Assignment part 2 - Climbing box and Jumping

This is the perspective view for my animation for the box climbing and jumping. Few things to note is that instead of doing walking animation as well, I immediately started out by climbing already. I also created something like a 'Sand Pit' of some sort as when my character lands, he also has some sliding animation to signify that it landed with a considerable amount of force in it. Some other things to note also is that when my character prepares to jump, he doesn't bend so much as the jump is a light and not a heavy jump so it only reaches quite a low height before falling down.

This is the side view for my animation. In this view you will be able to see clearly the walking up the stairs as well as the jumping also. When walking up, there a few thing to take note. When climbing up the stairs it must not look as thought it has stretched a lot so it's body should not shift so much upwards as there is gravity acting upon it. Another thing to take note is when it jumps, it lands in a same angle according to how it's feet left the platform, so as to make it look and seem accurate.

This is the front view of the animation. Similar to the previous part this is where you can see the weight shift and how it works. So when it is ascending the steps it follows accordingly to how the walking is done. When it is jumping, you can clearly see there is an ascending step, and descending step, so as to show how it reaches the highest position possible, then falling down. Also note the arm movements. When it prepares to jump, the arms bend backwards first. When it reaches the highest point, the arms are lifted to it's highest possible position, then when it is falling down, the arms start to sway backwards again. Before reaching the ground then it sway forward again. A bit complicated, but it was done.

Assignment part 1 - Walking Animation

This is the perspective view for my assignment the walking animation. Some adjustment were made to it as compared with my latest upload for the animation. This is a much smoother animation in all. I had some difficulty in doing up the weight shift as I have no idea how to visualize well how does the body shift accordingly. I added the hands animation also, so that it looks perfectly nice in sync with the body's movements.

This is the side view. From this view you will be able to see how the walking goes naturally. I tried removing some key frames here and there so it looks more natural and not so jerky. When the body moves and lifts up it's legs, the body will move upwards due to gravity and it will move down when the foots touches the ground. Also, I make sure that the arms don't swing too much and they swing naturally. Such that they look very relaxed and smooth.

This is the front view of the walking animation. In this view you would be able to see the weight shift more carefully and precise. Also another thing to note is the 'swaying'. Depending on which leg it lifts up it will tilt to that side. If the right leg is lifted up the body will be tilted to the right a bit. Also another thing to note is the arms as well. Instead of swinging normally and rigid. When it swings, it also moves a little bit inwards towards the body so it kinda looks like a 'U' shaped pattern if viewed from above.

Joe Waist Progress

This was some preliminary playblast for my Joe walking animation. This was taken from the side view. Some things which I have noted during the animations is one; setting keyframes at almost every single area. If let's say you set a keyframe for the left leg to move upwards, if you did not set the keyframe for the right leg to remain stationary, the right leg will move together as well, so one would notice in my maya file that almost at every keyframe like let's say keyframe 40, the waist and legs would have some position configured at that particular keyframe. Another thing I've noted was the moving speed of the body. Since animating the leg was just simple lifting, and putting down of the foot, there has to be precision while adjusting the position of the body as well so when it is walking it does not appear to look as though it is either sneaking, or walking very unnaturally (For my animation it looks a bit similar to sneaking).

This is the front view of my animation. Basically this is where one would notice the weight shift and how does gravity act upon this figure. When one takes a step forward and lift up his legs, the body also moves upwards too and doesn't not stay in a normal and fixed height or equilibrium. When the foot touches the ground, the body also moves slightly lower as well. So when it's moving you will constantly see the body moving up and down, though it shouldn't be so prominent as it will look unnatural. For my case I may have to slightly adjust the height again so that it looks as natural as possible.

This is shown from the perspective view, even though our tutor didn't state there is a need to show it in perspective by I still did it anyway to show my progress. From the perspective view you can see clearly how the whole walking animation is done overall. Also few things to note that I did a small animation with the head whereby it started lifting up it's head, and then turning to look towards the left. Another thing I did was to create a simple floor for the rig to walk on, as I have some trouble visualizing and ensuring that it does walk on a straight and even plain, I create a cube and then flattening it. So that when I did the rest of the steps, I could see clearly where the "Floor" was. There are some places here and there that needs to be fixes, particularly the steps taken after walking off the so-called "Wired-floor"  and onto the fake "Floor". As they appear to look slower and more uneven. 

