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POSES:

- - - Apart from the assets we were supplied in lessons, every model you see on this page is my own creation - - -

Collect images of interesting poses and pose your Maya rig into its stance:

Angry man:

I chose this photo because of the charismatic pose. His body shape and position emphasize his expression and highlight his intention. I also wanted to challenge myself by posing the wrists with the thumbs protruding outwards.

I believe I succeeded in creating a confident, strong, and powerful stance by widening the leg position. This makes the man look more stable and, therefore, more threatening and menacing

www.deviantart.com. (2021). Male Angry Beckon Standing Pose by theposearchives on DeviantArt. [online] Available at: https://www.deviantart.com/theposearchives/art/Male-Angry-Beckon-Standing-Pose-867694089 [Accessed 27 Sep. 2023].

International, C.E. (2023). Unique Aesthetic Poses To Make Your Photoshoot Momentous. [online] Color Experts International. Available at: https://www.colorexpertsbd.com/blog/aesthetic-poses/ [Accessed 27 Sep. 2023].

Sitting woman:

I chose this photo as a pretty standard sitting shot with crossed legs, which is absent from my other shots.

I encountered some difficulty in aligning the head with the hand at the specific angle depicted in the photo, primarily due to the disproportionately large head provided in our tutorial rig.

Aside from the recommended tutorials given on LinkedIn, I have utilised this tutorial from Amanda Val on YouTube, which I found adequate for a simple lighting setup in Maya to give my character pose more finesse:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQYU3-V4lOk&t=156s

Back stretch:

I chose this pose as it seems an elongated stretch with the person facing upwards from the side.

While I believe the proportions of my ball are accurate, the head's size required me to cut the stance close again. This resulted in a slight upward rotation of the neck joint, which I then corrected to achieve the desired head angle. While not fully accurate, this position is much closer for the head.

www.adobe.com. (n.d.). How to Draw Dynamic Poses: Your Expert Guide | Adobe. [online] Available at: https://www.adobe.com/uk/creativecloud/illustration/discover/dynamic-poses.html [Accessed 27 Sep. 2023].

tjeffries (2022). 12 Yoga Poses for Strong Legs. [online] Yoga Journal. Available at: https://www.yogajournal.com/practice/yoga-sequences-by-anatomy/12-poses-for-strong-legs/.

Leg stretch:

I chose this pose because it is a simple side view shot with a slight adjustment due to the fingers grasping the toes or hips. This requires dexterity and balance, which I wanted to convey in the photograph.

Proud man:

I chose this pose as it is once again a pretty unique position that is being taken compared to my other images, as he is standing in what I would call a somewhat proud position, the bent toes on the right leg may be a challenge to position correctly.
I noticed my camera angle could be improved and shifted a small amount round to the left, as in the reference photo he is facing the camera slightly more front-on.

The toes were a challenge to bend, as the tutorial model has added some sort of a floor constraint/restraint that hasn't been applied correctly, and this means I can only bend the toes up when the sole of the foot is flat on the ground, and not when the sole is raised...

Lifestyle, C. (2016). Balanced Body, Balanced Life: Yoga Poses for Creating Harmony and Flow. [online] Conscious Lifestyle Magazine. Available at: https://www.consciouslifestylemag.com/balance-yoga-body-life-poses/ [Accessed 27 Sep. 2023].

Pushing man:

I chose this image for more variety, as in this shot the person is visually applying force in a direction.

I noticed that due to my own model's large shoulder width, I was unable to have the person's left arm at the desired angle while still pressing against the surface. I could navigate around this by adding more control points and weight paints to my clavicle areas, giving me the ability to squish his chest tighter together, as can be seen in the original reference photo.

Limited, A. (n.d.). man push pose Stock Photo - Alamy. [online] www.alamy.com. Available at: https://www.alamy.com/man-push-pose-image67040810.html [Accessed 27 Sep. 2023].

My Rig:

A little context on my Maya rig; how I went about rigging, and creating my own Maya character. Demonstrating knowledge of Parenting, Bones, IK Controls, Weight Painting, Texturing, Constraints, and modeling. As well as professional or technical skills such as correctly naming objects in the outliner and conforming to common naming systems and prefixes typically used in bone rigs, EG: RightIndex_1, RightIndex_2, Etc...
From the poses task above, I have realized the need to perfect the clavicle areas in my rig, as I have spotted possible benefits to adding extra bones around his shoulder areas for more flexibility.

Bouncing Balls:

Our next assignment was to create a bouncing ball animation in Maya, using the principles of timing and spacing, easing, weight, materials, pose-to-pose animation, straight-ahead animation, and bouncing ball physics. We were also encouraged to research these topics and create reference material to help us with our animations.

