Maya 3d
Physics of Animation Blog
Thursday, December 6, 2012
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Monday, November 19, 2012
Saturday, November 10, 2012
Sunday, November 4, 2012
Outline for the Second Term Paper
I.
Introduction
a.
A brief overview on the Law of Conservation of
Angular Momentum and how it works in the real world.
b.
Hypothesis – The Law of Conservation of Angular
Momentum can be bent in entertaining media if it enhances a scene or does not
detract from the scene significantly.
II.
Body
a.
Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn (2012) – In part 2 of
this mini-series cadet Lasky is suffering the effects of his allergy to a
chemical used during the cryo-freezing process. This causes cadet Lasky to pass
out during a capture the flag exercise. In the first shot of the scene you see
cadet Lasky rotating forward as he has no control over his body. In the next
shot it shows cadet Lasky falling straight down to the ground without any
rotation. During this fall he loses all angular momentum.
b.
Dead Island (2011) – In this horror RPG video
game the protagonist is one of a few survivors on a popular island resort that
has been overrun by the undead. As the protagonist makes their way around the
island they open a lot of doors. To open the door the protagonist can be seen
placing their hand flat on the door frame and giving a slight push. The
protagonist can push on the door near the doorknob, in the center of the door,
or right next to the hinges. No matter where the door is pushed the force
exerted by the protagonist is the same and the speed at which the door opens is
the same. In order for the door to open at the same speed if pushed closer to
the hinges it would require a larger amount of force. Angular momentum does not
seem to be dependent on force in this game.
c.
Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) – When
Steve Rogers returns from the secret Hydra factory he brings along a device
powered by the energy of the Tesseract. Howard Stark then takes apart the
device to study the power source in his laboratory. In this scene Howard Stark
is standing on a small platform looking at the power source through a small window
that stands about shoulder high. Howard Stark then applies an electric current
to the power source which causes an explosion that sends a shock wave through
the small window knocking Stark halfway across the room. Since the blast was
directed through the small window the force applied to Stark would have been
centered around his shoulders well above his center of gravity. This force
should have caused Stark to flip backwards instead of flying straight back.
Angular momentum was not conserved.
III.
Conclusion
a.
In all three instances the law of conservation of
angular momentum was broken for either dramatic effect in Captain America or to
simplify the scene as in Dead Island and Forward Unto Dawn.
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
Character Animation
Watch on YouTube for higher resolutions
I created this stop motion animation by first using reference video of a run and jump I did. This allowed me to get the frame numbers I needed and my step and jump timing. Next I set up a green screen studio in my office. I used a pair of green poster board and a lot of lights. To hold the action figure i used my helping hands solder station. Using my Canon DSLR, stand, and remote I proceeded to pose each individual frame. Since I was limited in height movement of my solder station I didn't worry about the position or height of the figure in frames where the figure was in the air and focused on the poses. I imported everything into GIMP and proceed to remove the background. I found out it is important to use a non-reflective green material as I found my figure was bathed in a green glow. I had to be careful not to pull pixels out of my figure. I went over everything with a little negative green color saturation and got everything looking normal. Next I created a background image and proceeded to position each frame within the background using the previous frames to line up the next frame. I then saved all 84 individual frames as jpg images and converted them into a HD avi file using a free software called JPGVideo.
Green Screen Studio
Alexand showing he can pose!
Animation Snake
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)