Setting Maya to Python 2 (Rolling back a version in Maya 2022)
Installing Tween Machine
Methods for creating pose transitions using ‘biasing’ (easing/slow in and out)
Creation of different kinds of motion shots
There are three ways to slow in and out：
Use the Tween Machine
Change the curve in the curve editor to a straight line (linear tangent) and drag the mouse in the middle to slow in and out
Change the curve in the curve editor to a spline tangent and drag the mouse in the middle to slow in and out
Camera Animation & Camera Movement in the Real World
What this lesson taught about motion shots is very useful. The transformation of the focal length of the lens, the position of the character in the lens, the smooth movement of the lens, etc. In real animation production, it is very helpful for us to create the ideal animation shots effect.
Viewpoint: The story should present freshness to the audience. Only freshness can keep the audience’s attention and make them feel that their attention, their time and their money are worth it.
Explanation: Freshness should be reflected in the creation of the story. The way of presentation, the scene, the performance, the display, the rhythm of the story, these fresh things, endows the film with realistic significance. The best they do is that it makes you feel like you’ve never seen it before and you don’t know what’s going to happen next.
Example 1:
Tom and Jerry
Example 2:
The polluted underwater world
Example 3:
Kung Fu Panda
This is just my preliminary assumption. In the future, these views and cases should be revised and adjusted to some extent.
Through this class I learned lip syncing in animation:
Lip syncing and facial animation: two goals
Jaw bounce: the underlying structure:A lip sync should be built upon a solid jaw bounce rhythm
Emotional speech: underlying emotional structure:Facial animation should capture emotions not just move. All movement has purpose and matches the dialogue
Jaw tilt (angle of the mouth driven by speech/ emotions)
Creating a ‘Jaw Bounce’ animation：Adjust the opening and closing of the chin
Creating a ‘Viseme’ animation：Adjust the size of your mouth (lengthen or rounder) ,turning your lips inside or outside and your tongue up and down
Mouth enhancements: Adjust lips up and down, turn lips inside and out, inflate and deflate the mouth and move nose up and down. The last step is to adjust the teeth.
Upper hemisphere (Brows & eyes):Adjust the movement of eyebrows and brow center, adjust the displacement of eye gaze, adjust the movement of upper and lower eyelids. Add blinking of eyes and move frames appropriately.
From last week, I decided I needed to narrow my research, and I focused my research on the Academy Award for Best Animated short film. After watching these award-winning animated shorts, I found two areas of interest for me:
1.Animation is the ultimate presentation of imagination. It breaks all conventional ideas, sets novel Settings and violates traditional presentation methods. Sensory stimulation of the brain can stimulate the audience’s association and attention to a large extent. Insert interruption points in the flow of the story line so that the pace of the story grabs the audience’s attention. Such as, a row of walking ducklings, the last one will always be alone, breaking the rhythm. Or, before the audience thinks the result is reached and the narrative is a cliche, give a reverse action that breaks the expected result. The cat climbed on the flying basket, the audience thought everything went well, but, the next second a violent sinking, the audience will immediately in the spirit of worry. Comparing to fly directly, this kind of way will attract the audience’s attention, mobilize the audience’s mood. The result of the story is the same, but the core is to always attract the audience’s attention, in the process of stimulating the audience’s thinking, association, emotion. When the audience is familiar with a certain presentation, immediately break it, such as a plane flying in the sky, the protagonist jumps out of the plane, the audience’s emotions are immediately aroused, they will worry about whether the protagonist is dead.
The performance of Tom and Jerry exaggerate to the point that they defy the laws of physics. Contrary to the audience’s expectation in every detail. For example, the cat tried to stop the mouse, but unexpectedly, the mouse went so fast that the cat’s chest fur rubbed off. These seemingly counterintuitive exaggerations are actually constantly stimulating the audience’s eyeballs. For example, when a mouse is eaten by a cat, the audience’s brains and eyes are immediately attracted, but the mouse comes out of the butt, which is reasonable and unexpected. The story need to tell the audience about the characters’ plight and let the audience see what they are most worried about happened. Then, it need successfully interrupt their imagine so that the audience’s emotions can be constantly aroused.
2.Animation is great for conveying implied meaning. Anything in the animation, even the wind can be life-giving. The beginning lays the groundwork for the setting and atmosphere of the story, introduces the story (no matter how absurd, just make it clear), and some of the close-ups either push the plot forward or hint at metaphors and themes. When there is a political metaphor, the opening scene close-up has a unique meaning, such as the prey caught in a spider’s web, symbolizing the fate of the character. Animation can illustrate profound life philosophies in very abstract ways, such as in Rudolf Sremec, where the characters are inflated balloons. This expresses the theme: when we are making arbitrary decisions about the fate of others, we fail to realize that we, too, are manufactured and vulnerable.
