Advanced Animation

Aug 29th, 2022 - Sept 23rd, 2022 (Week 1 - Week 4)
Rusydina Fazlin Athirah Binti Fauzi
Advanced Animation
Week 2 [Sept 2nd, 2022]
Exercises

INSTRUCTIONS

Exercises

Exercise 1

Week 2 - Advanced Animation (Exercise)

Bouncing Ball Series

Sept 9th, 2022

The first advanced animation exercise started in the second week when learned and understood how rigging works in the utilized advanced animation software which is Blender.

The requirements of these exercises are of a variety, we started off with learning how to animate a bouncing ball with the guidance of Mr. Kamal during our week 2 class. Regarding animating balls, we are also meant to understand animating the physics of these balls with different kinds of density put onto them.

1. Bouncing Ball series:

Soccer ball - Normal weight
Bowling ball - Heavyweight
Ping Pong ball – Lightweight
Squash and Stretch ball

Animation commences:

After understanding a few of the common importance of animation fundamentals, it was time to endure what it feels like to model, an animated rig inside of a 3D modeling/animation software. Even then before we got to animation, Mr. Kamal had to give recaps and introduce how we exactly work the software out.

-with the assistance of an existing blender file provided by Mr. Kamal where animation and rigging of a 3D modeled ball.

Understanding the rig

Blender_root_identification_animation_rigging

root -> initial placement, size & rotation in the scene

we seldom animate this controller

Blender_body_identification_animation_rigging

Body -> animate the position

Blender_spin_identification_animation_rigging

Spin - a rotation motion in animation

Blender_Squash_identification_animation_rigging

Squash

Object
Edit -> Shape the component
Pose mode -> always in this mode for animation

Manipulating the key

shifting the key - left click at the key

hold and drag to a new frame in the time OR-
Press G, slide the cursor to change to a new frame

Manipulating key_graph editor_figures

Graph editor

navigation

Pan/track view: (middle mouse button)

Click
hold
drag

Zoom in/out

scroll up/down on the middle mouse button

Zoom horizontally

Ctrl + click + hold + drag (middle mouse button)

Zoom vertically

Ctrl + click + hold+ drag (middle mouse button -> vertically

Adjusting the space_figure

Adjusting the spacing of the animation curve

image display

Display arcs on the 3D viewport

select body controller
property editor -> motion path

motion path:

Frame range start: 1, end: 50
calculate - click to create

object properties data

Additional notes:

every change in the graph editor will not automatically adjust on the viewport, always click on the 'update path' button to take effect of the changes.

Soccer Ball - Normal weight animation - Progress:

Figure 1.1 - Graph animating, ball bounce, September 9th 2022

One good thing to keep in mind is the shortcuts and useful keys that assist in animating the basic parts of the objects.

Basics:

Adding in keyframes - position the object (ball) first

shortcut key to add keyframes

Graph editing

X-positing of object - should be linear
Z-position of object - varies based on object movement/placement

Bouncing Ball, outcome - movement:

Bouncing Ball, additional - squash & stretch (week 4):

In the 4th week, we continued on applying the squash and stretch animation principle on the 3D animated ball! In the previous week, we understood the basics of keyframing and worked out how the movement of the ball bounces.

-Now we learned and understand the squash and stretch animation principle:

Elasticity_figure

basics of rigging squash:

make sure to move/squash/stretch object before keyframing
Press "I" set to scale

Figure 1.2 - Graph animating, ball bounce + squash and stretch, September 27th, 2022

Figure 1.3 - Graph animating, ball bounce + squash and stretch (graph), September 27th, 2022

Bouncing Ball, outcome - movement + squash & stretch:

Exercise 2

Week 4 - Animation Fluidity

Pendulum Swinging

Sept 23rd, 2022

Exercise 2 - Pendulum - Brief:

In the 4th week, we carried out our second exercise, where we utilized the flexibility in the 3D animated pendulum that we are meant to practice on to help progress into our upcoming projects.

Overlapping_figure

-with the announcement of the 2nd exercise, comes a brief to better guide us into this exercise along with Mr. Kamal's tutorial of the exercise.

Progression

Throughout starting this exercise it was during class so Mr. Kamal could help out and guide the class through the following exercise.

The requirements to meet for this second exercise are the animation principles:

overlapping
followthrough
drag

Just like the previous exercise and being familiar with working with keyframes. This time we worked with the keyframe placement of location and rotation.

Keyframing the location of the pendulum which is:

selecting the top of the pendulum + I + select location

this part of the exercise focuses on the follow-through of the pendulum swinging.

Figure 1.4 - Pendulum movement keyframing, September 30th, 2022

-adding to the follow-through as well as the line graph where two placements of the pendulum keyframes are to add another keyframe to have a much smoother transition of the movement of the pendulum.

Figure 1.5 - Pendulum followthrough keyframing, September 30th, 2022

While the rotation of the pendulum is worked with the three selections of the tail and the pendulum, but simply:

selecting each of the pendulum tail sections (after adjusting the rotation of it) + I + Select rotations

-the next step is to eye down and analyze how a pendulum would start swinging after being dragged and how it would stop which explains overlapping.

Swinging pendulum, outcome - Drag + follow-through + overlapping:

Exercise 3

Week 5 - Animation Clarity

Emotion Pose

Sept 30th, 2022

Exercise 3 - Emotion Pose - Brief:

In this 3rd exercise we covered more on rigging a mode, and of course, understanding the rigging systems to model and pose the particular model on the stage.