Week 4

What a week. I'm exhausted. I barely got my work in this week. I missed Q and A because I was driving an old truck to Oregon for a friend who needed one. Long story, but i digress.

We got our grades this week, and I was absolutely mortified to see a B+ for my grade last week. I couldn't belive it. I was working hard, my review was "great work as usual Phil" BUT I was critiqued for not haveing squash and stretch in the work I turned in! (I was really concerned last week about turning in work without S&S, but it was the assignment NOT to add the S&S so I deliberately left it out!) I feel I was likely docked for that, and it upset me. If you don't do A work in the business world, you lose business, so I was alarmed. I'm calm now, but man it paniced a bit.

This week we are to add S&S to our bouncing ball and add a heavy ball to compare the feel of the timing and spacing. I reviewed a bunch of other critiques and saw that those who rendered thier work were getting more (animated) reactions from their mentors, so I took a bunch of extra time to render mine. I felt like I had to keep up with the others. Now I just feel silly about it. My apologies to my fellow AMers for getting so competitive and so anal. I'm using playblast from now on.

Here is my assignment this week.

Bouncing Bowling Balls
(its 16MB.. so be patient downloading this :)

I rather like it. I corrected the arcs as Derek pointed them out, and really pushed the S&S for the light ball. Here are some details:

• I flattened out the height of the ball bounce for a more graceful curve.
• The toughest part was accurately rolling the ball... WITH a deformer in place. Once I fugured out how to do that it went pretty quickly.
• One the heavy ball, I left the ball on the surface for a full two frames for each contact. This is not visible, but it is definately perceptable.
• I used a camera shake to emphasize the impact on the second contact frame of the two frames.
• I added a little hop to the light ball on the immediately following third frame. I deliberately chose to not roll the light ball on this little hop, just a simple hop to keep the bowling ball in the foreground. Any S&S or roll would have taken attention off the main character of that moment.
• I turned off shadows (or turned we way down) per a fellow student critique, and added a stylish AM Bowling logo on the ball to really show the rotation.

This was fun assignment becuase it was my first time dealing with rendering and surface nodes in Maya. I think the animation itself was a gas too, and I hope, now, that the rendering won't detract from the actual animation. It took me a bit of time to model the bowling ball (can you say "booooo-leeean"?)

Finally, I have made a deliberate decision to not pay much attention to my grade. If I get a B out of a class, but I enjoyed it and learned a bunch, then it will eventually add up to a body of good work. No one is going to hire me becuase I got A's.. they will hire me becuase I do good work. Fail faster fail faster. That is the path to excellence.

-P

Assignment 3 Final

I hate to say final, but sooner or later you have to turn it in!

Final Assignment 3

I tweaked the timing on the 2D version a bit. I added a golf ball texture to indicate motion blur real rotation. Doubled the speed of the debri in both the initial ball landing and the back spin.

The 3D version has a higher bounce, and the default checker pattern to indicate roll. The toughest part was the tiny rollback at the end. Sheez I spent more time on that than the rest combined.

-P

Disney Feature SIGGRAPH event! Awesome!

Hey all,
I went to the Disney SIG event at Fort Mason last night. Wow! what a gracious team from Disney. They shared some great work in progress, some tests and some final shots. They spoke about the process and demo'ed some of the internal tools they use (Paint3D was AWESOME!). They spoke a little about technical issues like switching from Nurbs to SubD models for better paint control. It was a great talk.

Many thanks for Jefferson Thomas, one of my first Animation Mentors (he turned me on to Villpu and the Illusion of Life) for ringin' me up and inviting me to join him. He's a talented animator and one of those guys that you stay in contact for life.

Also ran into Taylor from AM! The first contact "IRL" with a fellow AM student. My strategy was to walk around with JT and talk about AM in a semi-loud voice (trolling for students). It Worked! Anyway.. Nice to meet someone as excited with this school as I am. One of the coolest things about AM is how stoked everyone is and how open we all are to each other's critics and encouragement!

Finally, I was DOUBLE STOKED to get home and find out that Derek mentioned one of my poses in the Q and A! He couldn't remember my name (its cool, I aint mad atcha :)) but it was pretty awesome to have anyone of Derek's caliber remember my work, let alone cite it.

All in all a great way to spend an evening I must say! I'm going to get more involved with the SIG. Seems like a great way to get closer to the industry and meet some cool folks!

-p

Assignment 3 extended

Hey all, I threw together the Maya version of bouncing ball... see it here...

Assignment 3 movie

Tonight Im going to refine the 2d art, and then tomorrow I'll add a little more bounce to the Maya version.. as I didn't see the basketball recommendation 'til after I planned for a heavier ball.

I'm having a hard time not adding S&S... but that was part of the assignment I guess :)

Any feedback appreciated!

-p

I, Robot

So I was contemplating the nature of bouncing balls, and this is what I came up with after studying methods for determining the physical nature of gravity, elasticity, friction and velocity...

Bouncin' Machine

I think it needs just a hair more speed...

P

Assignment 3

Hey everyone. I whipped this up last night.. its the pencil test for a shot I want to do for my 2D over achever dealio.

BounceTest.mov

I see the following things:

1. I need to remove the big stretch in the beginning to get it inside the parameters of the assignment. Ideas? I couldn't help myself.
   
2. I need to add "ONES" at the point of impact to create more stickyness
3. i need more in-betweens in the slower arc sections
4. I need to slow down the end just before dropping into the cup (for dramatic effect)
5. I have a frame out of registration right at the end (doh!)
   

As for the planned steps:

1. layering:
1. backspin visual indicators.. im thinking add the AM logo on the golf ball!
2. a couple extra splat debri peices that disapate
3. a mysterious ine to screen left that later is revealed as the flag stick (i'll shake it a tiny bit on teh percived impact of the ball at the bottom of the cup)
4. the slightest hair of debri at the end of the bounces to really punch the backspin direction change.

So I planned the animation out, then I keyed my timing, and finally animated for the most part straight ahead.



I got the debri out of animating straight ahead, but It cost me a little in my spacing on teh last 10 frames or so. Not a bad trade. I get some appeal, and all I have to do is redraw a dozen or so positioned balls!


Thanks for any feedback! I'm going to draw again after I do my 3D assignment (which will be waaaaaay more simple :)

My AM handle is philro... this animation is in my public review area.

Thanks
-p

Welcome to my Animation Journey

OK, well, you're about 20 years too late for the beginning of the journey, but NO MATTER! What is happening NOW is waaay more important than what happened 3 seconds ago anyway right?

So I'm PROUD and overjoyed at being in the first wave of students at Animation Mentor. Can you imagine telling people today that you were taught by Frank Thomas or Ollie Johnson? That is what is happening here. We are getting the nine YOUNG men of animation. I'm overwhelmed at the level of industry and art know-how in our mentors. Its staggering. The course we are using for the first time now will be the rosetta stone of the animation language in coming years.

So I'll be doing my best to keep reading all of your posts and post stuff here myself. I'm a business owner, father, soccer coach and student. I have LOT on my plate. I'll tell you more about all tht next time.

To any AM readers: Good on YOU! I'm stoked to be in YOUR company! See you on campus!
-philro