Introduction to animation and rigs
As one of the first tasks for this module, we had to create a simple "cube man" and use it to understand the hierarchy in Maya's Outliner, basic concept that is also used in rigs.
We learned the concept of "parent" and "children" objects. Parenting and grouping are used to establish a hierarchy between objects. For instance, you may want to rotate several objects around a single point. By grouping the objects, you would only need to rotate the group object and the others would follow. The main difference between parenting and grouping is that grouped objects are connected to a single null object and parented objects connect to a single parent object.
Once we were done with that, we learned about freezing transformations in order to be able to animate certain body parts, such as hands, arms, etc. You freeze transformation by accessing the "Modify" menu -> Freeze Transformation
And so I was able to manipulate certain body parts of this simple cube character and make it pose and wave it's hands around.
Next, I made joints, ik handles and controllers for the legs, arms, torso, etc. in order to be able yo pose and animate the character.
Flour sack animation
Assignment 1 - Ball Animation
I started off by building the obstacle course I'd be using for my animation, then moved on to blocking the main movement of the ball. Once that was done, I moved on to adding detail to the movement, such as building up the jump that would start the course, rotating, squishing and stretching the ball.
Furthermore, I decided to use a texture for the ball that you can find here: https://preview.free3d.com/img/2017/04/2272890702914389399/86hd4t72-900.jpg
For the obstacle course I used the aiStandardSurface "frosted glass" preset and added a couple of area lights.
Picking up objects using locators
Assignment 2 - WALK CYCLE
For this assignment we were asked to animate a character, showing movement with personality and weight. I decied to animate a character picking up a boulder and putting it on a pedestal.
I used the same video from above of the man picking up the box as a reference for the first part of my animation, then improvised with no other references. Once I was o=happy with the overall movement, I started building up the details in the walk cycle, and in the end, in his facial expressions. I wanted it to be visible on his face that the boulder is heavy and it makes him feel a bit uncomfortable when carrying it.
As for the texturing and the lights, I used a couple of area lights with different colors, exposure and strenght. I used the arnold aiStandard material for the pedestal and the walls, and for the boulder I used a free texture pack found here.
The final result is not perfect as I've noticed some noise that I missed in my test renders, but as rendering takes a lot of time I decided it was good enough even with a bit of noise.
Assignment 3
The original audio used for this animation can be found here.