In the end, I decided to study the first field, because stories should present freshness to the audience, and only freshness can make the theme more interesting and make the audience feel that their attention, their time and their money are worth it.
Complexity of an action and how to fix common problems
Dynamic IK/FK switching
Knee& elbow popping
Rigging IK/FK switching & how it works within a rig
splinepolished
After smoothing, we still see elbow and knee popping problems that are not resolved. We learned two ways to solve the elbow and knee popping problem:
The first method is to copy keyframe Pose and turn on the Elbow switch to match the elbow position.
The second method is to create clusters, observe the movement curve of clusters, so that the movement of objects is smooth.
Final result of resolving knee popping problem
final result
IK/FK Switch Rigging
I may need to modify the shape of the controller to distinguish between IK and FK
Motion Path Animation
Spline IK Rigging & Animation
Through this class, I really learned a lot of useful knowledge, the animation jitter problem has been bothering me before, the tutor taught us how to solve it. It is really very useful, and I think it will also help me a lot in the future. We also learned how to create curve animations, which are very useful for animating flying objects and animals.
Appeal in animation characters is a similar parallel with actors having charisma. It’s about what a character is, about its visual design, about how we see the character. In some ways, the character is a reflection of ourselves or of people we know. So often a character’s appeal has to do not only with the design of the piece, but also with how the character is performed. What kind of personality it has, what kind of history it has and so on. If it needs that charm, then you have to give it that charm.
A character who is appealing can still be unsympathetic, a villain or monster. This is an important part of the narrative, how this evil character becomes something that we care about or associate with. So this is an important consideration. Both in design and in narrative, no matter what you add to your game, appeal is very important.
Appeal is critical in the audience association with the character creating interest and concern.Make the character give a very convincing performance because you can make the audience fall in love with it and they want to see more. So it’s a very important element when you’re writing and narrating, when you’re analyzing the characters in the film, when you’re designing your own characters and animations.
Appeal lies not only in the design of the character but the action and deed of the character within the storyline.It’s not just superficial design. They need to be convincing, they need to feel real. Because in animation, we accept a certain level of abstraction, we accept the absurd, and therefore they are real. Because their performances are convincing. So it’s not about human realism, it’s about the authenticity of the characters themselves. So it doesn’t matter whether they’re cartoon characters or surreal characters, they have to feel authentic.
Essentially the character feels real and convincing.
It may more accurately be described as ‘captivation’in the composition of the pose, or the character design.
What visual components or aspects of a character might achieve this? When you see a picture of a character, you may want to learn more. Things or lists to consider when you analyze a character, when you design a character for yourself or someone else. Different visual components of the character may achieve different effects.
What performance traits might endear us?Big eyes, babies, kittens or puppies, we’re wired to find them cute and attractive, it’s part of our psychology. That’s really taken advantage of in the animation world, and the way they perform it is really cute.
Why do we forgive and ultimately care for a character?The character is a criminal. In a sense it is a catalyst to get the audience excited and thinking. If the character meets something that starts to soften him, eventually he becomes a forgiving character.
How do we establish trust and empathy with a character?It’s a role we need to trust, we need to understand, we need to change. If they have changed, the character may turn evil again. You know Gru wants to go back and do what he normally does, which is another way of thinking about how we can relate to the characters.
If you’re thinking about designing a particular part of a character, you might ask what role that character plays in the film. They are enemies, protagonists, etc. That in itself tells you what you should design, how does it communicate? It’s about the performance, or it’s about what they say. Servants, for example, don’t talk. And within that, we create this personality. A character’s personality, which can be a personal trait or skill. They may have some flaws. Clothing can also have a big impact. If you’re designing a character, you might have a biography that describes who they are, what they do, their lineage, their history, etc.
The Uncanny Valley, coined by Sigmar Freud. When something is familiar, but feeling not quite right, it becomes disconcerting. It could be a show, it could be a movement, it could be noise. The uncanny Valley, not limited to visuals. We feels a bit strange, when the voice on the phone is too clear. We instinctively protect ourselves. So subtle differences can sometimes cause discomfort and revulsion. It produces a negative emotional response. You don’t know what’s real and what’s not. Because it looks familiar, but suddenly there’s a dark side. They are always worried about the uncertainty.
