Character Animation | digital sketchbook

Week 1: Introduction to 3D Animation and Bouncing Balls

In this week’s lecture I had to animate different objects. Normally I would use keyframes and that would be it. This time I learned how to use Autodesk Maya’s Animation Graph Editor which allows me to dictate how my animation moves. E.g.. I can make an arrow accelerate and decelerate when it is airborne in its animation.

Examples of animating in Maya

Learning How to Use the Animation Graph Editor

I added a keyframe to my object by initially setting its values at the current frame and then pressed the S key to confirm this movement as a keyframe.

I moved my player to another frame and did the same task.

This is the Animation Graph Editor’s HUD.

I moved the editor’s points which were my keyframes into a position so that they smoothen my object’s movement.

Using Tangents in the Animation Graph Editor

Visual representation of the tangents that can be found on each keyframe point.

There pre-sets for the tangents I can use.

To independently move my tangents points.

I applied my new found skills onto animating a bouncing ball using the tangents in the animation graph editor.

Using the same techniques, I animated a wrecking ball knocking down a wall

Week 2: Animating a Ball Course

Week 3: Posing and Rigging

I applied Maya’s Human IK feature to a model of an arm so I can pose it seamlessly.

Some renders:

I applied the same task to a pair of legs

Posing the pair of legs

Pistol Squat

Roundhouse Kick

Split

Animating Cuby: A more advanced character animation rig where I was given a skeleton present for my character “Cuby”

Week 4

Disney’s Sack Exercises

The poses I used as reference

My poses

Squash

Stretch

Twist

Dejected

Joy

Cocky

Crying

Curious

Tantrum

Luxo Animation Exercise

My animation frame by frame reference

My final animation:

Eleven Rig Posing

The reference with the line of action

The reference with the line of action

The reference with the line of action

Week 5: Head turn and walking animation

Separate head turn

My starting position

My final position

To make the turn look more natural I added slight lower tilt in the middle of the movement.

Final product

Walking animation

I moved the knee’s controls so they can bend better when animating my walk.

I combined the head turn animation with the walk for my final product

Assessment 1: Ball Course

I rigged my ball to give it physical bounce properties

I used the animation editor to ease the ball’s movement so it can better resemble real world physics.

I added an interactive windmill turn mechanic to the scene

My final product:

Week 6: Infinite Walk Cycle with Locator

Week 7: Lifting Weights

I added 2 locators for each hand

I added a locator to the box

I linked all locators to the one in the middle.

Week 8: Kick Animation

My reference:

The previous video was my kick movement reference. I wanted to sync how the man kicked the ball to my rig. To do so it was important to also match the timing. I added the frame count onto my reference.

Activating image sequence on a material in Maya allows said material to display a video if I insert an image sequance to it. This is helpful because I can view my reference directly as I animate my rig.

The final product:

Assessment 1: Ball Obstacle Course

I inserted a sphere to add bouncing constraints to.

This nurb curve will be the main movement control of my ball.

This nurb curve will be the bounce controller of my ball.

Applying the squash non-linear deformer to my curve. I also added another nurb curve to be my ball’s rotation controls.

To create a squash controller, I added a costume attribute to my curve since Maya did not have any by default. I did this by keying point A’s movment then point B’s movements as my squash’s low bound and high bound.