Project 2 - Animation

Robot Simple Walk - Front View

Robot Simple Walk - Side View

For the first part of this assignment, I find that it is actually quite easy to do. There is a word document that I can refer to. It was quite straightforward actually. However, I did encounter two problems. The first one was that, I realized that there was a slight jerk at one part of the video. In the end, I found out that there was a mistake on the graph editor. I managed to solve it after doing the respective changes. The second problem that I faced was the movement of the robot. It looks a bit stiff at first, but when I added movements to its shoulders, it looks much more realistic. I also added the background just for fun. Hehe.

At the end of it, I am satisfied with the outcome. I hope you are too! :)

Robot Walking Happily With Confidence - Front View

Robot Walking Happily With Confidence - Side View

Initially, I thought of doing the robot with the box. However, it was a bit too advance for me. Haha. So in the end, I decided to do the walk. At first, I was a bit stressed, because I find that it's actually quite difficult to do a walk. So, I have decided to imagine a walk whereby the robot is actually skipping happily. Unfortunately, it didn't look too good. Haha. There were a lot of mistakes. Mr George even mentioned that "This work will not pass." Thank goodness I showed the video to him first before burning it into the CD. After hearing his feedback, I re-do the whole animation. I referred to this PDF file that can be found on OLIVE, and I followed the steps carefully. The outcome is not bad actually. For a student who is not good at animation, I am actually very satisfied with both outcomes! :)

Anyway, I would like to take this oppurtunity to thank Mr George for teaching us 3DPF. I gained a lot of knowledge from this subject and I am starting to get interested in animation. Haha. So, Thank You!

The Walk

The Walk (Side-View)

The Walk (Front-View)

The next lesson, we were then told to animate this headless robot. We were supposed to make it walk and also, sway left and right at the same time. Above are the results for my animation. At first, I did have difficulties making it walk because I missed the first lesson. With the help from my coursemate, Nurqiah, I was able to animate the walking part. After that, for the swaying left and right, it was quite easy to be done because there was actually a step by step tutorial which was actually quite easy to understand. In fact, Mr George also demonstrated, so it was quite easy to complete it.

Big Dog Walk

For this particular exercise, we were told to animate the Big Dog model just like the one we have watched in the video. Personally, I find that it was very easy to animate Big Dog because I just have to adjust the leg positions. It might not look exactly like the one in the video, but I feel that at least it still looks quite similar. Towards the end, I did rotate the model a bit so that it looks as though it is going to fall but then it managed to balance itself.

Week 6 - Spiderman Poses

The First Pose: Relaxed Spider-man

The Second Pose: Soccer Player Spider-man

The Third Pose: Running Spider-man

The Fourth Pose: Upside Down Spider-man

The very first time I saw the Spider-man's model, I thought that it will be difficult to turn it into a different pose. So, the first pose we were told to model was the RELAX pose. Ok, with the help from Mr George, it was actually quite easy to complete the exercise. I have to say that the RELAX pose is the easiest to be done. Next, we were told to do another three different poses, including the upside down pose. I have to say that I am not good at changing the poses. All three poses look very stiff. Haha. I hope it still looks ok though.

Week 6 - BigDog

Exercise 1

1) If engineered or programmed badly, BigDog would fall over. Watch the full video again, and describe how BigDog's legs move while walking - ie. what is the sequence of leg movements for one complete step? Use the terms BL, BR, FL and FR for the back left, back right, front left and front right legs.

FL, FR, BL, BR.

2) Explain how this sequence of movements manages to balance BigDog's body weight.

When it is being kicked, the first movement was the front left leg stretched out so that it will be able to stabilize itself. Following that, the front right leg tries to support the body of the robot while both of the back legs are trying to stabilize its balance. Next, when the two legs in front crossed each other, the legs at the back try to support the robot so that it will not fall over. Last but not least, the back legs crossed each other while the front legs tried to support the robot before it finally balances itself and stabilizes its postion.

3) Look at BigDog_kick_slow_motion.mov. Draw a storyboard of BigDog stabilizing itself after being kicked.

(The storyboard is shown above.)

For the first frame, the back legs are crossing each other while the front left leg is stretched and the front right leg acts as a support.

For the second frame, the two legs in front are crossing each other while the back left leg is stretched and the back right leg is supporting the BigDog.

