Research
Eadweard Muybridge
Eadweard Muybridge is a British photographer. His best know for his invention of the Zoopraxiscope in 1879. He used multiple cameras to capture stop-motion pictures of animations locomotion eg. flying, running, swimming, swimming.
The Zoopraxiscope worked by displaying the projected image from rotating disk. At first the images were painted onto the glass disk as a silhouette.
Muybridge worked with a fast camera shutter to come up with his first sequences of images. He used multiple camera capture the horse's movement. He placed cameras parallel to the horse and also used trip wires, which is activated by the horse's hooves.
Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eadweard_Muybridge
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Video reference
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These are the some of the existing animation I'm looking at. Since my walk will be a confident walk i'm looking at animation that mostly contains confident in the character.
By Looking at these animations I have gathered that in a confident walk the arms go up high compared to a normal walk. Also the chest pops out. The chest and the head leads the way. |
This video will help me animate the character. I will be creating a confident walk cycle.
I have recorded some shots of people walking around the museum. By looking at this I have discovered that everyone has a different walk no two people are the same. I have also recorded in slow motion (skip to 01:00) to give me ideas, when animating. I can look at how people shift their weight.
Storyboard
My animation will be the character gets out of the car, then walks on the footpath then he sees a puddle so he steps over the puddle and carries on walking. The character will be walking confidently around 2pm.
Puddle
I'm looking at different types of puddle which I can add to my 3D environment. From looking at these sources I have discovered having a reflective puddle will make it more believable.
This is what I will be trying to create on Maya. This will help me to identify where the puddle will be.
This is what I will be trying to create on Maya. This will help me to identify where the puddle will be.
I have created the puddle on Maya. I have tested the ocean and pond fluid effect and I have gone with the ocean fluid effect because it was the easiest to set up. Also, I got the effect that I was looking for. I created the ocean by going to Dynimaic > Fluid effect > Ocean > Create Ocean.
I have changed the fluid shape and size to get a realistic effect. Furthermore, I have rearranged the vertex's so that it gives a natural feeling and it doesn't look linear. Beside that I have also changed the colour of the water and the transparency to 10%. |
References
http://www.profkrg.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/1100487_86471013-1024x768.jpg
http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00796/after-the-storm-2_796414i.jpg
http://www.italiannotebook.com/new/wp-content/uploads/romeupsidedown2.jpg
http://www.profkrg.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/1100487_86471013-1024x768.jpg
http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00796/after-the-storm-2_796414i.jpg
http://www.italiannotebook.com/new/wp-content/uploads/romeupsidedown2.jpg
Stepping over the paddle
I am looking at how will I animate my character stepping over the puddle. I have noticed that in all the images the back leg stays in contact until the front foot touches the ground.
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This is a visualisation of how the step will look like. This will capture the principle of animation squash and stretch.
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Reference
https://c2.staticflickr.com/8/7206/7015617323_85a0f84b8c_z.jpg
http://i.istockimg.com/file_thumbview_approve/35940948/2/stock-photo-35940948-stepping-over-a-puddle.jpg
http://i.istockimg.com/file_thumbview_approve/40796452/2/stock-photo-40796452-woman-stepping-over-water-puddle.jpg
https://c2.staticflickr.com/8/7206/7015617323_85a0f84b8c_z.jpg
http://i.istockimg.com/file_thumbview_approve/35940948/2/stock-photo-35940948-stepping-over-a-puddle.jpg
http://i.istockimg.com/file_thumbview_approve/40796452/2/stock-photo-40796452-woman-stepping-over-water-puddle.jpg
Lighting
Test's/render's
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These are the some of the tests that I did when creating the walk cycle. The end product didn't come out as i planned. This was my first walk cycle that I did, for a first time i think i did ok. Not too great, I should've used the tutorials to guide me.
I really like what I did in this animation. I think this animation is very successful, Looks so much better than the ball & legs animation. I did use a tutorial for this, but I didn't copy everything, I used the tutorial as a template.
This animation is not successful because there's no weight to the character. This looks liner, there's no excitement. Where as for the orange guy, he had a swagger to his walk. There was a bounce on his walk.
In this video you can see the process of animating my character.
I think this animation is successful, it has everything that the brief asked for. I need to improve on some of the Maya skill that I have learnt, like when there's a change in animation, try to get them fit together. After doing this animation now i'm very comfortable with the graph editor. I have used depth of field in this animation to get the audience to focus on certain parts. If I was to do this again, I would make the character interact with its environment.
I have rendered it in 1080HD at 24 frames per second in Tiff. I have used Tiff format because the file will not be compressed, I will get best quality. After rendering the frames I took them to Adobe After Effects to put them in sequence and render them in .MOV file so I can upload it on YouTube.
I have rendered it in 1080HD at 24 frames per second in Tiff. I have used Tiff format because the file will not be compressed, I will get best quality. After rendering the frames I took them to Adobe After Effects to put them in sequence and render them in .MOV file so I can upload it on YouTube.