I chose to create two different bouncing ball animations: one of a rubber ball and one of a solid ball. I wanted to see how the different materials would affect the movement and shape of the balls as they bounced.

Solid Ball Animation:

For the solid ball animation, I used pose-to-pose animation. I started by drawing the ball at the top of its bounce and then drew it bouncing down. I used easing to make the ball slow down more and more as time went on and have a smoother movement at the tops of bounces

Lighting:

I once again added some cool lights to my scene to make the balls look more realistic. I used a directional light to cast shadows on the balls and an area light to create a soft glow around them.

Rubber Ball Animation:

For the rubber ball animation, I used a combination of pose-to-pose and straight-ahead animation. I started by creating keyframes for the ball at the top and bottom of its bounce. Then, I used in-betweening to create the frames in between that required a squash and stretch effect to make the ball flatten out as it hit the ground and then expand back to its original shape as it bounced back up on certain frames to change the shape of the ball to then more flattened shape as it hits the ground.

Conclusion:

I enjoyed working on this assignment and learned a lot about timing and spacing, easing, and bouncing ball physics. I also learned how to use the Graph Editor to create smooth and realistic animations.

Basket Ball:

Part of the additional challenge

Practicing more on how bouncy balls have arcs in animation and how this momentum diminishes over time.

Bowling Ball:

Part of the additional challenge

Learning how really heavy objects may not have much air time at all when animated.

Cannon Ball:

Part of the additional challenge

Practicing a little bit on hard, heavy objects and how their momentum would end abruptly when coming in contact with other hard surfaces.

Ping-Pong Ball:

Part of the additional challenge

Leaning how lighter objects may spend considerably more time in the air compared to heavier objects when animated.

My ball:

This task demonstrated the usefulness of references, and how using references alongside your animations can help you accurately decipher timings and speeds of realistic movement, by using frame to frame animation and alligning my ball with the reference i have created a realistic bouncing ball, equiped with adequate objects in which the ball interacts with, just like in the reference video, i have also acheived this by filming clean and stable reference footage.

Some thoughts i have come across to do with the aspect of frame-to-frame matching using videos, I find the next most accurate and logical and efficient step in this direction and method of animating would be to cut out the middle man and to have a software developed that somehow tracks the object throughout the video frames and analyses the movement to apply the movement and translate/transfer the moments onto the 3D geometry in a scene, luckily in today's world we have developed tools such as motion tracking objects, as demonstrated in my Narrative Tab with my Short Film, or motion tracking with characters, where we can not only track simple balls throughout animation but also people as I have demonstrated here on the right; I have included a short video of my experience and prototyping of my own Maya character rig being motion tracked and mapped its movement and being controlled by my own video reference. A fascinating and exciting discovery I came across almost a year ago now when I was gladly invited into the closed beta at Wonder Dynamics. I find developments like this not only get an animator's dull life in front of a screen to be more personally and actively involved in their projects, such as filming their own stunts, and having to go outside more, but also by saving much more time with his work by being more efficient and getting more done in total, by having the very repetitive task of clicking on each pixel in each frame to align to achieve realistic movement when we could just directly transfer or translate the moment we have already created for reference, arguably, achieving more realism with movement than ever before in CGI.

The motion capture data is ready to be used and imported straight into your Maya scene project file or straight into your post-production video.

I will likely be making use of this efficient tool for my future larger-scale projects.

Wonder Dynamics. (n.d.). Wonder Dynamics. [online] Available at: https://wonderdynamics.com/.

Swings:

Pendulum Swing

Practice task

Chain Swing

Main task

Here, I remade the chain from scratch, demonstrating my knowledge of parenting, also known as constraints. I have gone 1 frame over what the tutorial suggested with the overlap effect to create a seemingly lighter chain with more of a character.

Ball Tail:

Some Themic Inspiration:

My inspiration for this project i would say heavily came from the Abe's Oddworld game series, specifically, Abe's Exoddus realeased in 1998, which was a game i grew up with and i was very fond of due to it being one of the first PC games at the time i got and i remember the atmosphere visuals, and the animation cycles, as well as the soundscape used in the game, it ran at a low resolution as well as a almost square aspect ratio on the old laptop i had at the time. Nowadays it seems retro to me.
Some screenshots from the game are given here on the right.

Inc, O.I. (n.d.). Oddworld Inhabitants - Oddworld Inhabitants, Inc. [online] www.oddworld.com. Available at: https://www.oddworld.com/oddworldgames/ [Accessed 17 Dec. 2023].

www.reddit.com. (n.d.). Reddit - Dive into anything. [online] Available at: https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Ft03uxafr4dr31.png [Accessed 17 Dec. 2023].

