel the intensity of the hit.
Ultimately, I am proud to have been so imaginative and critical about timings ever since I was young, for it has helped me in this assignment, allowing me to achieve effects that I never would have thought of. I will improve on my animating skills namely the technical aspects, as I feel that these are the things that are holding me back from creating animations that I thought up.
The same as for scenario 1, the robot is busy stacking boxes.
However, in this case, once the robot has finished stacking a box, the remaining boxes do NOT move forward.
Animate the reaction of the robot, and how it deals with this sudden turn of events.
Character
I have decided to name my robot Lifty for he is a robot that lifts and apparently, these are his thoughts on his work.
"Moving boxes again. Lift.Lift.Lift. I wonder if there is something out there I can do other than this. Maybe I could ask my creator the next time he shows up. If he does that is. Oh well, I guess I should stop thinking too much and do my job, my non-paying job. Why do I even need money?
Argh, all these lifting is making my joints hurt."
Judging by his thoughts, it can be seen that Lifty is carefree and quite easygoing. His questions to himself are replied by himself. I wonder if this reciprocates in real-life. Does he solve his own problems?
