Exercise 1
This is the link to the exercise: Maya Bouncing Ball
Part 1 Reflection
Link: Part 1: Project Folders, Working Units, Grid Options
I learned about the importance of setting a new project when creating animations in Maya so that all the files used in the animations are all neatly and clearly categorized to be found easily. I also learned about the grid options and that you can alter it to meet your needs.
Part 2 Reflection
Link: Part 2: Grid Options, Scene Layout, Viewport Cameras
I learned that we need to adjust the cameras so that it can capture the whole scene properly. I also learned some tips such as saving scene files of different versions and naming it with numbers so that there is a safety net to fall onto when a mistake is accidentally made.
Part 3 Reflection
Link: Part 3: Camera & Aim, Resolution Gate, Assign Material
There are plenty of stuff which I do not make use of before such as cameras and resolution gate. These two things are new to me and I find myself learning a lot.
Part 4 Reflection
Link: Part 4: Blinn Shader, Ramp Map, File Map
I learned that to make an object look like plastic, the reflectivity in Specular Shading needs to be 0. I also learned 2 new terms - procedural texture/map and interpolation/blending.
Part 5 Reflection
Link: Part 5: Bump Map, Render View, Freeze Transformations
I noticed that having a bump map makes the file map have more details and look more life-like. I learned that we can rotate an object in the world mode and have freeze transformations on it to create a more realistic-looking object that rotates more realistically.
Part 6 Reflection
Link: Part 6: Lock Selected Channels, Set Key, Playback Speed
I noticed that locking selected channels helps to make the animation process easier because we do not have to worry about accidentally changing any transforms which we do not intend to change. I also learned that it is recommended to set the playback speed in real-time and we can do this by right-clicking on the time slider, hover to 'Playback Speed' and selecting 'Play Every Frame, Max Real-time'.
Part 7 Reflection
Link: Part 7: Graph Editor, Break Tangents, Free Tangent Weight
For this video, I have already learned about the graph editor, break tangents and free tangent weight from previous tutorials and also lab lessons in school. However, I am introduced to new terms such as Bezier spline.
Part 8 Reflection
Link: Part 8: Scale Keys Tool, Ball Rotation, Squash Deformer
Before watching this video, I thought that the scale keys tool could only scale keys from side to side. However after watching the video, I realized that it is possible to scale it from top to bottom as well.
Part 9 Reflection
Link: Part 9: Parenting, Squash Factor, Key Selected
I learned that the boundaries can be altered to achieve a more realistic squashed ball. I am introduced to a new term called keyframe interpolation/automatic in-betweening. I realized that a bouncing ball is squashed and stretched even after having contact with the ground. Lastly, I learned the proper way to keyframe the factor - after changes made to factor > select factor > select channels > select key selected.
Part 10 Link: Part 10: Step Tangents, Dope Sheet, Scene Summary
Part 11 Link: Part 11: Directional Light, Raytrace Shadows, Render Settings
Part 12 Link: Part 12: Shadow Colour, Ambient Light, Batch Render Settings
Part 13 Link: Part 13: Batch Rendering, Fcheck, Quicktime Export
Exercise 2
1) Do you need to be able to draw well to create good 2D animation? Explain your view.
No. I feel that having good drawing skills is an added bonus to the 2D animation and it is good to have but not compulsory. If a person has good drawing skills, he/she may not have good 2D animation skills. Whereas a person with good 2D animation skills can make his drawings animate realistically even if it does not look as good as the original image.
2) Do you need to be able to draw well to create good 3D animation? Explain your view.
No. We are able to create 3D animation in Maya and the program allows us to construct shapes into objects and applying images onto these objects as textures. With these features, I do not see the need of having good drawing skills because all the materials needed are the Maya software and a good camera to take pictures for the texture images and we will be all set to creating good 3D animations.
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?
In my opinion, a good animation would be closely relevant to it's real-life counterpart. It should also stick to animation standards as close as possible. For a poor animation, it would be the opposite.
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.
The approach for the animation work is different. For 2D animation, we were introduced to the Pencil software and the Maya software for 3D animation. Other than the difference in terms of software used, there is also a difference in setting keys. For 2D animation, we need to set keys not only for the key frames but also for the in-between frames which results in a lot of keys being set. This becomes very taxing on the 2D animator especially if the 2D animation plays over a long duration of time. However for 3D animation, we only need to set keys for the key frames and the interpolation in Maya will help us manage the in-between frames. This is extremely helpful to the 3D animator as it saves a lot of time.
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.
Maya as an animation tool can be seen differently. It can be a difficult tool to use especially for first-timers who may not understand certain terms such as transforms and attributes and it can also be easy to use for users who understand these terms. In Maya, there are plenty of things to learn about and it requires a lot of time, patience and hard work to make full use of it. There are things that Maya does well and not so well in terms of creating animation. One of the things done well is the motion trail feature. With the motion trail, animators are able to visually see the path taken by an object during the animation. This allows changes to be made easily because we can see where the mistakes lie. One of the things done not so well is the saving of animation files. When we do animation, we sometimes commit mistakes. Our solution for this is to save multiple files of different versions. However, what if we forgot this and save the file by overwriting the previous one? The software in this case does not provide much help regarding this situation and the worse scenario would be to start our animation again from scratch.
No comments:
Post a Comment