Maya Rig Animation, Assignment 2: Animations

Assignment 2

Assignment two in Animated Narratives was to create two short animations; one to convey emotion or personality, and a full body movement. I decided on an exaggerated angry emotive animation, and an interchanging one foot jump.

Animation One

Full Body Animation

For the first animation I wanted to create a hop or jump, from one foot to the other and back to make a loop. Finding exact reference videos of this motion was difficult, so I used my own mirror and Procreate’s simple animation feature to visualise what I wanted to make! This is what I started first, before any research, as I wanted to get my idea down and then build upon it later when studying the real motions of a jump.

My first idea would simply involve the Walker Rig bouncing from 1 foot, into the air, to land on the other, and back again, seen here in this basic initial diagram;

Building off of this, I worked on a very rough sketch of how the legs should wobble in the anticipation pose, and how the body should subtly squash and stretch when readying for the jump and when in the air.

Frames

However, when studying the motion myself in a mirror later on, I found that my sketch had some issues in how the body would react when on one foot; instead, in order to keep balance, the first pose should have the lifted leg closer to the ground and foot rotated low, and the knees should originally be bent, body tilted, on the side of the grounded foot. This is because of all the body’s weight being shifted onto one side and the knee taking all body weight. When looking at my own recreation of the movement I also exaggerated some areas, and noted the slight swing of my hanging foot in anticipation of the jump, and the rotation of the grounded knee as I got used to the weight.

All of these changes and notes I wrote down to keep in front of my workspace, I found this useful to keep me right!

Frames Animated

While I was happy with the rough frames, I knew afterwards that when making the 3D version there would be some corrections to make! This quick animated version was only in 12fps, so the timing is only slightly different to the 24fps I would end up using in Maya, but I knew that to make a more convincing jump I would have to pad out the anticipation frames and have the frame in the air be slower and arching.

In order to visualise the timing in a 3D interface, I tried to time out the jump with a sphere acting as the body. Again, as my original plan changed with how the body would move instead on the spot, I could only use the sphere timing as reference for Walker’s body height during the sequence.

References and Research

First Hand Reference

One of the easiest ways I found to understand the motion of the jump, was to recreate it myself. While I never recorded myself, as I had little space, doing it myself let me plan out how I wanted the movements to look and better imagine how the legs would bend or extend when the body moves. I found that trying to figure out how the legs and knees should swing was the most difficult, but by watching myself I was able to draw down how the action should be.

Mixamo

While watching video tutorials and Maya animation intros, I discovered an Adobe owned website called ‘Mixamo’, which is a 3D automated computer graphics service. Once logged in, one could view the large library of animations and character rigs uploaded to the site, or upload your own character with which to transfer an animation, simply using points for hip, knee, wrist and core reference to auto-rig your character.

I found Mixamo quite interesting, while neither Walker or Monty worked with the site when I experimented with it, I found it could be very useful in helping me understand how more professional 3D animations would work.

There were a few jumping animations that looked similar to what I was hoping to make, although none for an interchanging hop, but I still used these as references for my own animation and took notes on some of the movements I could see; like a slight roll up on the heels upon a land, and how the knees would push up towards the body in the height of the jump.

There were also other settings which let me see the animations slowed down, and view the skeleton version, which also greatly helped me when studying jumps.

Artist Inspiration

While researching other’s animations, I found Nikita Taranduke’s jump cycle, which I liked especially for the show of weight in the landing and the faster stand up motion after the landing; I thought this was quite realistic timing and kept this in mind when timing my own animation.

I found an animation by Tiffany Kangas when researching for this project, and found a ballet like jump first on google, which led me to Tiffany’s vimeo showreel with another animation that also had jumping frames. I liked how bouncy and flexible Tiffany made the Walker model in the ballet jump, which I added into my own animation. Here in the showreel I particularly liked the end sequence where walker’s leg and foot tilt downwards while the body rotates to look upwards, and it was another reminder for me to add heel motions like this to my own.

Video References

This video fortunately had a similar jump to what I was hoping to create:

Although is video’s hops were not as exaggerated as I wanted, I still found it useful in studying how the feet would land and how the knees are affected:

Other Videos

These jumps didn’t have the same movement I actually wanted, but found them useful nonetheless for understanding how weight is transferred, and how the body should rotate when in anticipation and in the air:

Tutorials

I made more use of our own lecturer’s videos, particularly week 7’s introduction to rigging and animation practise, which was to create a jump. I found these videos especially useful as they had a similar motion to my own, and they helped me a lot when trying to time and pose.

Week 8 had an animation that was more like my own, using the Monty rig, which was also an interchanging 1 foot hop, though it had no build up to the jumps like what I wanted to make.

Other Videos

While this video didn’t have the same kind of jump, I still took what I learned from how the feet should be placed when in the air and how the knees would bend in preparation.