Self-Made Rig - little process and 3 poses

This is the first picture I base on for my first pose I was going to rig using my self-made rig for the E-Learning week for self-rigging. I figured difficult parts to pose would be basically the hands, and arms, as there were some problems made during the creation of the rig due to the painting of the skin done incorrectly which I didn't had time to salvage.

As one would have noticed the problem with the right leg, I couldn't bend it upwards anymore as that would have interfered with the knee joints and would look unsightly. Some errors made with the hands as stated above.

This is what would have happened if I shifted the right leg wider, would have resulted in her crotch looking unsightly. So this is the best I could come up with, problems with the arms and shoulders also as can be seen from the above picture, if bent too far inwards instead of the elbows moving back like what a normal human suppose to move accordingly it will move in the opposite direction instead. Which defies logic.

This is the 2nd pose I was going to rig, it is a martial arts pose, whereby the legs are spread apart and are 90 degrees aligned to their body and back. I suppose difficult part will be nevertheless the arms again, as this time I have to bring them closer to each other.

Not only is the left arm unsightly, so is the left breast, maybe it's due to wrongly painting of the skin area, which I'm not sure about. Another part which I haven't discussed about are the hands, due to poor "Painting" the hands cannot fully clench into looking like a proper fist, instead they just look like clench fist while it is holding something, so one can see clearly a little gap between the fingers and the palm.

This will be the final pose I'll be attempting to rig. It looks similar to the above martial arts pose above. Only thing different is the pose for the right leg, and also a minor adjustment made to the right arm and hand.

The right leg looks somewhat off as it looks too rigid already. As for the right arm I tried shifting properly already but the most I could do was this.

As seen from this angle the left arm was also difficult to position as it would have resulted in the left hand being sunken into the left breast of the figure. Also note that the right arm wasn't fully out but was too straight and aligned horizontally with the body and shoulders. 

BigDog Animation (Improved)

I tried adding some improvements to the animation with some tips and guidance given to me by my tutor. Firstly, I made the anticipation for my animation much better. My dog was suppose to be limping, and for limping objects, one side of the object's body is suppose to look as though it has lesser strength. So I made it such that the first step it takes is slow, and when the injured leg is about to touch the ground, it will fall down faster to make it feel as though it is truly injured and limping with little energy.

Another thing I took note was how it's body tilted according to where the dog was limping towards. If the dog was moving it's front left leg (And corresponding hind right leg) towards the direction right, the dog's body would tilt to the left. This is hard to see in normal real dogs (Which aren't block-like, as in this rig's case) as their body is smooth and covered so its hard for one to be able to notice how the body is tilted according. Also, height is another important factor which helps decides whether the animation look realistic or not. When it is moving slowly the body is suppose to move upwards in a slow manner, then when it falls it is suppose to fall fast and move downwards.

The last thing to note was the camera angle also. If the camera was place in a nice position the animation would look nice and realistic for the audience to look and view. In this animation, I placed my camera angle  quite near to the front so one can notice the movements for the legs and body position as well. 

BigDog Animation

This is the initial animation which I did for my BigDog. As my tutor told me not to follow the given example, I kinda tried to do my own animation for this rig, taking note of what my tutor told me that it still has to incorporate the term of 'weight' and how does it move it's leg in sync with each other. Also I took note as to how it's body tilted depending oh which leg it moves upon, tilt left if front left and back right moves and tilt right if front right and back left moves. I made my animation in such a way that it is very dynamic, BigDog will look and seem as though it is limping on its front right and back left legs and then final it will settle down, kneeling on the ground. 

BigDog Exercise

Describe how Big Dog's legs were moving while walking. What is the sequence of leg movements from one complete step? Using the terms BL, BR, FL, and FR for the back-left, back-right, front-left and front-right legs.

BR + FL, BL + FR, BR + FL, BL + FR.


Explain how this manages Big Dog's body weight.


For a normal human being they have 2 legs, if one leg is lifted up, another leg has to shift near the center so as to balance the human, this is called stabilizing the center of gravity. This can be shown for Big Dog as well, if for example the front 2 legs are lifted up, only way for the Dog to stabilize itself if it lifted it's body so it becomes parallel to the hind legs. Thus if Big Dog wishes to stabilize it's body weight while moving, it has to move 1 leg in front the the other opposite hind leg so it balances out the center of gravity. Think of it as a square with 4 sticks at each corner, if 2 sticks are near each other and lies on a single line, no way the square can balance, but if they were opposite from each other, there may be a chance the square is able to balance itself. 


Draw a storyboard of Big Dog stabilizing itself after being kicked.