If the character entity is almost human, the audience runs the risk of being afraid of it. If you’re designing your own CG characters, you need to have some elements of realism that don’t cross boundaries. An industrial robot is neutral because it has no humanity. It’s far enough away from humans not to be a threat. But as soon as you put something like a prosthetic limb or an artificial eye on somebody, you know it’s a very disturbing thing. In animation we accept that inanimate objects can come to life and talk to us. On condition that it doesn’t cross that line . Whatever the object is, if it threatens us or makes us feel uneasy, then we can’t help being afraid of it in some way.
So a lot of scenes can be very realistic, but the eyes generally aren’t. Scientists have begun to explore this very specific sense of mystery from an evolutionary perspective. Some even compared the real photos with the manipulated ones. His research concluded that images of amazing robots reminding us of our mortality, particularly images of partially disassembled robots, trigger our subconscious fears.
How research into the uncanny valley threshold could help us in the future. You can think of it as an important part of design, if you’re a designer, you want to create something that’s accepted and loved. You want to make sure it doesn’t trigger the uncanny valley. In a game or movie, you are transported to another environment. If there’s something that makes you feel uneasy, there’s the uncanny Valley factor. The more realistic the animated characters are in the scene, the more likely we are to have an emotional response to their story. At the end of the course, I learned about abstract narrative, which is a narrative theme. There was a sense of crisis, a sense of doom, and in a sense, the character was dying. However, there is no direct narration in the animation, which is another field worth studying in the short animation.
Through this week’s study, I learned how to determine the exact position of objects by using locator and object center of gravity display. This method can be applied to many interactive animations to determine the position of objects.
This class let me fully understand the importance of smooth curves for animation. The instructor taught three different ways to adjust the speed of animation.
Move the whole keyframe before smoothing the curve
After smoothing the curve, move the key frame as a whole. It should be noted that we need to check whether there is any problem about the curve, after the curve at the key frame being moved
Scale keyframes in the curve editor as a whole, but the downside is that once you scale, it’s easy to completely break the animation rhythm
Finally, the instructor taught us two ways to add motion blur
1.Add motion blur in After Effects and speed up or slow down the animation in After Effects. This is the video after I added motion Blur in AFTER Effects (only CC Force Motion Blur due to the low VERSION)
Example: Playblast & After Effects
2.vUse the Arnorld renderer in Maya. In render Settings, check the Motion Blur option. (Because the rendering time was too slow, I only rendered a sketch.)
I want to study scripts, what makes them pull out of so many stories and win awards. Is it the structure of the story, the way it is told, the theme of the story, or any other feature that makes it recognized?
Analysis of the story: In the past 20 years,
Oscar Winner for Best Animated Feature film: Soul，Toy Story 4，Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse，Coco，Zootopia/Zootropolis，Inside Out，Big Hero 6，Frozen，Brave，Rango，Toy Story 3，Up，walle，Ratatouille，Happy Feet，Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit，The Incredibles，Finding Nemo，Spirited Away，Shrek
Best Animated Short Film: If Anything Happens I Love You，Hair Love，Bao，Dear Basketball，Piper，Bear Story，Feast，Mr. Hublot，Paperman，The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore，Lou，Logorama，つみきのいえ，Peter & the Wolf，The Danish Poet，The Moon and the Son: An Imagined Conversation，Ryan，Harvie Krumpet，The ChubbChubbs!，For the Birds
My hesitation lies in the fact that the script is a very large direction, which may need to be studied: story structure, narrative method, how to highlight the story theme, whether to give the audience enough space for imagination, characterization of characters, realistic meaning, etc. In general, I want to study those excellent animation scripts, but I do not know the reasonable analysis method, or what is the research direction? I need to make a discovery in it and prove it, and that’s what I’m going to do.
From my one-on-one with my mentor, he gave me some very helpful advice:
You need to narrow down what you want to analyze the story in the movie. It could be Spirited Away, it could be a Japanese movie that you’re watching right now, and you might analyze it, but analysis is not what you want. What you want is an argument or a discussion, what you want to do is ask a question. It could be how one particular film influenced other films because they changed the way the narrative was structured. It’s used over and over again to find the original film, and then you can say how it continues to evolve in more modern use.
Overall, in the following week, I think I need to actively look for and determine the direction I want to study and research.
Through this week’s study, I learned the following aspects:
Do I have a good story? Is it readable, engaging and surprising?
