Week 12

Exercise 1:
We were supposed to watch a 13 part video on youtube. But I've noticed that before this exercise I have already watched it.. I would say I was most interested in the bump-maps part and the lighting.

Exercise 2:

1)

The word "good" is ambiguous.

We do not need to have good drawing skills to develop good animation. But to have good drawing skills to develop smooth and lively scenes. Many people have said that digital art will still require traditional art techniques - and this statement is what I believe in. Therefore, even we have bad drawing skills, it is possible it develop a good animation but will be nowhere great or better than those who can draw well.

2)

No we do not. However, we must know the basis behind animation - a good example are the 12 animation principles. These techniques are required for a good 3D animation.

3)

Bad animations usually fall flat on the ground when it comes to memorability, aesthetics or unfitting in the particular scenario. For example, lets take the example of the ball bouncing, if we do not follow the slow in slow out principle, the ball will seem to be bouncing unrealistically(because in real life, gravity will make the ball fall to the ground faster than it going up). This is an example of a bad animation - it falls flat on aesthetics and be remembered for being a bad show.

4)

Yes. Frame by frame can be tedious at times, but it can be very precise on the other hand. Using the graph editor does help in 3D animation so we do not have edit each and every frame to make it smooth and pleasing to the eyes.

5)

Being only -so- much trained in Maya, I would have to say that Maya does make animation quite simple (just by pressing the s key we can set keyframes) however, the interface of Maya in its animation mode is not user friendly in searching for whatever I need (in the case of particles, collisions etc.. I could easily find it in 3DSMax) Other than that, I think Maya does a good job in making rigging quite simple.

Week 11 Lab 2

. : : Process : : .

I created the sphere and follow the instructions by grouping it twice and then locking out the specific functions that we do not need to edit.

After that, for the animation, I followed the table given to me and got a decent bouncing animation.

Keyframe No.	Translate X	Translate Y
1	-12	5
12	-9	0.5 (ground)
25	-6.1	3.9
37	-3	0.5
50	-0.2	2.8
62	2.7	0.5
75	6	1.6
87	8.8	0.5
100	12	0.5

However, the bounces will not look realistic without setting the tangents to linear.
(Done in the previous lab, thus no screenshot)

Here, I set my keyframes at intervals and changed the factor value to mimic the squash and stretch.

In the video, as you can see, I didn't emphasize the squash and stretch. But it is still fairly visible.

. : : Techniques/Reflection : : .

The techniques used to do this exercise has been mostly covered by previous exercises.
But here, we learn how to lock attributes and use a deformer to mimic a rig on the ball.

Locking attributes are useful when you don't want any other value to change when you edit a specific object. I think that this will be useful when we start to do more complex animations.
I don't really see the point using this feature when we do a simple animation though.

Deformer in this case is useful so that we don't have to manually scale the ball (or flatten it) manually which can result in uneven and inconsistent squashes and stretches.

Week 11 Lab 1

. : : Process : : .

Exercise 1:

After creating the polygonal plane, cube and sphere, I aligned the ball at the to the right as shown above and set the keyframe to 0 and pressed S to add the keyframe.

Next, I aligned the ball above the polygonal cube and added a keyframe at intervals of 20. (0 - 20 - 40 - 60 etc)

Next, I added another keyframe at the location above.


I made the ball 'jump' slightly before ending.

Using the graph editor, I set the tangent to linear so that it looks more realistic when it bounces.

We must not forget to set the playback speed to realtime 24fps or else the ball will bounce extremely fast.

Lastly, to record the video, I had to select playblast.

Here is the result of the ball bouncing

Exercise 2:

Add a keyframe at 0 at that position
Change the position to mimic the ball bouncing a certain distance and add another keyframe at 15. (15 intervals)
Add a keyframe at 30 at the location shown above to mimic the ball bouncing back up and following the principles of animation, the ball cannot bounce higher than its original drop height (unless a force acts upon it)
At keyframe 45, I set the ball to this location. This few steps are repeated to form several arcs where the ball will follow.
I set the graph to linear so that it looks more like real life.

