watching your arcs pt2

Straight lines give power.
So arcs aren't always good.
Heres an example of an arrow hitting a target, and an arrow missing the target.

One more example with a rigged character.

watching your arcs(pt1)

All actions follow arcs.
Most of the time arcs are figures 8's or they are in a wave pattern.
So I guess now is a good time to practise my arcs in these patterns.
incidentall there is a great tool in maya that im continually shocked to read of ppl not knowing about still. Its called the motion trail. Simply select your object you are animating, go to animate and create motion trail. Automatically you will see the arc of your selected object. One other object im finding very useful lately is the ghost selection object. You can set the amount of frames prior to and after the frame you are on and see where the object is on those frames. Its a great way to figure out your spacing and plot your arcs. It will work interactively with you as you pull points around in the graph editor as well. Great tool!
First a circular arc. ( you can see the motion trail working here)

All I have done is set a key at 1 and 25 the same. set a key on 13 the opposite. set a key on 7 and 19 the opposite again and splined it. And you pretty much get a perfect circle. So if you are blocking in a hand doing a circle arc you know how its done. frame one = 5y frame 25= 5 y frame 13 = 5y. frame 7 = -5x frame 19 = +5x and just spline it up. This is what you get.

Figure 8 now.

same formula as before pretty much. Just a couple more keys in the y axis and you have a figure 8.

the assistant

Basically, all cg animators are the directing or lead animator of our shot. The computer is our assistant. We give our assistant the keys, we give it the timing, and we let the computer fill in all of the inbetweens with the given information. I remember my first big critique after my first semester of school. My teacher had one question that he kept asking. Would you draw this? I thought..................ummmm, er no. I wouldn't draw that. Well why is it in your shot than? Well.....er......ummmmm...... the computer did it. I found out fast anything the computer does, is your fault. You control the computer, you control your animation, the computer merely does what you tell it to do.
How much work should we let the computer do than?
I know lots of animators who would say none. You do everything. They will work in stepped mode, work out there poses, work out there timing, work out there breakdowns, rework there timing, convert to spline and start working everything out again.
I say if you know what you want to do, figure out the best way to use the computer and do it.
It all comes down to how well you have your scene planned out before you start I guess.

the finger point

I finally get to do something with a rig. OOh the excitement.

Well it's just a boring finger point. But lets go for it. So I brought in the moom rig. I posed the hands as the book indicates.

well pose 2 wasn't indicated in the book but it's my breakdown pose. So it gives a few examples of how to animate this so here are the clips.

This first one the breakdown pose was at frame 4 the final pose frame 5.

This second one the breakdown was at frame 2 with the point on frame 5

This third one the break down was in the middle, and I slowed in and out of the pose

This one I just decided to have some fun and make something a little snappy.

The Pendulum

This particular section of this book brings up an age old debate in terms of cg animation.

To animate fk or to animate ik. Ik is slowly starting to reign supreme(in my opinion anyways) but it brings up some unique problems. Particularly arcs. Obviously the upper left example of the image is the correct one. While the upper right image is completely wrong.

Yet this is what we will get when animating ik, is the image on the upper right. Yet ik seems to be how most of are animating lately. Why do we get this when animating in ik? Well ik deals only in terms of translations. So the computer plots out the fastest way to get from a to b, and we get this straight path of action, with no arc whatsoever. The movement is completely unnatural. If we were to animate in fk, we wouldnt have to worry so much about our arcs, as the computer would rotate from a particular pivot point and the arcs would create the obviously more natural movement. So i'm going to create the pendulum and animate on in ik, and one in fk with just a basic sphere. So I went and animated the resulting pendulum based on the diagram given, in fk.

So its going pretty good. Im not a fan of the timing, but its the diagram given :S

Now I've done one the exact same timing in ik and heres what we get.

Well,its not really working is it. I guess I have to go in and work some more. I only need to animate the one axis in fk, but in Ik I need to go in there and do some more work. Guess I better go do it.

Same result, just more work.

lesson 1(unplugging)

Animation is concentration.
If Milt thought 2-d had its distractions I can't even imagine what his take would be today on cg animation. The computer has so many distractions. As I sit here I realize, I have 4 other windows open on my internet browser, msn logged on, skype logged on, and countless video games I could be playing, and maya of course is open as well. And that is just the distractions on my computer screen. Never mind music, surrounding toys, and noise coming from all areas of my house.
This unplugging thing they spoke of is gonna be pretty tricky :S