Characters and performances work together, so it’s important to understand how they work. Most movies have a hero or main character that runs through the movie. Movies are usually about them, about their pursuits, their goals or whatever factors they are trying to overcome. When you have multiple characters, the film is not about the individual, it’s about the whole theme. Anything a character does, it could be a story. Whether it’s engaging enough, whether it’s surprising enough, whether it’s novel enough that ultimately if the audience cares about something, then they might stop and watch it. So it’s pretty hard to get someone to care about something, and sometimes the function of characters is attracting the audience. In Sweet Cocoon, the crux moment of the movie is that when it turns into a butterfly, it’s eventually taken away. So everything is geared towards that scene, which is the key scene of the movie. In a sense, that’s the surprise. That’s what attracts you. You start caring about the butterfly, and then you get a feeling for it, and then it’s gone. It’s a very powerful piece of storytelling, a character, an environment, they have a problem to solve, and it’s a series of individual pieces. A lot of it is off-screen, a lot of the action is implied by audio, and you don’t always have to tell a full story in a traditional and meaningful way. As long as you have the main characters and we know where they are, those sound effects make sense. The characters have to be engaging, you have to do something else, to make the audience care about the characters, in order for the audience to be with the characters, to travel with them, to fret with them. How do you do that, yes, through the initial vision, think about how compelling the character design is inside. It also has to do with how they move, and how they behave, and how they speak. And the more strongly they react to others, the more they gain personality in the process.
How will the structure and treatment of the film tell the story?
You break down the structure of the story. How does it work, how does it tell the story? This is an important means of understanding how stories are organized. In terms of how storytelling works within these frames, maybe move the end of the story to the beginning, and then the beginning to the end. Because if you organize it in a different way. You probably wouldn’t be able to tell the story. You need to know how to structure the story to make it happen, physically and physically. Because you need to act it out and execute it. The story breaks the rhythm from different angles. It allows you to analyze things in a critical way. Basically, you know what tricks they use to get what they want.
How will character design, action, staging, and performance advance the story?
How the character will create the action, I mean analyzing how the main character is involved, what the character will do to move the story forward. Look at the story through the lens of the character, not through the structure. So in most movies, the main characters are the driving force throughout the story, and the movie won’t be successful without the characters’ footprints. Because the stories about them are about their vulnerability, about their passion and so on. I think the most important thing is to know or have similar experiences. When it becomes a universal experience, the audience immediately relates to those characters, their plight, and I think that’s an important factor, so the characters themselves become the story.
Character Dimensions:
Animation provides a broader definition of character by reinterpreting human form, applying anthropomorphism, bringing inanimate objects to life, and making it possible for everything to interact. Animation has more elements for characters than other forms. We can reinterpret the human form, and the character in the animation can become a true shapeshifter, you know it’s a character with multiple characteristics and personalities. If they are flat characters. In that case, how a flat character moves the story forward. But it can also be a round character who learn something and move the story forward. That allows them to show their situation and reveal to the audience what’s going on. How a character performs in that scene, what makes that scene work, It’s important to communicate effectively to the audience.
We can perform without dialogue, and make elements happen. You can create possibilities with minimal performance attributes. There is no dialogue, which is indicative of the character. If that’s your limit, then that’s a good thing, because it means you have to perform. It can’t just be a traditional perform, it has to be something that performs in that context. It was their behavior, in a sense, that created this unique way of performing. Some story that doesn’t have any dialogue, you know it has a backstory and so on, so it’s complicated. It need to explain what kind of person the character might be and how to handle things. The key moment in ‘For The Birds’is about six minutes. If you watch that animation, the eyes are the only thing that’s really acting. If you watch it over and over again, the body is moving, but the acting comes entirely from the eyes. So in a sense, the face is the body, the body is the face, and you can communicate powerfully in a very simple way. It’s the most important, the perfect timing, orchestrated for his simple narrative, but not an easy thing to do. But they are beautifully constructed. In a sense, you have two very different worlds, how you move between them? how you tell stories in both environments? In fact, they’re much harder in the short film. Structurally, you have to get it right from the beginning, and you don’t have much time to reach a conclusion, a further conclusion, which is very important in the story. For example, the story of 60 years, told in just a few minutes, can uses a prop throughout to connect with the things that are already in the past.
I think I need to spend time studying award-winning animation. They’re still mainstream, so it’s important to pay attention to the elements in those award-winning films. I need to study how the story develops, the structure of the story, and if I can, compare those animation, see if there’s any difference or similarities between them.
