January 28
To stand out, make something your own.
Don't excuse your work. Take a critique and grow.
Review:
Opening files
Always open Maya first and then either the .ma or .mb file. Don't drag and drop files onto Maya and don't open files first.
Preferences
Checking preferences, you always close Maya first.
Mac: Users/Student/Library/Preferences/Autodesk/Maya/2012x64/prefs
PC:C:\Documents and Settings\Student\My Documents\Maya\2012-x64\prefs
On Macs, the library is hidden under Finder > Go. Reveal it by holding options.
Rename prefs before adding your own so that there is no copying over.
Open the program first and then right click on the program's icon in the dock. Options. Keep in dock.
In the bottom right, the icon of a calender with scratches is the settings.
In the status line, you can set which type to be clickable.
Free floating menus are better for animation in that the pop ups will not scale your viewing window and ruin your acetate data collection.
Double clicking on the range slide selects all of it.
Under Display, Grid needs to be checked in order to show grid..
0 = off
1 = on
Inverting a light's value can force it to shine darkness.
To lock a camera, in the channel box, select the values you want to lock, right-click, and lock selected.
Jason Schleifer created the squash and strech ball as well as Gollum
January 30 Homework
Richard Williams 1 - 34
Preston Blair's How to Animate Film Cartoons
Ken Harris, master animator at Warner Bros
Jerky/bumpy animation seems only to be able to hold the audience for twenty five minutes.
Believable things have weight and muscles.
Art Babbitt, Grim Natwick, Emery Hawkins
Animation is just doing a lot of simple things - one at a time!
Concentrate on performance and not the technicalities.
Ub Iwerks
Learn perspective, then the human figure, both nude and clothed, and surround it with proper setting.
Know the figure well enough so that you can concentrate on the particular person - on the difference - why this person is different from somebody else.
Your drawing is strong because you're depicting why this is different from something else.
Learn to draw. You can always do the animation stuff later.
Look to inspiration.
How to Cheat in Maya 2012 3 - 35
www.howtocheatinmaya.com
Squash and stretch gives characters a sense of flexibility and life.
- Can be combined with anticipation to make a character "wind-up" for an action in a visually interesting way.
Anticipation prepares the character and the audience for an action.
- Moving the character a small amount in the opposite direction.
- We are accustomed to tracking fast moving objects by taking a cur from its anticipation, and then looking ahead of the object in the opposite direction. We can make it so that the audience is always looking at the part of the screen that we want them to.
- If we see a character really wind-up for an action, it is clear that the character has planned the action well in advance. If it moves without warning, the motion comes across as unplanned. You may want that for characters who simply react to the world.
Staging involves framing the camera in a way to best capture the action. How it best communicate the motion, the character arc, the story.
- Adjusting the camera, making tweaks to the layout, and finding just the right balance in the composition improves the staging.
- When block is finished, generally the major staging decisions are decided. Staging isn't over though.
- Where is the audience's eye going to be looking at every moment of the shot? Lighting, effects, and editing will hone in audience's focus.
Straight ahead animating should be used when the action is very mechanical. The ability to perceive the motion as your frame through the animation in slow motion is far greater than trying to imagine what pose the highly mechanical movement is going to hit.
Pose to pose should be used for creating character performances. The key poses are going to tell the story so in order to be sure that you arrive at these golden moments, you should pose them out and time them as necessary.
Overlap is when an object lages behind the main action. FLUIDITY.
Follow through is when an action overshoots or goes past the end pose. WEIGHT.
Slow in/out
- Not every action should slow in and out. The contact of a ball on the ground.
Arcs
- Linear paths are robotic.
- Check arcs from all angles, but most importantly from your camera view.
Secondary Action
- There is no amount that is too much. We're constantly multitasking.
Timing
- Pauses in between actions can have more powerful messages than the actions themselves.
Exaggeration
- Find the idea in your scene and figure out the best way to exaggerate the message.
- Your workflow must create animation that has minimal keys, therefore making it easy to change the animation later on.
