animationinmaya

[animationinmaya]

Final reflection

I really enjoyed this animation class, i found it quite fun to animate unique rigs and create some unique animations. There were a few points along the way that made it really difficult like losing 2 of my files and being unable to edit them any more. Also textures not showing up in some animations(which is only really for aesthetics) but the biggest issue was dealing with Maya constantly crashing. The software didn't seem to want to cooperate with anyone in the class.

I would have liked to flesh out some of the animations a bit more and make them a bit more complex however it would have been too much of a workload for me to do that as i am still very new to 3D animation and am still learning how to do it at a basic level.

[animationinmaya]

Forward Roll Animation

again i started by plotting out the key frames for this animation

starting with the static first pose and then the end pose (which are just the same in different positions)

then i added a frame for crouching before he goes into the roll

then a frame midway through the roll

then finally 2 frames for ending the roll and coming out of the roll

after this i touched up all the in between frames like moving the arms to follow and rotate with the body movements. the arms gave me the most grief out of the whole animation as they kept trying to rotate in weird directions, i would swing them around with the body and they would somehow end up going sideways.

once i had smoothed out the in between frames i made a few tweaks to the key frames like making him over shoot his roll slightly leaning quite far forward and having to lean back when he stands. i also had to change some of the key frames when he was crouching down as his legs didn't end up following through with the leap into the roll.

[animationinmaya]

Squat Animation

For this squatting animation i again had the rig start from a static pose and then added key frames for him crouched-returning to the static pose-and turned to be looking at the camera with a thumbs up

after that i added the in between frames like him moving his legs to turn to the side, and for moving his arm across to the thumbs up position and also added arm movement to the squat itself

and the final thing i did was add a smile to the end of the animation

[animationinmaya]

Attack Animation

Unfortunately this was the other of 2 clips that i lost the file of so screenshots have come from the final playblast

In this animation i started by getting him into a pose for the starting frame by rotating his torso and moving 1 arm in front of his body while the other was behind his back. I then Rotated the staff every 2 frames for 20 frames so that it looked like it was spinning around. I then twisted his torso and brought his arms around in front of him so he would be swinging the staff and "hitting" the camera with it. The last thing i did was add a bit of eye squinting as a final touch

[animationinmaya]

Running Cycle

the running animation was relatively the same as the walk only faster

i started with the contact frames, then the passing frames, added a bit of torso tilt, some arm movement and then ha the headband blowing around in the wind

The biggest change i had to make to this one was decreasing the amount of frames that it had. i took all of the key frames i had made on the 40 frame animation and scaled them down to be 10 frames. I still left the frame rate the same so that it looked like he was running much faster like the gif i used as an example.

[animationinmaya]

Walk Cycle

The walk cycle was definitely the easiest animation to make as we had gone through an example of it together in class.

i started by mapping out the contact frames of the legs for the beginning middle and end of the cycle

then moved on to the passing frames of the legs in between the start and middle/middle and end

once i had done the passing frames i moved on to the arms swinging around, (however after i had animated the shoulder movement they started to look like they were only moving up and down)

after the arms i rotated the shoulders so that his torso was twisting as he walked and his shoulders were moving up and down.

I then added movement to the headband but it is kind of hard to see without the textures of the rig working anymore

Lastly i added eye movement to the animation so it looked like he was looking around

but again its kind of hard to see as the character is facing to the left while he walks so you cant really tell

[animationinmaya]

animating the jump was relatively easy, i started by key framing the starting position which was just a simple static pose and then made the key frames i needed starting with the legs.

I had the rig crouch down to where i wanted the jump to start

then key framed how high i wanted him to go

then used the same key frame of crouching for the landing.

after that i started adding a bit of detail.

i started with the bend of his torso so he was leaning forward while crouched.

then started swinging the arms during the crouch and in the middle of the air

After these key frames were done i did some fine tuning and ended up being pretty happy with the result.

However unfortunately i didn't get to finish animating and the headband was left un-animated due to the file breaking and no longer letting me edit it

[animationinmaya]

For my animations i used some example clips and took some references to use

I was using the Ninja Turtles as my rigs hence why i used them as a couple of examples

I took a short video of a class mate walking while hunched for my walk cycle

i used a reference of some key points in a forwards roll to animate

i used a clip of Donatello smacking the camera for my attack animation

and finally for my running cycle i used a clip of one of the Turtles running and also used a gif of a lady running to use as a reference for the key frames during the animation

[animationinmaya]

Second Animation project

For our second project in animation we had to create 6 short clips that had to include at least 1 Walk cycle and 1 of the following: Running, Attack, and Jumping and the rest could be anything.

For my clips i chose to do a Run, Jump, Attack, Squat, Forward Roll and the Walk cycle

[animationinmaya]

Maya Shortcuts

Pan = Alt + Middle mouse hold

Zoom = Middle mouse scroll

Save Location Key Frame = Shift + W

Save Rotation Key Frame = Shift + E

Rotation Gizmo = E

Scale Gizmo = R

Location Gizmo = W