The youtube link to the completed animation for the assignment
Above is one of my animations that i did and it was the only one that i was able to play-blast so i uploaded here on youtube for you to look at it. I will be the other two animations that i created with the Maya link below. I am also not able to post a syncsketch link because I was only able to play blast one video out of three that I have made.
https://drive.google.com/drive/u/1/folders/1tRMNGQdsmVjvnWxybIXBGv-83FbqBwsG
Above is the link to the google drive where I have posted all of the animation maya files that I have created. I am using google drive link only because I wasn’t able to use other alternatives since it kept crashing for me and Alec told me to just upload the Maya files. This was one of the most fun assignment I ever did and even though I had to do it from home with the shortage of time I think I nailed it and I am very proud of myself.
The blog for the assignment
In one of the classes we started watching tutorials assigned by Alec that thought us a little about animating on Maya and introducing us to the first few options that we are able to use while practising to animate the cylinders. We got introduced to animation and how you can start animating on Maya. First we got to watch a tutorial on how to create certain objects and rigging them which was quite interesting. We learn how to add multiple rigs to these objects that you can see below and make them act more like live beings. It was definitely fun learning this because its another way of animating and its definitely going to be useful later on in the assignments. This was week 7 of the semester.
It was fun learning these functions and options that will be very useful when it comes to our short animations and the group animation as well because we are getting so many alternatives to learn and to look at which I really like. We learned how to make these cylinders into skeletons pretty much. This means that we are able to control their movement and different parts of the bodies any way we want. This can be useful for many things like animations and manipulating the objects any way that we might need them to move.
This was the day we also find out about the corona virus outbreak and that the university will possibly close down so this was the last time we were all in class discussing different things and options that we might not understand. This was hard to hear because this situation is really messed up and we found out that we wont be able to get guidance eye to eye. Which meant that we will be working on our own at home. We will be getting weekly helps from our tutors which is always good and will always help us no matter what.
We also started watching tutorials on the FK rigging which is another type of rigging and I found this one really interesting because it thought us a bunch of new options while using the Maya application. What i enjoyed the most in this section was adding different joints to these rigs and then being able to manipulate them any way I wanted to. This was really fun to do. I also really liked the way Alec thought us about organising different files and folders, which makes the folders look very neat and when ever you need to find a specific function it is very easy to do so. These tutorials showed us how to clean up different places and spots when it comes to some of the rigs because when you are rigging some mistakes might occur along the way and we learned that its possible to fix. Might be tedious at times, but its really useful when you need to get rid of things that might stop you from going forward or things that you might not want there at all.
Mirroring different rigs is another very nice option that you are able to use. What it does is that when you need multiple rigs that might look the same and you don’t need to create a brand new one, you are able to mirror all of the options and copy paste them onto a certain object or practically just duplicating the object.
Ik rigging was also very interesting and unique to watch and try to learn because it might be useful at some point in the future so its important we followed the tutorials well and look over them in our free time.
Development, reference and research.
I got the Mac pretty late compared to my other class mates because of this corona situation so I had less time then others which sucked, but I got through it with the tutor’s help which was really nice. I only knew the basics of the animating because we did’t really learn much so far so I was scared going into this and developing my skills with the short amount of time that I had. I watched a lot of tutorials on animations on maya and the way they use different parts of maya to make the animation look as realistic as possible. I really enjoyed watching bunch of tutorials and Alec made a few tutorials to guide us as well, which was really nice. He made tutorials to give us a feel of what direction we might need to take and try to find your own style. There are multiple ways of doing animation when it comes to Maya you just have to find the one that suits you the best.
I really liked watching a lot of tutorials on jumping, running, kicking etc. So i decided to go old school and create 2 simple animation of walking and running and other one which is more difficult. The difficult animation is the rig jumping across to the yellow cube to reach a checkpoint.
I had Alec also give me feedback on all of the animations that I created and I really enjoyed that because he gave me very good tips on how to make the animations look better then they are now. Even make them look more realistic. In the video guide i learned that some of the poses can be changed even more, which makes the animation look way better than it was before so I was thankful about that. He also showed me how to use the graph editor correctly and how you can use it to fix up your animation and make it look even more realistic. He also said that the jump itself looked great and with minor fix ups it would look amazing. So I fixed a lot of tiny things when it came to that animation so I was happy when I finished it. He also advised for me to make another animation that would show that the rig has a character/emotion. So, I listened to the advice and made another animation with a fast running cycle and then I found a really awesome model of a threadmill so I used that to make the rig run on top of that treadmill and called my final piece the running exercise. I think I was able to give the rig the character and the animation with this different run cycle that I haven’t done before so I am really happy with it.