The video for the ball bouncing.

. : : Learning Outcome/Techniques/Reflection : : .

I've learned how to use, set , delete, copy and duplicate keyframes which will benefit me when doing animation work. I also learned how to use the graph editor to manipulate the curves to make the bounce look more realistic.

Furthermore, I also learned how important it is to set the FPS to realtime 24fps and learned about PAL, NTSC FPS as well.

At first, I did not know how to take a footage of the animation, but with the playblast, we can easily record these animations and post our results here.

Now I know how important our first lab was - the principles of animation plays a very large role in developing smooth animation (like the ball dropping) and how to follow the law of gravity.

3D Animation Principles

Original Clips w/ Slight editing




Clips with Music & More Editing(For Fun)





1. Anticipation
Using the first clip (With the girl jumping) as an example that clearly represents this principle of anticipation as she bends down and prepares to jump in the air. Another example is at the boy at the end of the video shooting the basketball, notice that how he bends and takes aim to score the ball - this is also anticipation.

2. Staging
Using the second clip (where the girl is running towards the camera) it clearly emphasizes this principle of staging where the audience attention is focued towards the girl running instead of anywhere in the background. Also, the next clip following that is another view of the girl running but captured at a different view. Notice that the camera pans and follows the girls movements which also is the center of the audience attention and is therefore acting upon the staging principle

3. Straight ahead action and pose to pose
Straight ahead action can be refered to any part of this video at all. As the Staging is usually one object only and never focused on the surroundings. However, a good example of pose-to-pose is the boy doing a robot dance where the frames can be done using keyframes instead of straight ahead action.

4. Follow through and overlapping action
Using the clip where a boy punches another boy, notice that the follow through and overlapping action is shown by the fling of the hair by both boys when a large action is executed.

5.Slow in and slow out
This is clearly shown in the clip where the boy is jumping at the waller, the camera starts of slow and pans in fast to the main character ( also another good example of Staging ).

6. Arcs
A clear example of arcs is when the two boys are playing pass-ball in the video. The ball moves in a parabola shape.

7.Secondary action
Using the clip where a boy punches the other boy, notice that the secondary action is the fist raising which signifies anger.

8. Timing
Using the clip where the ball was thrown up and left to bounce on the floor, the timing principle comes into play when the law of gravity acts upon the ball and makes it decend to the ground. The timing of the ball going up and then going down should not be equal as the ball should fall faster then it going up assuming that the strength used to push the ball up is constant.

9. Exaggeration
This is quite similar to No. 7, using the same clip, when the boy punches the other boy in the stomach, notice that the boy punching throws his fists in the air before landing the hit to the other boy. And following that, notice that the boy being punched flies back and hits the wall, this is also the act of exaggeration to show how deadly the punch is.

10. Solid drawing
Though hard to express because this is not an animated video, an example showing the ball bouncing can be a good example showing how the volume and weight of the ball is balanced and tied into the gravity of the world.

11. Appeal
Using the second clip ( where the girl is running towards the camera ) notice the appearance on her face which shows the seriousness/grave of the situation which adds to the general appeal to the audience.


Exercise 3:



1. Anticipation
The elf at the start standing at the top of the cliff jumped off the cliff ( which people anticipated her to do). And the clip shows her grabbing the two swords before taking the stance to run and jump is also part of the anticipation principle.

2. Staging
The video shows the characters drawn very distinctly from the minions and the main protagonist and the antagonists (brightly coloured vs dull/dark coloured).

3.Follow through and overlapping action
When the camera zooms into the face of the character, it shows how the hair sways with the wind.

4.Slow in and slow out
This video shows plenty of slow in slow outs. Using the part where the elf jumps off the cliff, the video slows down to show the emphasis on the how powerful the jump was.

5. Arcs
When the two elves were fighting, the light-elf(blonde hair) jumped into the air along a parabola and sliced at the dark elf.

6. Secondary action
When the camera zoomed into the dark elf's face, we could see that she have a crooked smile (expression) which is a secondary action.

