Then giving both the ground & ball some colour.
Applying the squash & stretch to make it look like an actual beach ball.
It kind of became horribly distorted at first, stretching in the wrong angle & direction as it bounced.
Added lighting, as well as checking the graph to see if any part of the graph was out of place.
& here's a playblast of the beachball.
Added lighting, as well as checking the graph to see if any part of the graph was out of place.
& here's a playblast of the beachball.
Reflection for Ex1:
This exercise was relatively easy, since i have learnt about the basics of animating a ball with added squash & stretch.
Other than that, i learned how to use the dope sheet to decrease the timing by using the graph editor.
As well as how to add ambient lightning to allow the object to cast a shadow when rendered out, making it look more realistic.
Also, by setting up the camera to get a good shot of the scene at an angle, i won't always creating a playblast in perspective view & adjusting it till everything is out of place.
However, though this is easy, watching all those 13 videos is a different story. It's 2hours long & majority of what was mentioned was apparently not much needed.
And because i was struggling to concentrate on those videos, i apparently either forgot to take or save A WHOLE LOT of my screenshots & ended up only few to show.
Exercise2:
1) Do you need to be able to draw well to create good 2D animation? Explain your view.
I think that to be able to create good 2D animation, one would require a certain level of artistic sense.
For me, i like watching anime. But before i watch an anime, i would first look at the storyline/genre(s) then the art work. If i find the art not to my liking, i might reconsider whether i should watch the anime or not. However, if i happen to reaaally like the storyline, i would watch the anime & try to tahan the art. Though usually, the artist improves over time.
An example.
Only when i rewatched the anime, did i start to realise how different the art was from start to end.
From the fifth episode - I could have just fainted.
Then, the art improved a whole lot.
Subsequently, i think that some animated characters that are made up of basic shapes can be as appealing to an audience if the storyline behind the animation is unique & interesting.
2) Do you need to be able to draw well to create good 3D animation? Explain your view.
One doesn't have to draw well to create 3D, this is much more different compared to 2D animation. For 3D animation, i think one must be able to understand & be able to sort of visualize how objects move in reality then incorporate these elements into 3D objects. But of course, being able to draw & plan out the animation would certainly be helpful as it may be easier one to visualise the scene.
3) What do you think would separate a piece of poor animation from a piece of good animation? In other words, how would you go about deciding if a piece of animation is good or bad?
Firstly, i look at the the way the characters & objects are animated.
Is the animation flowing smoothly, does any object give sudden unecessary movements/pauses & how does it look? Is it unrealistic & out of shape or something like that.
Colours also matter, if the colours a are horribly mismatched or too colourful it would ruin the whole scene. For example, my incredibly colourful bouncing ball from Week11's Lab 2 exercise. Both the ball & the ground are so colourful, it is distracting & one isn't sure what is the main focus.
With both the background & the main object that colourful/with the same colour, how is it possible for the main object itself to stand out.
However, everyone has their own preferences so it isn't easy to tell how good an animation is. Therefore, one has to rely on one's intuition.
4) In 2D animation, you need to be very aware of timing at a frame by frame level, using timing charts and other techniques - but for 3D animation, this is handled using the graph editor, which is more concerned with manipulating rates of change over time.
Does this affect how you approach your animation work? Explain.
In 3D animation, I think using the graph editor is much easier to create a smooth flowing animation. It deals with mainly the curves & length of a graph to create the direction of movements for the animation.
Whereas for 2D animation, it requires good drawing skills, good sense of timing & intuition. I remember, previously, for my Motion & Sound project, i created a short clip using stop motion. It took me a lot of time time to draw all 200+ frames using Microsoft Paint & time the animation accurately to match the audio. It was incredibly tedious work!
5) Give a brief critique of Maya as an animation tool. Don't just say Maya makes animation difficult, or easy, or that you need to learn a lot of stuff to use Maya - explain what Maya does well and not so well in terms of creating animation.
This is the first time i have used Maya to create 3D animations, & i think that it does pretty well in most aspects.
There are a whole bunch of tools that will add extra effects to your 3D models. For instance, the lighting can be added to allow your object to cast a shadow, making it more realistic & 3D. Or the rendering that allows you to apply a wide range of materials and texture maps to the object. This, i like, because i like to annoy people by applying psychedelic colours to all objects, & people find it too loud to look at.
Also, i can set up & move the camera around to show the scene at different angles. This is also pretty simple.
But after talking about the good points, there is the problem with the keyframing. Usually just by pressing "S", the keyframe would register itself on the timeline. But sometimes, i don't know why, but even though i pressed the key twice & the indicator for a keyframe shows up, there is nothing happening when i render the scene. And i would have to redo it. Annoying. But apparently, the problem can be solved by turning on the autokey function thing somewhere in the corner (where i hardly notice its existence).
Still, i feel that 3D animation is pretty interesting, though tedious.
And did i mention how incredibly lazy i am?
(even when it's very obvious i am)
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