3DPF Project 2 Mani Walk Part 2 Stepping Up And Jumping Off A Box Walk Cycle

Video of Mani Stepping Up And Jumping Off A Box 

Thoughts about attempting this project 

For the second part of this assignment, I have 2 choices to picked 1. A walk cycle with emotions or 2. A step up on a box and then jumping off it. I chosen to do the stepping up on a box and jumping off it as I wanted to try something different from a walk cycle. Before I began, I went to research and Google for videos that will help me better understand how Mani can jump off a box. I found one which is a walking of steps however to me, it is the closest one that i can find, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umO4nE5-Hog which I use to visualize how mani will walk up the box and then afterwards for the jumping part, I decide to experiment and test out how does one actually when he or she jumps off a platform/box. 

Reflections

I think that for this video, I make a few mistakes here and there such as the distance between the feet and the box should be wider when Mani takes a step forward thus in one part of the video, I  position one of the legs in a weird angle as i was afraid that the legs might look as thought it is touching the box. The jumping position that i position Mani also looks rather stiff as although the arms is spread out to help it balance its jump and preventing it from falling over, the back is straight and unnatural .The spine also needs to be more arched when it is stepping up on the box because only robots have a straight spine when they are stepping up unlike us humans who need to arch our back to keep our balance. Overall, I enjoy animating this character as although there were many difficulties i encountered, i enjoyed the process of when i complete my animation and see it being 80-90% as accurate and close to the ideal walk cycle i have in my mind. I am confident that given more time to practice, I will be even better at animation then now(I am a rookie now).

3DPF Project 2 Mani Walk Part 1 Standard Walk Cycle

For Project 2 Assignment, I was tasked to do 2 animations with the Mani Rig provided by my lecturer.

 First of the animation which is required of me(& everyone else) to do is a standard walk cycle whereas the second one can be a walk cycle of emotions such as happy,angry walk or to animate Mani stepping onto a box and jumping of it. For this blog entry, I decide to talk about the standard walk cycle first.

Before doing the actual Mani standard walk cycle, I first went to "research" and seek tips on how others do their walk cycle.[links of the walk cycle will be listed at bottom of this post]. From the videos, I observed that for a walk cycle to be good, it consist of three parts which is firstly the body. The body needs to be moving a little(rotation of the pelvis and shoulders) otherwise it will look as thought it is a robot walking and not how a human being should walked. Secondly, the arms and lastly the legs. The arms and legs need to move in sync.Armed with this information, I set off to start on my animation. 

This is the first video walk cycle which I did.

2nd attempt of  Mani Walk[Standard Walk Cycle after third attempt]

Reflections

For my first Mani walk video, I didn't move the hips of Mani thus it looks like he is marching and also the hands of Mani doesn't look anything like how a normal person swing his arms.

For the second Mani walk video, I like to believe that I have at least grasp the basic of a good walk cycle which is 1. when the legs move forward, Mani's ankle/heel is supposed to be lifted up. 2. Moving the thorax allows the shoulders to be move further which gives an impression that the shoulders are moving in the direction of Mani's moving hand direction.3. Moving the pelvis will create the impression that the hips are shaking and moving with the legs as well as allowing the the legs to stretch further.4.When the leg is moving backwards, the ankle/heel  should be facing the ground.

In conclusion, this mani walk has let me learn a lot from this walk cycle assignment which is that it isn't easy to animate a character moving thus it is even harder animating the same character jumping,siting down or running. To ensure that your animation runs smooth, other than researching on how others animate their walk cycle, you also have to visualize and sometime experiment in this case I repeatedly walk up and down my house to better visualize and think about how i want to go about doing this walk cycle. 

Video Links that I referred to 

11.       http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjVnMft4c20 [Cartoon Walk Cycle By Chris Rasch)

2

22.      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOyqaNvlHls [Cartoon Walk  Cycle By oOdubOo)

3

23.    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anZvw9ab-Vs [Cartoon  Walk  Cycle By Peter A. Montgomery]

3DPF Shift weight Big Dog Exercise 1 and 2

Exercise 1

Your responses to these exercises should be posted on your weblog.

i)        If engineered or programmed badly, BigDog would fall over. Watch the full video again, and describe how BigDog’s legs move while walking– ie. what is the sequence of leg movements for one complete step? Use the terms BL, BR, FL, and FR for the back-left, back-right, front-left and front-right legs.

