Week 12

create a sphere

add bump map

lock all except Translate X, Y and Rotate Z

set keyframe at 1

set time frame to 48

move the ball down

RMB>Playback Speed>Play Every Frame, Max Real-Time

Window>Animation Editor>Graph Editor

go to Translate Y

break tangent

adjust the curve

select Translate X

Curves>Weighted Tangent

adjust the curve

select Rotate Z

select the last keyframe

adjust the curve

Create Deformers>Nonlinear>Squash

change factor to -0.5

lock Rotate X, Y, Z

change high bound to 1.5

change Translate X, Y and Rotate X

move down 5 keyframes and change factor to -0.4

move down 5 keyframes and change factor to -0.4

move down 5 keyframes and change factor to 0.3

move down 5 keyframes and change factor to -0.2

move down 5 keyframes and change factor to 0.1

move down 5 keyframes and change factor to 0

go to keyframe 24 and break tangent

Window>Animation Editor>Dope Sheet

View>Scene Summary

highlight the scene summary

adjust the curve

Edit>Snap

Create>Lights>Ambient Light

change ambient shade to 0.3

From your (still very) basic experience with 2D and 3D animation, discuss the following questions on your weblog.

1)  Do you need to be able to draw well to create good 2D animation? Explain your view.

Yes, 2D is all about drawing.

2) Do you need to be able to draw well to create good 3D animation? Explain your view.

No, 3D animation is not done by drawing. It is done by modeling objects in programmes.

3) What do you think would separate a piece of poor animation from a piece of good animation? In other words, how would you go about deciding if a piece of animation is good or bad?

An animation is good if it appears realistic.

4) In 2D animation, you need to be very aware of timing at a frame by frame level, using timing charts and other techniques - but for 3D animation, this is handled using the graph editor, which is more concerned with manipulating rates of change over time.

Does this affect how you approach your animation work? Explain.

No, they are very similar. Everything has to be done frame by frame.

5) Give a brief critique of Maya as an animation tool. Don't just say Maya makes animation difficult, or easy, or that you need to learn a lot of stuff to use Maya - explain what Maya does well and not so well in terms of creating animation.

Maya is easy to use. For example, the graph editor makes adjusting an animation simpler. There are also many shortcuts in Maya such as using W key to move. This way, we save a lot of time as we need not spend time searching for the function in the program.

Post your responses to your weblog by the start of next week.

REFLECTION

This exercise will not be difficult if you are able to follow the instructions closely. I had to redo this exercise severa times after missing out on a few times. This was a complete waste of my time.