Character Animation – Maya

Week 2 – Weight and Motion

In the second week, I learned about the importance of weight and motion in animation, and how they are conveyed through timing and spacing.

Time Charts

The first thing I learned was the time chart. This was a new term to me, as I was not very familiar with the animation workflow. A time chart is a visualisation that illustrates the timing and spacing of an animation.

Timing and Spacing

In particular, timing refers to the number of frames a movement takes, while spacing means the variation of speed. Even with the same timing, different spacing patterns can lead to different speed.

Weight

When talking about weight, I learned how it can be illustrated through speed and an object’s interaction with a character.

For example, under the same force, a heavier object generally takes longer to accelerate than a lighter one. Similarly, when a character holds a ball, the closer the ball is to the character’s hips, the heavier the ball looks.

Bouncing Balls Animation

To better understand weight and motion, we practised animating different types of bouncing balls, including a tennis ball, a beach ball, a bowling ball, and a basketball.

This was my first time using Autodesk Maya to animate something. I was introduced to the Graph Editor and learned how to add keyframes in Maya. I also discovered a very useful feature called Motion Trails, which allows me to visualise an object’s movement directly in the viewport.

While working on this assignment, I also discovered how convenient Maya’s Auto Key feature is. It automatically creates keyframes for modified channels, rather than keying every channel at once. I found this useful for keeping my timeline clean.

As part of the assignment, I researched references for each type of ball to understand how their weight and motion. I analysed the references frame by frame and drew time charts before animating in Maya.

Generally speaking, after receiving feedback from Ting, I realised that my biggest problem was that the spacing in my animation was too even. This made my balls look floating, making it difficult to distinguish their different weights. Also, my timing was also too slow.

Tennis Ball

Reference:

0:19 - 0:25

Feedback:

The overall timing was too slow => cut it in half.
The ball should slow down as it approaches the highest point of its bounce. As it begins to fall, it should accelerate, moving slowly at first and then faster as it approaches the ground.
My time chart was too evenly spaced => overly even spacing in the animation.

Revision:

Beach Ball

Reference:

Feedbacks:

Too much the squash and stretch => over-animation.
The ball moved too slowly compared to its rotation, especially when rolling across the platform.
Both the rotation and the travelled distance when the ball fell from the platform were inaccurate.

Revision:

Bowling Ball

Reference:

Feedback:

Both the timing and spacing were too even, making the ball’s weight less realistic.

Revision:

Basketball

Reference:

Feedback:

The overall timing was too slow.
The spacing was too even, making the ball appear to float.

Revision:

Golden Poses

This week, we continued practising posing. But this time, we used a different rig with a character of different proportions. The assignment included four tasks:

Pose one Hero Pose
Pose one Sitting Pose
Pose one Angry Pose
Make my poses in 360 degree camera

Hero Pose

Feedback:

The chest and hips were too parallel to each other.
Exaggerate the curve of the character’s side profile.
Push the exaggeration further in certain parts of the upper body, such as the chest and shoulders. Some stretching is acceptable when it is intentional.

Revision:

Sitting Pose

Feedback:

Exaggerate the curve in the side view by bending the back further.
The silhouette from the side view looked messy.
I needed to emphasise the curve around the hips.

Revision:

Angry Pose

Feedback:

The direction of the chest did not match the reference.
Push the hips further backwards to exaggerate the pose.
Due to the character’s proportions, my pose lacked balance and looked as though the character was about to fall.

Revision:

Week 1 – Introduction to 3D Animation in Autodesk Maya

In the first week, I was introduced to the basic 3D workflow in Autodesk Maya, and the concept of Golden Poses in character animation. As I was not familiar with Maya, I also did some self-study by taking a Maya Beginner Course, and learn about 12 Principles of Animation.

What Makes a Golden Pose?

Clear silhouette – no confusing shapes or overlaps,
Includes a clear line of action,
Balance and weight – imagine the body being cut in half to check whether the two sides are asymmetrical,
Exaggerated emotion and personality through secondary motion.

Golden pose refers to a strong and effective pose, while a Hero Pose is a more generic pose representing a character.

12 Principles of Animation

I watched Alan Becker’s video about the 12 Principles of Animation to further understand the elements that contribute to good animation.

The 12 principles are Squash & Stretch, Anticipation, Staging, Straight Ahead & Pose to Pose, Follow Through & Overlapping Action, Slow in & Slow out, Arcs, Secondary Action, Timing, Exaggeration, Solid Drawing, and Appeal. Though this was not the first time I watched and learned about animation principles, this opportunity helped me to remind of those principles when I started to animate for this course’s assignments.

Getting Familiar with Autodesk Maya

I used this tutorial by Animators Journey to start getting familiar with Maya. Although I found the tutorial quite slow and long, it still gave me a better understanding of how to navigate the Maya interface and introduced me to some useful hotkeys that I can use while working.

As I have already had some prior knowledge about 3D principles, I found it relatively easy to start working in Maya. The hardest part was getting used to new hotkeys and navigation system. However, I found that Maya has some useful feathers, such as being able to view the silhouette of my poses in the viewport simply by pressing 7.

Golden Poses Assignment

I decided to challenge myself to the Golden Pose assignment to become familiar with Maya. This assignment included four tasks:

Pose a Hero Pose
Pose a Standing Pose
Pose a Happy Pose
Make my poses in 360 degree camera

After receiving feedback from Ting, I realised my biggest problem when posing was that I tended to make the arms and legs slightly curved rather than straightening them. Therefore, the line of action was not continuous. Moreover, I also learned that when drawing a directional lines for chest, hip, and eyeline, these lines should not be parallel. Otherwise, the pose is going to look unnatural. Last but not least, I also learned that I should try to incorporate as many lines of action as possible from different angles of the pose.

Hero Pose