Appeal
Workflow
- Step-by-step process you employ to create a shot from start to finish.
- Toned canvas. Large shadow forms.
- Color relationships
- Warmer or cooler?
- Lighter or darker?
- Color tendency? Hue?
- Exaggerate poses because as you continue, they will be watered-down.
- Body movements before facial.
- Are my poses as dynamic as I originally planned? Is there still contrast in the animation in pose, timing, and composition?
January 30
Don't Caps Lock.
Number by double digits.
Windows use AVI. Mac use qt.MOV
Shift to select a number of frames. Two arrows should appear in the center. Moving that should move the selected frames.
Feb 4
A shows all in graph editor.
Flower icon constrains.
You can stack curves under view.
View > Infinity. Curves > Post-infinity
Ctrl Alt adjusts the graph editor.
K MMB Drag on time slider: Listens to audio
K LMB: Sees visuals
In the channel input boxes, plugging in "* = #" will multiply the previous value by whatever the input value is. / will work the same for division.
Feb 6 Homework
How to cheat in Maya
8
Staging involves framing the camera in a way to best capture the action.
- If you're not a strong drawer, then perhaps you rely more on photo or video reference to give you cues to begin your work.
- Will I be able to hit all of the poses that I like, or are the poses going to have to be changed to work when the character is in motion? Adjust the camera, make tweaks to the layout.
- Where is the audience's eye going to be looking at every moment of the shot?
Ch 2
As the curve travels to the right, frames are ticking by. As the curve raises and lowers, it's an increase or decrease in the value. If the curve changes direction, the object it represents will change direction.
If a curve's direction is mainly horizontal, the value is not changing much. If the direction over the range is predominantly vertical, a larger change in value is happening and the movement will be large. If a curve is perfectly horizontal, there is no change.
Using the template tangent types tend to make the motion look very "CG"and uninteresting.
Weighted tangents have differing lengths which depend on the distance in value between the keyframes.
Handles Pros/Keys Cons
- Curves less cluttered with fewer keys
- Powerful curve-shaping options
- Curves scale in time more accurately
- Good for subtle spacing adjustments
- Create sharp angles with fewer keys.
- Not very dense with keys and easier to make changes to.
Handles Cons/Keys Pros
- Exact. Value isn't affected by adjacent keys.
- Complete control. Any shape possible.
- Clearly readable in editor.
- Simple to work with. Not complex.
- Easy to edit.
- Using handles and adjusting adjacent keys can affect spacing.
- Some shapes are not possible.
- Too few keys tend to feel floaty.
- More difficult for other animators to edit.
- Less control over larger spacing areas.
Spline techniques
- Have spline technique
- Only have what keys are necessary.
- Curve shapes between two keys that are one frame apart can cause motion blur problems.
TV visual effects and commercial VFX work is typically done at the same type of studio.
- May take on a few shots of small budget movies as well.
- Variety of projects.
- Demo reel will have different visuals and easier to transition to both games and feature if you have the TALENT.
- Projects are shorter. 1-3 months. Constantly updating reel, making contacts, and lining up next job.
- Animator should learn rigging, lighting, and modeling in that order.
- Ultimate job for most animators, is feature film.
Ch 3
If a circle comes up while editing, it just means you have the select tool Q active and you need to select another tool.
Curves > Spreadsheet See data as spreadsheet.
Edit > Select Unsnapped. Edit > Snap Moves any keys off of frames to nearest whole number frame.
Selecting a channel in the graph editor. Curves > Mute Channel.
View > Display Normalized. See curves in the same range.
Hold I. Insert Keys.
Hold RMB > Swap Buffer. View > Show Buffer Curves
Right Click Menu. Snap Buffer will snap the buffer to the current version of the curve.
Ch 4
Timeline is the interface element. It allows for scrubbing, copying and
pasting keys, reordering keys, setting tangent types, and playblasting.
Add in subtle amount of figure 8 motions.
Animate > Create Editable Motion Trail
35 - 117 (exclude 96 - 107)
16
Richard Williams 85 - 100