This was also useful, as it used the same model which I could understand easier in reference to my own. I tried to add toe rolls in certain places, like how this tutorial added them, for even more movement. It certainly made the animation feel less stiff! It also gives the appearance of a more powerful push-off, so the added toe roll animation was definitely worth adding.

Blocking

To start off, I followed the movement of the sphere I used to begin timing my frames with only the Walker’s body, as I would focus on the feet positions on the second pass. I was happy with this rough timing, and I would add any squash and stretch once finished the feet. I had originally planned on having the Walker Rig move slightly across the scene, but I decided I would keep the Walker in the middle of the grid so I could focus easier on the jump. However, I still found the sketches I drew up, and the sphere, useful as I could envision the jump, leg and foot positions easier.

Although the Walker Rig’s feet and knee position in key frame 1 is different than other grounded frames, as I wanted to block out a more natural initial pose, and I thought to fix it later when I would polish the foot and leg positions, I actually like the shift in weight the different suggests. I kept this in mind while I was working on the legs, as even in this little mistake I thought it helped add believability in weight as the foot rotates and knee shifts away from the body.

When watching professional Maya animators create jumps, and watching myself and real videos, often the feet move positions even on the ground, and lift up at points to roll on the heel, and I hoped to add this subtle movement when polishing.

Blocking The Legs

Although rough, I was happy with the overall look so far. I had to retime and add more frames, so as there could be more anticipation time and more time in the air. Aside from the first few frames, there is no anticipation between jumps, which I had to remedy in order for the animation to look as I wanted it.

Inbetweens and Timing Refine

I had wanted to get the first few frames just right, so I could mirror them later and refine the whole thing later with little changes. Upon reflection, while at first a good idea, it made me spend too much time refining one area (particularly the opposite foot’s landing frames) and ended up actually looking odd. I had to delete many frames and start over at these places, so I could pose each in-between part in relation to the next key frame, rather than working on multiple in-betweens at one time, hoping that they would move correctly to the next key position.

I began using the ‘dope sheet’ more often as this point, it was incredibly useful to watch the animation play live while being able to freely move frames, it made timing very simple and a lot of problems I had with certain parts shifting on their own or jerking was resolved with the dope sheet.

Peer Assessments

During this timing stage, and later stages, I began sending my progress to a friend of mine. She doesn’t do animation, which I thought could actually be beneficial in bringing an unbiased and general outlook to the animation, and she gave feedback on certain areas that needed reworking; that Walker should “spend more time in the air”, and later on in the polishing stages that Walker’s “knees move a bit too much when he lands and jerk”, which I later changed!

Polishing

One thing that made the process of refining especially difficult was the program crashing almost every time when squashing or stretching the body, I had to save and only use my right mouse button and leave it for a second before keying the frame, else the whole program would freeze!

I also took time to watch the jump from multiple angles, so that I could make sure the knees are facing the correct way and that the feet don’t go too far behind the knees, to keep the anatomy somewhat correct!

Almost Complete

All that was left to do was add some more bounces to the last landing pose frames, for some breathing room before the loop begins again, and so that the body doesn’t look stiff. Although I did try to simply copy and paste frames to mirror as Walker jumps back to position 1, I found that just posing the body myself gives a more natural variation and was actually easier than attempting to mirror frames manually!

As I was animating this, I gained a lot more understanding and, in my opinion, more skill in moving the body naturally and in an interesting way. In the positions where Walker is on the opposite (left) foot, I tried to experiment more with motion in the lifted foot, hence the build-up roll, which I hoped gave an appearance of attempting to gain balance. Again, I varied the landing back pose where Walker lands on the right foot once more, where I decided to kick the leg outwards, different to when Walker lands on the left foot, in the middle of the sequence.

Finished Animation

Animation Two

Emotion Animation

For the second animation I wanted to create a very exaggerated, angry stomp inspired by the 2D style of animating tantrums! I watched many of these 2D videos as reference, as attempting to recreate the motion myself was more difficult than a simple hop due to the fact that Walker is just a flexible ball!

My idea was to have very abrupt, forceful actions of the Walker rig stomping his foot on the ground and shaking in what I hoped to convey as fury, and perhaps a sadder cooldown motion at the end before the loop starts again.

Frames

Again, I used procreate to sketch up my idea as the animation assist feature is very basic, and quickly drew down my frame ideas. There would be less frames to create in this animation than a looping jump, and because I knew I wanted the timing to be varying from very fast to very slow, I knew timing it in procreate would be easier than the jump.

While its not exactly as I wanted it, due to limitations in layer numbers, it was close enough to give myself a basis; the parts that would need more consideration in timing would be the slower parts, where Walker holds his foot in the air, strains, and flattens sadly.

Frames Animated

Unlike with the jump, there would be little point in detailing the rotation of feet and knees, as I wanted the stomps to be fast, and adding too much motion to the feet would cause awkward jerks (which I learnt when making the first animation).