7. Appeal
As stated above, the main villains and the protagonists can be easily defined as dull coloured and bright coloured respectively.

Assignment Part 2

Hello there!

:: S e l f C r i t i q u e ::
Before I start with the model progression, I would make it clear that I am DISPLEASED with what I had to submit as my assignment. Mainly due to the fact that I decided against modeling the details and not actually using actual textures similar to my gun model - the gun looks way too unrealistic and the details (like the horse) does not make it very motivating to model. As a result, I've came out with a black skin for my gun to make it look more intimidating and look more like a gun. In the above image, I have included the use of shaders and lighting.

I would say that I've finished 90% of the entire model, 10% consist of the additional details and textures. Parts such as the barrel could have been extruded inwards from the slide, but due to not planning ahead, I had to separate the pieces - which I deeply regretted because I feel that is really bad modeling.

In my previous post, I said that I would start from the slide and proceed on to the body, but after research, as shown below, I decided that it will be better to start from the grip and proceeding onto the grip. I wasn't really happy with the edgeflow of my slide, as I didn't really plan ahead - therefore, when wanting to add the barrel, it was really difficult without remodeling the entire slide.

Other than that, I think that the body was pretty well done, my wonderful lecturer helped me a little in the body, teaching about reversing normals and solved most of my problems with the body. Generally, the edge flow is good. However, for the slide, I kind of rushed a little and felt a little dejected because of the details etc and the inability to extrude the barrel from the slide.

Oh yeah, a little problem with the size of the slide as well, at the end, I had to add two cube fillers to fill in the sides so that people could not peer inside the model from the back. I'm pretty negative about my model, but then again, I did have my fun.


:: R e s e a r c h ::
For my research, I've gone around youtube to search for other people modeling other guns. Most of my research done is not to actually how to model a gun, rather more of how a gun topology and edgeflow should look like.

First:


In this video, it shows a person modeling an AK-47 in timelapse, I noted that he started with the grip (I also started modeling from the grip) and from then onwards, I paid attention to the edgeflow and how he manages his topology. However, in this video, I did not use a polygon cube to start modeling.

Second:


This video is slightly more related to how I did my model. The method of duplicating the model then doing one side using planes is how I did my model. I found out that using this way is easier but more time consuming to come up with a slightly more detailed model with lower polygon count.

:: P r o g r e s s i o n ::
Now, here I will start on how I derived my model. Due to me... being too engrossed in some areas, I'd admit that I may skip some important steps but I'll try to explain using text. Well, let's begin shall we?



This is after I imported my ref image. Note that I only used the side view only, that's probably why my model isn't very accurate. I started by creating a new plane and placing it facing as shown above.



Now, I moved the vertices to form the outline of the grip of the gun and to mimic the tilted shape of the grip handle.



In the picture above, I extruded the edges to form the bigger shape of the grip. From here, I will timeskip and show the outcome after I finished the grip using the aforementioned method above.




In "1" mode

In the "3" mode

Here is the almost complete form of the grip. I did not join the bottom because I will be adding the bulged part as a separate object. So how did I do the curved area? Simple. It is just the tilting the of the edges on the different axises in the perspective view and then switching back to side view to check the accuracy. Slowly, but I came up with this.




Continuing.. I extruded the trigger guard from the grip using the faces and then deleting the unwanted faces that are left inside the model.



Now, I extruded an edge from the chassis and to form the slide. From there, I extruded the face sideways to form a depth for the slide and not just a piece of "paper". Soon after, I extruded the faces from the top of the slide and curved it as shown above. The slide is nearly done.



When joined, this is how it roughly looks like. However, we are not done yet! We have not created the holes for the hammer to fit in.



Now, to create this hole, just deleting the faces is not just it. I had to create some thickness of the hole as well. Well, what I did was extruding the top edges and then merging the vertices with the bottom vertices.



I added the hammer into the model. I did not take the steps on how I modeled the hammer, but I started from a square and manipulated the vertices to form the shape. To get the hole, I used a cylinder and scaled down the subdivisions to about 5 and then Boolean>difference it. From there, I had to use edge loops to control the shape of the hole by joining it to the nearby vertices using the interactive split edge tool.