Researching different walking poses and simple walking cycles for one of my animations was also really fun and useful because I was able to look and see which types of positions and frames that I might want to use for my short animation. I really liked just the usual slow and simple walk so I decided to do it. It was definitely time consuming because I had to look at every key frame and make sure that the foot and the leg is correctly placed in each of the frames which was hard to do at times because I would also have to duplicate some of the key frames. This would get really confusing at times.
I developed a lot of skills when it came to this assignment because I feel like I am way comfortable with animating now for sure. I have learned that timing is one of the most important things when it comes to animating anything. And getting your key frames right is also very useful that saves you a lot of time.
With Alec’s guidance it was way easier to work on for sure. I had so much fun trying to perfect my jump and looking at little details that could make the jump landing even better because I felt that it didn’t seem realistic enough. I used the graph editors to fix some of the mistakes that improved the ump by a lot and I learned that graph editor is a really good friend when it comes to animating with Maya.
I researched that some times you are able to draw some of the poses inside maya that move and show you different key frames as you are animating. For this I would definitely need a tablet because it’s really difficult to just draw our models and different keyframes with a mouse. So in the future It is definitely something that I want to try out because I might really like the way its done so you never know.
I was researching different methods and best ways of animating on maya and i came across many things that help you out with animating. Animators survival kit seems to be the best book when it comes to learning how to animate and sadly I don’t have a hard copy so I can only read it online in few places and watch few reviews that pretty much summarise what the book is about and what it tells you.
I also had to go back to the 12 principles of animation because I was really lost when I started animating again. I refreshed my mind with many great tips that help you animate and tips that make it easier for you. I will never forget that when it comes to the animations that the timing of each frame and scene is the most important thing because without proper timing it just looks really weird and unrealistic.
When it came to me researching different poses and animations I was really excited because there is a lot of resources on the internet that allow you to see and use different poses and different key frames you might be able to use for your animation. I am still developing my skills when it comes to animating, but I learned a lot from all of these videos that I have looked up. I found some of the run cycles very interesting and professional so one of my animations is also a rig running on the treadmill.
For each of the animations that I was doing i had to find a lot of references of different keyframes that suit the style of my animations, so in the image above you are able to see that those are the keyframes of a running character, which were really useful for me because I used them to place my rig keyframes properly and make sure that my animation turns out amazing in the end. I always struggle when it comes to reversing different key frames, but with more practise it wont be a challenge in the future.
I also had a few issues with the rigs throughout me creating animations because they wouldn’t behave they way I would want them to, so I had to research a lot of solutions and ask for help from my tutors. Some of the keyframes that I was doing were not listening to be me and bending in different sides of the frame so I was really confused at one point. One of the knees was bending backwards and I was confused so I forgot that there are knee controls and sometimes you have to adjust them back to the knees in order for them to function properly. So I will definitely know this in the future.
This was one of the most fun animations i ever worked out because it was similar to the walking animation, but it was running this time. I was advices to do this by Alec and I took a chance at doing this in time which I am glad I finished. I really liked doing the run cycle and trying to perfect each of the frames to it looks as realistic as possible.
I had some issues through out when it came to setting some of the frames and sometimes even forgetting to set them which can cause problems later on. I also have difficulties with mirroring different key frames at times so its definitely something I need to work on to perfect it. Sometimes when using other objects after animating the objects can collide with each other and not allow me to pick one or another so I need to be careful about that the next time as well because I was having difficulty with that as well.
My reflection
Overall, this unit was really fun when it came to me doing it. The problem for me was that I didn’t have as much time as every body else because I don’t have a computer that is able to run any of the application that I need to use. So I had to barrow the Mac from the university which gave me the resources to be able to work on these animations, which I am really grateful for.
I really enjoyed researching different methods and styles that people have out there and there is hundreds of ways of doing the same animation which is scary and cool at the same time. I have a couple of methods for sure and I can’t wait to use them with the group animation work even further because I feel somewhat accomplished with myself that I learned so much in such a short amount of time. I want to be able to try drawing out my own keyframes by just look at certain images of myself with a tablet or record my own reference video that I could look at and then use it to recreate my movement.
I really enjoyed studying different methods of achieving different weight motions and body mechanics inside my animations and hopefully I did an amazing job because I think I did. This was definitely interesting and difficult at the same time, but I will never back away from a challenge as always so I had to tackle it with everything I had. Also trying to implement character/emotion into a rig was a real challenge for sure because we only had legs to work with pretty much so I enjoyed trying to make it look that the rig has some sort of character and emotion. I think I achieved that with the running cycle.
Things I need to improve on is timing for sure because some times I get confused between multiple frames and how they work with each other to create proper animation. I will have to keep practising duplicating/mirroring different key frames because sometimes that is difficult for me as I forget how it works every time.
Mantas Macidulskas 