Community inspiration:

At the beginning of this task, I explored YouTube to understand how other students might have tackled this common yet straightforward challenge in animation. My search led me to a particularly clever video by Ronald Toes. The smoothness with which a button click was executed in his animation caught my attention. Although my character's interaction with the button in my scene slightly differed from Ronald's approach, his technique provided valuable inspiration. It not only played a key role in helping me conceptualize and refine my character's engagement with the environment in my animation but also sparked creative ideas for the storyline and activities my character would pursue in my own project.

www.youtube.com. (n.d.). Flying Fox Animation. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CWLnjQV84s&list=LL&index=10 [Accessed 18 Dec. 2023].

Some Behind the Scenes:

Here below is a short video that provides insights into how I constructed my scene and animation, responding to the curiosity many viewers have expressed about my creative process. While I'm aware that revealing the behind-the-scenes details might highlight some flaws in the scene and make the final product, on the whole, seem less impressive, I believe the benefits outweigh these concerns. This video offers a chance for others to experiment with similar techniques, potentially leading to advancements in this field as more people engage with and adapt these methods. Therefore, I am eager to share my approach and contribute to the animation community's growth.

In this project, I've also included my original image, which required numerous hours of careful configuration and refinement. I meticulously crafted the specific prompt to generate an image that was not only desirable but also suitable and compatible for use in my animated scene. This process involved a deep understanding of how machines interpret connections and relationships between words. For instance, incorporating terms like 'long distance' alongside 'close up' in the same prompt can yield a 2D image with a remarkable sense of spatial dynamic range.

Furthermore, this method bridges the gap between post-project documentation and creative intention. Typically, one might use words to describe the intended aspects of a project after its completion. However, by preemptively employing this language—words and phrases you'd ordinarily use to articulate your vision—you effectively streamline the creative process. This approach allows you to go straight to the essence of what you envisage, capturing what you already had in mind without the tedious part of piecing it together separately. It's about having the vision in your mind materialize directly at your fingertips.

If the animation industry could universally adopt this approach, it would significantly simplify the task of animation, particularly from the standpoint of vocabulary in dictation and direction. This could potentially enable animators and creators to accomplish a larger volume of work, or even empower them to become more like directors of their own creations, rather than merely being used as implementers or like pawns in a game of chess.

The Image Prompt I Crafted:

19 Nov, 10:49 am:

"Abe's Oddworld, Abe's Oddysee, Abe's Exodus, game background, backdrop scenery, long distance, close ground, deep floor, mountain distance, factory distance, flat backdrop, 2d game, side view,"

Midjourney. (n.d.). Midjourney. [online] Available at: https://www.midjourney.com.

An Early Test Render:

This was an early test render I did where I felt I could have improved many aspects of the ball with the tail. Not only was the transitional movement from the bottom platforms to the top platforms incomplete, but also I noticed many areas that were initially not noticed such as the clipping of the tail through platforms and the unnatural movement of the leaf platform. making these quick prototypes proved useful at revealing areas that would later require polishing and being more mindful about. Having completed a rough vision of my project was also useful for planning where I would take the animation project next. Also later, changed out the beaver skin for a more customed rig with my own ears.

Final Result:

This is the final result of my Ball with Tail exercise, which I found quite fun to make overall. combining aspects such as depth maps, which required using specifically tuned AI images composed on Midjourney to achieve a suitably arranged image composition that could be efficiently transferred into a black and white depth map image, created using Photoshop's in-build feature to analyze an image and create the depth map, and later use it in Maya on a densely loop-cut polygon plane to offset or displace the plane according to the shade shown on the depth map image, then later overlaying the real image onto the mesh from the camera's viewport. The final result also has additional creations such as branches for the leaf platform, activatable moving platforms, and glowing moving fireballs.

Walking Ball:

I began the project by creating a walk cycle, as per our instructions. To make space for a run cycle at the beginning, I moved all the keyframes from my walk in the outliner along the timeline. My goal was to explore beyond a simple walk cycle and understand the dynamics of run cycles. During this exploration, I realized the necessity of keeping the character entirely airborne at certain points, as the character's movement during a run involves periods of flight. This contrasts with the walk cycle, where the character's motion is more grounded. Additionally, I found that the animation cycle for running is shorter, with 2 running steps being quicker than 2 walking steps. After several tests, I determined that a run cycle is optimally around 16 to 20 frames, shorter than the 24 frames typically used for a walk cycle. Through numerous test renders and meticulous zoom-ins to check the control points placements and accuracy on the model's rig within the animation, I have successfully achieved a seamless transition between a slick-looking walk and run cycle.

- - - Apart from the assets we were supplied in lessons, every model you see on this page is my own creation - - -

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