For the third frame, before the robot managed to get into balance once again, the back legs crossed once again while the two legs in front are trying to stabilize the robot.

For the final frame, it shows that the robot finally managed to get into position once again.

My Roles

What I Have Done...

Firstly, I was assigned to draw the characters for my group's video. Since the topic that we have decided to do is a pirate's theme, therefore, I was told to draw a pirate, ship, octopus, canon with a canon ball and another animal to represent the Firewall. Once I have done all that, I was then assigned to model the octopus on maya. It was easy to model the head. However, when it comes to the tentacles, it was a bit difficult because firstly, I had to get it into a tentacle shape and secondly, I was required to animate it.

Thankfully, I found a video tutorial whereby the person showed how to model the tentacle and then animate it. I have to say that it was quite difficult to follow at the beginning. I actually did it quite a number of times until I finally got it right.

Also, I have to admit that I faced quite a number of problems while trying to import the octopus into the real life footage. There were actually 2 major problems. One, when I opened the real life footage then I tried importing the octopus, there was always an error. I repeated the steps once again and then I got it right. I did not know exactly what my mistake was but I believe that I missed out a step. At the end of it, I managed to import the octopus inside the real life footage successfully. However, there was another problem. Before animating, I did play the animation and ok, the tentacles were moving but, when I tried to rotate it, I selected everything, rotate it and the tentacles became out of shape. Fadilla also tried helping me but she encountered the same problem. So end up, I decided to give it another shot, and YES! I managed to rotate it successfully without getting distorted tentacles shapes. Haha. I selected everything but then I de-selected the 'joints' (I think that's what it's called) if I'm not wrong. So finally, I managed to animate it successfully! Yay!

Honestly, I am proud of the outcome. It was a job well done because I'm really not good at modelling actually but it ended up looking great!

Above will be the final video that I have rendered.

Thank you!

Week 1 - Introduction To Matchmoving

What is parallax and why is it important for matchmoving? Illustrate your explanation with examples.

Parallax means the difference in the apparent position of an object viewed along two different lines of sight. For example, the objects that can be seen in a distance will appear to move slower than the objects which are closer to the camera.

Secure Your Computer and You Secure Yourself

My group members consist of Fadilla, Diyana, Lynette, Si Siew & myself (Amirah).

Basically, the story line that my group and I have thought of is kind of cute. Haha.

"A user is using Pirate Bay to download movies or song. Every time the user access to the pirate bay and download files, there is a virus called the Captain Virus and his pirate ship virus. Captain Virus than will shoot out a cannonball to penetrate the user’s firewall. User firewall is very weak because it is guarded by Lazy firewall. Once the firewall is down, a very nasty virus, called the Octo virus, enters. Octo virus, enters the user hard disk and eat up all the parts in the CPU. He grows bigger and bigger and it eventually grew too big that it exploded out from the CPU and sits on top of the user."

For this particular project, my group leader has assigned me to do the following tasks:

1) Designer and sketcher for possible characters for our video.
2) Make sketches of the characters to be developed and modeled in Maya.
3) Touching up on 2D sketches in Adobe Photoshop
4) Motion tracking on MatchMover.
5) Texturing 3D models
6) 3D Render

My First 2 Tasks

From Top Left To Right; A Pirate, An Octopus, The Weak Firewall, A Pirate Ship, A Cannon Shooting Out A Cannon Ball & Bricks.

Next, since time is running out, in the end, all of us were told to choose a character to model in Maya. I chose the octopus. Here is the result of the animated octopus. It is not done yet, but it roughly looks like that.

Basically, the octopus has evil features on its face and the animation will be the tentacles keep moving. The next step I am going to do will be to edit the octopus and make sure it looks nice and professional :)

Week 1 & Week 2

Introduction To MatchMover

In week 1 and week 2, I was given this footage of a statue lion and I had to track the particular image sequence in 3D using MatchMover. This feature will eventually locate

good tracking points in the image, and then tracks them through the whole sequence. Once that is done, I created a new project in Maya and then export this particular file into that folder.  

Following that, I was also given a 3D animation of a man being chased by a zombie. I was required to add these 2 animations into the lion footage. So, first, open the lion footage file in Maya and then, import the 2 animations. From there, then I just adjusted the animations and make it look like as though it is inside the lion footage.

I have tried it out and above is the result :)