    BigDog starts by moving its FL (Front-Left) and BR (Back-Right) foot at the direction it was being pushed so as to prevent its’ body from falling over due to gravity whereas the FR (Front-Right) and BL (Back-Left) will remain at the ground to try to help it maintain balance. In the event that BigDog loses its balance,FR and BL will move forward and this process is repeated until BigDog regain its centre of gravity.  

ii)       Explain how this sequence of movements manages to balance BigDog’s body weight.


This sequence of movements helps to slow down the momentum of falling after BigDog has been kicked. When Big Dog gets kicked, the front-left and back right legs move in an angle so as to prevent the body from tipping over immediately(acting as a support) as BigDog's weight shift from 1 side to the other. Through this sequence of movement, the lack of balance will reduce with each step  it take eventually getting back into an upright position when BigDog  regain its centre of gravity and balance.

iii)     Look at BigDog_kick_slow_motion.mov. Draw a storyboard of BigDog stabilising itself after being kicked.

You should draw the key poses. You don’t need to draw well – but you must show the leg positions and the body rotations around the X, Y and Z axes for each key pose.

Exercise 2

My Playblast of Big Dog getting Kicked.(Final product after several attempts and raging over it not being perfect)

To be honest, I am still not satisfied with my big dog character shifting weight animation because I feel like the body still looks a little stiff thus I should have animate the body to move a little more to make it look as realistic as possible. 

3DPF Shift weight Spiderman Exercise 1

For this week, I have to complete a weight shifting animation where the spiderman rig given to me will be able to  shift his weight from one leg to the other, and his head will also move in the same direction and at the same time as the leg. Although this animation seems very simple to do, but it is not because if I got one step went wrong, the whole animation won't seem "logical" . Overall, I had fun in making this simple animation so do enjoy my video :P.

3 Poses of Spiderman Project 1

So for this particular project, I am tasked to create 3 different type of poses for the amazing spiderman and through the internet, I managed to find 3 poses which I think are quite challenging for me to do as personally I haven't touch maya in a long time of about 1-2 years and so gathering all the data of poses I have on Spiderman plus the spiderman rig given to me by my lecturer, I set off on my quest to position Spiderman.

Pose 1 :Spiderman Crawling/climbing Bottom view

Pose 1 :Spiderman Crawling/climbing front view

Pose 1 :Spiderman Crawling/climbing right view

Pose 1 :Spiderman Crawling/climbing left view

Pose 1 :Spiderman Crawling/climbing top view 

Pose 1 :Spiderman Crawling/climbing picture 

Pose 2 :Spiderman Upside down Back View 

Pose 3 :Spiderman Upside down front View 

Pose 3 :Spiderman Upside down right View 

Pose 2 :Spiderman Upside down Left View 

Pose 2 :Spiderman Upside down reference picture

Pose 3 :Spiderman confrontation Back View 

Pose 3 :Spiderman confrontation Front View 

Pose 3 :Spiderman confrontation Right Side View 

Pose 3 :
Spiderman confrontation Left  Side View 

Pose 3 :

Spiderman Confrontation reference picture 1

Pose 3:

Spiderman Confrontation reference picture 2

Pose 3 :

Spiderman Confrontation reference picture 3

My thoughts before doing the poses

Before doing the poses, I thought that it was still manageable as I have taken a maya subject before this current one so it should be about the same or less thus I was a bit confident and ready to take a go at this subject also because it seems rather exciting  to finally get a chance to "play" around with spiderman and position him into poses that we tend to see on the movies,cartoons and books.

My thoughts after doing the poses

After doing the poses, I realize that I really have a lot of brushing up to do on maya as I sometimes tend to forget simple things like how to rotate spiderman and stuff. I was also kind of pissed and anger with myself because originally I wanted spiderman to do sit ups and pull ups which when i told my lecturer who told me it was in a way doesn't reflect spiderman as a hero thus i sort of waste time by doing these poses which are a little away from the point that spiderman is a hero.Upon testing these 3 poses, I am some what glad that i am at least able to reach 60-70% likeless as there are still many things I can improve on but hey, it's still a good project to try out and work on. P.s. I really hope I can at least get a B at the end of this subject