I finished the last part of the hammer. And as you can see, I've already added the textures to the model(metallic material x). To do this part of the hammer, I merely just followed the shape given to me in the reference images and extruded from a polygon cube.



Lastly, I added the grip frame by using the same method as I did doing the chassis. Also, I added in the small details such as screws, trigger etc - and with that, we are basically done!





All these were taken with lighting and shaders(including the first image of the post).

Assignment Pt 1

Story

Rat was racing down the track in his car when suddenly he spotted a large hand drawing closer to his car from behind! He noticed that the hand came for the toy car's owner, George, a five-year old boy. Rat did not want his ride to end here, luckily he spotted the track ahead of him was going down and he might have the chance of escaping the hand for a couple of seconds. However, to his dismay, the boy was much faster than he anticipated, with the large enigmatic hand approaching and soon overshadowing Rat, he could only look in terror.

BAM! An object almost as large as himself miraculously landed in his car. It was a toy gun! Apparently George accidentally kicked it and it coincidently landed into Rat's hands. Rat used all his might to turn and aim the toy gun at the legs of the running boy who was grinning, thinking what to do with Rat when he caught him.


BANG! Rat hit the spot down came George, losing his balance and crashing into a pile of plushies leaning against the wall.

"Saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaafe!!!" Rat said to himself with glee.

Well, he is.. for now.

Shape

Well, what I'll be modeling for this assignment would be a semi-realistic looking pistol that fires plastic spherical projectile that Rat used against George.

The shapes used are generally not very basic as it requires plenty of modifications (explained later) to the primitive shapes in Maya. I will be breaking up my model into several parts to explain about what shapes I think I should use for these areas.





Slide
The basic shapes of the slide of the gun should be constructed with a cylinder - of course, with less subdivisions. I was thinking of using the polygon cube tool to construct this area and using the insert edge loops to create the barrel, I will post my results later on when I actually try both methods out.
as for the details (the words and the horse sign) I was thinking of using the draw polygon tool for the horse, for the text I can simply create 3D text and boolean difference it. The rest of the details could be done by simple beveling and extruding. I will start with the hammer and model towards the muzzle. The grip area can be extruded downwards from the barrel.

Chassis
The main chassis of the gun will be extruded downwards from the slide and extruded to form the body of the gun. Will be manipulating vertices to get the desired curved shapes and of course, inserting edge loops.

Grip
The grip area is quite straightforward, from the chassis, I will extrude it downwards to form the shape of the grip. Most likely I will only need to do extruding and the rest are minor details such as differences and vertices manipulation. The hard work will be to form a nice grip frame.

Trigger Guard/Trigger
The shape of the trigger guard will be extruded from either the grip or the slide, most likely I will do it from the grip and extrude it upwards to join with the main body of the gun. The trigger can either be extruded from the top OR creating a new shape, I will try both.

And that's it! The gun is only separated into 3 different parts and mostly everything here can be extruded from the slide. It is actually not very complicated. As you can see above, I mainly discussed plenty on the slide section; that section is where the whole gun will form from. That's why it is important and I dwell most of my views over at that section.

Design
Now... as for the design, I have mostly discussed what the design should be above. The only part detached from the body will most likely be details such as the slide stop, the hammer, the trigger and safety switches.

Sketches?! Bahh.... Later. I will be working on the model already.

Edit: Added


As for the parts, most of them are extruded, so I don't think that will be a problem :)

And yes, initially I did want to do a sketch that has all the dimensions right for all the views, but I ran out of space for the side(that's why it's slightly deformed), so next time if I decide to this, I will do this on a A3.......

Reference Images

In the above picture showing the parts I'm going to model, that will be my reference image. I was thinking whether do I need a front view reference, but since the breadth of the gun is not really important and the muzzle of the gun is simply just a hole, I think that a front view and a top view is not necessary at all. But I'll still ask my in-charge anyway.