revisiting the old ball

So I did the bouncing ball earlier. But I wasn't informed of the squash and stretch principle yet. So time to fix up this bounce. So apparently on the contact the ball needs to be squashed, the ball needs to stretch as it gains momentum before the contact, and it needs to return to its volume as it slows down at the peak of its bounce.
So lets do this.
Ive opened up my old bounce scene file.
I go to my contact frames and I begin to scale the ball(r on the keyboard in maya). I notice that as Im scaling the volume of the ball doesn't always stay consistent. So I need to scale in at least 2 axis to keep the volume or mass the same. I notice as well that by default the volume of the ball is 1 in all 3 axis. So in order to maintain the correct volume I started with all 3 axis should always equal 3 when added together. Ok simple enough. I scale the x axis to 1.4, and I scale the y axis to .6 with z equalling 1, I now have a squashed ball that is of the correct volume. On the next contact I make x 1.3 and y .7 as the impact isn't quite as hard. So now I need the ball to return to it's volume again so I set a new scaling key of 1 in all the axis again at the peak of the bounce. Now it's a little tricky trying to maintain the volume perfectly as I work in the graph editor so I have a little trick ive made up. I open both the y and x axis scaling curves. I add a breakdown key with both curves selected(I on the keyboard and mmb click) and I turn my scale tool on(r) and grab both breakdown keys at the same time. I click on the 1 line and can now scale them both to where I want the breakdown to be and they move exactly the same so the breakdown volume still = 3 and the journey to it will always = 3 as well. Here is an image of how that looks.

I play my animation, and it looks very funny. I need to definitely add some rotations to this for the shape to look like its supposed to. So I turn on my rotation tool(e in maya) and lets set some keys. I know the rotation should be 0 on the contact frames, so I add that. I add the rotations for before, and after each contact frame, and I set my curves to linear. Since the rotations are 70 and - 70 it balances out nicely and I dont need to add any extra curves to this. Since it reaches 0 at the peak frame everything works nicely.

Here is the image of the final bounce with squash and stretch now.

Once more but this time lets apply what Ken Harris said. Have the ball contact and then squash. Notice the difference here.

Timing and Spacing pt.2

Next example Richard gives of timing and spacing is a coin travelling across the screen in one second. One example with even spacing. Ive set two keys one on frame 1 and one 25. My curves are in linear, which means the spacing will be exactly the same from 1-25.

And one with ease in and ease out, or slow in and slow out. He gives somewhat of an example of a timing chart as well. Which i'll explain how I go about animating the coin to the provided timing chart. On the chart you will notice on frame 13 which is exactly the middle, the coin to is exactly at the middle. Frame 11 is at 50 percent of the distance to frame 13 and frame 15 is at 50 percent of the distance to the final frame. Likewise frame 9 and 17 are 50 percent away as well.

So in cg how do we go about making this timing chart. First I am going to set my first two keys. Frame 1 at the start of the screen frame 25 at the end. My curves are going to be linear so frame 13 will be halfway just like the timing chart but nothing else will be like the chart. So ill save a key on 13. So I know since my curve is linear the space from one key to the next will be spaced perfectly evenly. So frame 7 is 50 percent of the way to frame 13 from frame 1. The timing chart says I need this distance to be at frame 11 though. So I hold "I" on the keyboard and mmb click to insert a key on frame 7. I grab that key mmb click and drag it to frame 11. Making sure my keys are still in linear I now can grab frame 6 which is halfway again and drag that over to frame 9. So the first half of the animation is accurate to the timing chart. Now I do the last half frame 19 cam be dragged over to 15 frame 20 can be dragged over to 17, and your graph editor should look like this.

You can now smooth out your curves and your animation for this will look exactly as the example given. Which is like this.

Timing and Spacing pt.1

Two of the most important aspects of animation.

If you haven't read the section on timing and spacing in the survival kit, do it.

I'm going to animate a bouncing ball to figure this out better. Basically the ball will just bounce around. When the ball is contacting the ground is the timing, how it gets there is the spacing.

The book gives an example of a ball bouncing 4 times. One bounce it takes 20 frames, then 16 frames 13 frames and then 10. So I have my timing down, now I need to figure out my spacing for this. So first im going to set a key at frame 1, and frame 60. I click on the ball and press "s" to do this, I move over to frame 60 I move my ball to the opposite side of the screen and press "s" again. I know because my timing has been worked out I need 59 frames to get from point a to point b. So now when I press play I can see my ball travelling to this point, but theres no bounce. I want to change how it is getting there though so I open my "graph editor". This is under window, animation editors, graph editor. So with the ball clicked I can see a line there that represents the travel path. I drag my mouse over the line and change my curves to linear so the ball moves evenly spaced on this path. I go into the time slider and press "s" on frame 20 36 49 and 59. This exactly where I want the ball to be on these frames. Now I need to animate the bounce. So I go to frame 10 and translate the ball up in "y" axis to where I want the ball to peak on the bounce. I do this for all the 4 bounces I do, remembering the ball wont bounce as high on the following bounce. This is looking pretty ugly but its bouncing. So I need to work on my spacing now. I drag my mouse over the y curves and click the spline button, which flattens all the curves. I now need a key inbetween each key that will control the spacing, or control how the ball will get from the bottom to the top, and the top to the bottom. So I hold "i" on the keyboard and middle mouse click between each point to add the keys I need to control the spacing.

