Week 13

. : : Process : : .

Due to not saving at intervals, I only can take screenshots from certain places and use the final model as an example as well.

In the above picture, I created a skeleton - joint and positioned it as such as shown above at the
joints of the mechanical arms. After that, I created an IK Handle as shown as the brown line above.


If we leave the joint alone without attaching to the model, only the joint will move and not the actual model. Thus, what you see above is me selecting the object then shift click the joints at that location and pressing "P" to parent them. This is done for the rest of the whole object.



Next, we create a controller with a curve>circle and freeze the transformations. This circle will be the invisible controller of the robot (at that area). In the above image, the bigger circle controls the linear and vertical movement of the crane head while the smaller one controls the rotation. These are called constraints and...


This is how we create a constraint. I created a point constraint for the bigger circle and an orient for the circle one to move it linear-ly and rotate on the xyz axis respectively. From there, we are pretty much ready to go for the animation.

For the animation, I added keyframes on the controllers instead of the object itself. I also applied some principles of animation (e.g. slow in slow out when picking the crate) to make it look more realistic. See the video above.

Exercise 4:

1) Apart from their different sizes, it is obvious from Luxo Jr. that the big lamp is “older” and that the small lamp is “younger”.

How is this communicated by the animation? Give at least THREE examples.

Do NOT say because the small lamp is playing with a ball, or that its name is Luxo Jr. – you should be looking at the animation, how the lamps move and emote (emote means to express emotions).

The bigger lamp shows larger but slower movement when compared to the smaller lamp that does child-like movements such as leaping continuously, shaking its "butt" and stepping on it while the larger lamp observes more. (e.g. child does not think much of the consequences while adults tend to observe and analyze the situation) When the ball is deflated, the smaller lamp gets really sad while the larger lamp shakes its head. (Depicting an adult saying that "you caused this yourself" while the child is crying because he lost his favorite toy)

2) Give an example from Luxo Jr of how timing is used for comic effect. Explain how the timing decisions contribute to the humour.

When the first ball was deflated, the animation shows the smaller lamp being really sad, and this sets the mood from hyper to emotional, all the actions made by the smaller lamp seem to slow down. However, soon, the larger lamp displays a shock emotion and suddenly a larger ball flies by. This is an example on how timing can be used to make it funny. Another example is when larger lamp looks at the camera and then slowly looks down and shakes his head.

3) When you create a joint chain, these form a hierarchy, with the first joint at the top and the last joint at the bottom. Explain why this is necessary for the joints to work properly.

A good example to explain would be a finger. Which is very similar to how the crane performs.
If we do not have the joint near our knuckles, we would not be able to move the joint that allows us to bend our fingers into a "C" and if that joint is missing we wont be able to move our last joint near our fingernails.