In Animation having a good reference to use in order to create and inform your creative decisions and help lay the foundations for animating is very important especially for more complex body mechanics and performance-based animation using biped (human) characters.
The reference that coulee used can be found, gathered on the internet for instance, or recorded. they both have their advantages and disadvantages.
For Found, second hand videos the cons can be the low resolution since it might be an old video, it could have a wrong speed of the video which might be difficult to animate in maya leading to a mismatching frame rate between the footage and maya itself; the content might not be specific to what you are looking for. On the other hand it has some pros as well, such as featuring something that you might don’t have the skills to do, is more readily available and involves no shooting set up.
For personal, first hand videos the cons can be that not being a good actor could constitute a problem to match the requirements of the task; even not having the right equipment and tools or finding the place to record. Some pros, however could be that you have full directional control over what you may want to record and what you manage to shoot is unique content to the goal, it also helps producing multiple takes of the same recording and they might be stitched together for a better result.
An essential aspect of a reference is that it needs to capture real and actual forces which should not be fake or having people pretending. This could be archived by using appropriate objects and contact points and having the help of actors who have skills and being able to direct them to achieve the goal. Another element to pay attention to is the pixel quality of the video the frame rate (24-25-30 fps) – higher frame rates reduce motion blur, less motion blur leads to a more detailed action. Adding a timecode on the reference video to help matching maya’s frame rate to match your footage
This is the source reference footage for the ‘body mechanics’ and ‘advanced body mechanics’ challenges. Body mechanics a short action that involves how the body mechanically works with weight, balance, gravity and the 12 principles (a volleyball bump). Advanced body mechanics reference video and consequent animation should be an upscale of the first body mechanics and should show join motions (a volleyball smash).
The rig for these animation should be chosen following the requirements of the animation proposal and displaying rather simple controls.
The following are the audio clips for the performance task in the following weeks.
A method involving reference footage is rotoscoping which, in 2D Animation, meant to draw over footage which it could be the first place you start for your animation to make it more lifelike. However it may look uncanny, strange, since it does not add anything to it, is not exaggerated and it can undone quality, although it might be useful if used to some degree.
The first step was to add a time code using After Effects to the reference footage I have chosen to work with and export the footage in images to help creating the animation (rotoscoping). I after imported the character in Maya and created a camera and imported the image sequence in the camera. Next phases to roughly match the rig to the footage image. An animation method to be used could be involving stepped keyframes and after the animation is completed switch them back to curves. I have also created a character sets which helped me select all the rig controls at once and I achieved that with the script editor collecting all the script for the different controls together: I have created one for the overall controls and one for the spine. The rig had both IK (which connects movement and FK so I have decided that for my animation I would have kept IK for the legs and FK for the arms. Since is a volleyball animation I have also imported within the scene the ball used in week one and used a volleyball texture.
The first animation step consisted in rotoscoping the first pose, in my case I have started from the moment of when the person hits the ball and continued forward and backwards from there. I have chosen to potion the keyframes every 8 frames more or less and started to work on the rig starting form the centre of gravity and spine. The first block keyframes I did had a problem: the centre gravity controls were moving, since I only used the side via at first, and leg position where incorrect I added a camera for front view as well to correct it.
In order to visualise better my animation I have coloured the break downs in green to differentiate them from the main keys in red using a colour code and selecting them from the graph editor. I did not use the maya breakdown method because if I had to move any key for any reason it would have averaged out the position of the keys as well.
I have also added into the scene a volleyball and animated it according to the reference video: I have used the ball rig employed in week 1 to animate the bouncing ball and animated following those steps more or less. I first keyed the positions, added the rotation and all added the squash and stretch of the ball and added an initial casual position to add a natural effect to the overall animation. At first I had used the “common rigged ball” so I could not used that last element of the ball. I after imported the correct rig, the ultimate ball rig, so I could complete the animation.
This is the version of the animation with the correction applied to the character rig and the ball animation together.
overlap and follow through, arcs
After my teacher cleaned up the character sets and reduced keyframes I worked on the feet position hand rig position and spine flex during the animation side to side and up and down.