So if I have my translate option on "w" in maya I can now select the new keys and move them around in the editor to control my spacing. I merely select the key I want to move, hold shift and hold my middle mouse button and move the key up and down, or side to side. Up and down would change the height of the key , and side to side would change the frame the ball will contact that height. You can see how my curves end up looking after I have adjusted the "inbetween" keys. Also notice I the bottom tangents are red and blue. This means I have broken them. This allows me to grab one half of the tangent and pull it around without affecting the other half. Which is really helpful for a bounce like this. To move the tangent around, just select the side of it you want to move, and middle mouse click and move it around to where you want it to be.

Here is the video of the ball bounce.

Life Drawing

Time to get to work!

Richard Williams goes into great lengths discussing the importance of life drawing. Every animator 2d or 3d should always be observing life, and drawing it as they see it. Great stuff is everywhere, you don't need to be at a life drawing session to do it either. Grab a sketch book, walk around and just draw people as you see them. You will be building up a great library of poses as you do this to reference in your animation. Since I am applying this entire book to cg, why not import a character into maya and do some dynamic posing. If you are out there doing life drawing, why not try and mimic some of your drawings with a cg rig of your choice, and see if you can capture that same pose.

Here's a link to a plug in for maya that let's you store poses as you make them for whatever rigs you are working on at the time. http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/downloads/scripts-plugins/animation/c/poseman-pose-manager--2/download_page

flow and resources.

Im going to try and keep everything I do as chronicled as I can, with videos of the finished work. Step by step details of what I have done to replicate the tutorials given in the book, with as many images as I possibly can to help out ppl who may be learning as well.
I will be exclusively using maya for everything, but there is no reason any principles covered wont apply to other cg programs. Just any button or hot key references may not apply for other programs.
For all of the ball stuff, I will just be making a sphere and animating that.
For all of the human stuff I will be using probably four different rigs.
For the human stuff I have decided to use the norman rig which can be downloaded here - http://sites.google.com/site/normanrig/
For the cartoony stuff I will be using the moom rig(by ramtin) which can be downloaded here - http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/downloads/character-rigs/c/moom-v4-0-3-by-ramtin
For the heavy character stuff I will use the buck bunny rig(by the blender ppl) which can be downloaded here - http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/downloads/character-rigs/c/rabbit
And may randomly use the andy rig(by John Doublestein) which can be downloaded here - http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/downloads/character-rigs/c/the-andy-rig
Much thanks to all of the people that share the awesome stuff they have created so that we can use it for learning purposes.
I have set up a vimeo account that I will use exclusively for posting videos. And a photobucket account I will also use exclusively for posting images. I will be also keeping track of all of my scene files, and if anyone decides to follow along and wants a specific scene file made available to you just shout and ill do my best to put that up as well.

The beginning

I went to school to study animation. Instead of being taught personally I was handed books and told now do it. I'd do it, hand it in. It would be graded, and criticized accordingly.
Lesson 1- Bounce a ball in 2d. Bounce a ball in cg. Roll a ball in 2d. Roll a ball in cg. Here are some diagrams of how Preston Blair did it, here are some diagrams of how Richard Williams did it.
Lesson 2- Make a flour sac jump and apply what you learned on the ball over to the flour sac in 2-d heres some videos of what other students did.
Lesson 3- Do a vanilla walk, heres some examples of how Richard Williams does it. Do a personality walk, heres some more examples of how Richard Williams does it.
Lesson 4- Do a run, heres some example of how Richard Williams does it. Do a personality run.......you get the point. Well on this one they managed to find a tutorial someone else from some other country published online, and tossed some Williams examples in it as well.
Lesson 5- See lesson 4, but do it with animals.
Almost half a year had past of this, and my only real mentor was a book that cost me about 20 bucks from amazon. Had I really been duped into spending about 10000 dollars for 6 months of education by a 20 dollar book....................yes.
After looking into it, I discovered that this was pretty much the case in a large majority of schools. Animation schools were literally charging students an arm and a leg, for a stall with a computer, an animation table, and little bit of time with a teacher who knew his way around an animation book. I had all of these things in my bedroom already!
Im not bitter about my school experience, I did meet a lot of great students of like mind. Random amazing people from the industry at times would stop by and look at work and comment etc.....Which was really the only selling feature the school had, was the cameo appearances by some super cool animators. The experience as a whole wasnt all bad. We went on to learn a small amount of modelling, a small amount of rigging(by someone who was not even qualified to work in the industry with the knowledge he possessed), and from there used what we had made to make our own short films. Which was definitely a great learning experience.

So I am now working part time,(outside of the animation industry) and I figure I am going to brush up on my skills as an animator in my spare time at home.
My goal is to go through the entire Animators Survival Kit, but not in 2-d, every exercise I am going to attempt to do in cg. I realize a lot of the things covered in there may not be able to be done in cg, so I may have to omit certain things.
Hopefully this will make me a lot better of an animator, and if anyone decides to follow my progress through the book, will help them as well.