This is a great class. Fantastic opportunity to study a range of animals and learn some different body mechanics! I’ve learned things about birds, bats, hippos, frogs, crocodiles, turtles, frogs, snakes, lizards and frogs that are amazing. Those are stories for another day.
One interesting technical aspect to this class is animating within a live action “plate”. This is a quick post to describe what that’s like.
Matchmove scene
A nice coastline vista (I think it’s Hawaii, not sure).
The live footage is setup as an image plane in Maya and renders in the shot_cam.
How do you place a character in the scene and have them look like they belong there? That’s the matchmove magic.
Matchmove was already setup, so when I opened the maya scene this is what I saw. A set of geo matching the cliffs, and a moving camera.
The camera is timed to match the live footage camera. I think lots of points on the image plane are selected across several frames, then some fancy algorithms and maths figure out how the camera must have moved. I’m sure there’s a lot of work making that just right — “Matchmove Artist” is a job, check the credits on any film with epic special effects!
This playblast shows a better view of what’s happening with the camera and image plane. Note: the image plane flickered when I made this playblast. I’ve never had that issue from the shot_cam though.
Put a creature in the shot
Since everything is setup like this, we can put our creature (Dozer) in the set and animate like normal. Here is my initial concept, as seen in Maya with the geo and camera from the perspective camera.
And here’s what that looks like from the shot_cam.
It works. But the solid geo is nowhere near the quality of the live action footage!
Here’s what it looks like if we turn off the geo. We can see the image frame nicely, but now Dozer looks pasted on top of everything.
We want him to be in the scene, and so we want parts of the image frame to show up in the foreground. The solution is to mask out the geo. Everywhere the geo is, we want to see the background. Maya knows where Dozer is in relation to the geo, so it will handle the depth for us.
This type of masking in Maya is done with a “use background” material.
How to setup the mask
Select the geo
Right-click and choose “Assign New Material…”
In the hypershade window that pops up, choose “Use Background”
That’s it. When you playblast now, you should see your image plane where the geo is. If other objects are behind the geo, then they are masked and you see the image plane. When they are in front of the geo, then you see them in front of the image plane like normal.
Animation Mentor is a great school. Last year, in addition to the awesome classes, they ran an anim jam—a chance for students and alumni to animate on a theme and have the results published with all the polish of a professional short. Check out the result!
A chance to collaborate
I missed out on taking a collaborative class so it was exciting to hear the anim jam announcement. We were told about the jam concept and that there would be three sets based around a circus theme. The first set opened and was filled quickly—so quickly I was asleep and missed it completely!! The second set went live at a different time of day (yes, Animation Mentor care about timezones and their international community!) so I signed up for shot 2290. What was shot 2290? That was up to me.
Shot ideas
At AM (Animation Mentor) we are encouraged to think about storytelling. I enjoy coming up with ideas for shots. For inspiration, we had the set design, a set of props and character skins—with a medieval flavour.
Anim Jam medieval circus set and characters
I jotted down these ideas:
prince saving the princess from the knight
princess saving the knight from the prince
mock fight
use the cannon with the imps
juggling
clowning: Stella baps Stewart with the juggling pin
Stella catches Stan and carries him off
he was afraid of heights on the trapeze
she saved him from Stan
imps playing music
Got to say, there were some awesome props that were never seen in the final cut, including the trampolines shown above and a super amazing vintage fire engine!
Choosing an idea
Sketch of circus jam medieval set and story ideas
Sketch of story ideas: Stewart vs cannonball Stan
I decided to focus on the idea of a fight between the 2 knights: Stewart vs Stan. I also thought it would be funny to stuff Stan, the biggest character, into the cannon. I’m not sure how Stan felt about this, especially after we did a test pose…
Stan stuffed in the cannon on Circus Jam
Still, I liked the idea and so I jotted down a rough plot:
both enter
glare at each other
march to sides of set (one at a time or together?)
Stewart turns and slams his shield into position
Stan jumps into cannon
Stewart surprised, then braces
Stan levers cannon down to aim at Stewart
Stan strikes sword along ground and lights cannon fuse
Stan aims sword at Stewart
BOOM (shockwave through set)
Stan flies across into Stewart and both are bowled out of the set.
The pitch
I made a quick animatic and shot some video reference to share the idea with the rest of the set 2 crew.
Got a thumbs up (that was pretty much the greenlighting process) and a suggestion that I team up with others to share the workload.
Collaboration and story evolution
I asked for help and Clarissa Amiata volunteered. We tossed some ideas around she agreed to tackle the second half, and suggested having Stan shoot some monster balls for Stewart to dodge (which, as you can see in the final cut, turned out awesome).
Animation: video reference
I shot some initial reference and added to it as needed later on. I especially needed new reference for a jump hookup (added later) and waving the sword around—the cardboard tube in my initial reference was too light. Cricket bat helped!
Animation: Blocking
My first blocking passes tackled layout, the walk and turn. I was going for a riff on “pistols at noon” Western thang, so the walk was pretty key. Plus, walk mechanics always need attention, might as well start them early.
By the final blocking pass, Stewart’s entrance had been replaced with a jump (I forget why. I think it was feedback I received to add more variety.) and I added some craziness with monster ball making faces.
I started blocking on 18 August and finished on 8 September, to give you a rough idea of timeframes. This was all done in my spare time whilst working a regular day job.
Animation: spline cleanup and polish
Not too much to say about spline cleanup, just got to get everything moving then make it appealing (and mechanically sound). Blocking sets a lot of the timing but you do get to tweak the rhythm of all the moves. Here’s my first and last pass:
I worked on cleanup from 8 September through to 19 September, and then started polishing. At this point I thought that polish was like cleanup—just keep improving things a bit each pass. I’ve come to learn that’s not a good approach to polish—you should bite off a chunk (say 100 frames) and polish it! That means, make it awesome and make it final! (I learned this later in my AN05 class—thanks Ethan Hurd! I still need to practice it!)
Direction—the cut
On 30 September we got some key direction. Our Director (Bobby Beck) had worked out a story cut from all the available shots. Luckily my shot made the cut, mostly because it tied in with other shots story-wise. It also helped that I had been making steady progress. This story cut was the first time we saw the entire “set 2” as one sequence and it was very cool to take that in.
Along with this cut came notes: my shot was shortened to make the story stronger—a welcome change that reduced my workload!—and had a new hookup at the start with Patricia Milton’s shot of Pinky in a hula hoop (I love that shot!). I’d never tackled hookups before and our first attempt was amusing! It’s hard for 2 people to animate half a jump and have it work correctly!
Everyone worked through their polish and hookups and the results speak for themselves.
Here’s where my animation ended:
My shot received additional fix/polish animation from Aaron Johnston and Bobby Beck, with awesome results. I especially love the overlap added to Stan’s body as he pulls out monster ball.
Post-animation
We got to see the updates as the lighters went through the shots and made them look amazing. This was a new experience for me—every day or two there was another awesome new clip to watch, and one day (12 November) it was my shot! Ben Sarlo worked magic with the lighting! 🙂
Overall impressions
It was a great process! Very similar to how we approach our own shots at first, but then we had director advice and shots were cropped and cut together and we had hookups with other animators. Feedback was regular, but different to when peers give you their thoughts in AM—feedback was coming from the lead animator (Sergey Berengard on set 2) and director and it was much more specific on what needed work to get the shot to the required level. Plus there was the overall sense that we were all involved together, which was very neat!
Seeing it all lit, rendered and with sound, it’s fabulous. Loved being part of it!
Curiously you’ll read the director had an easier time with shot 3—where shots were planned and storyboarded in advance and animators picked a shot and worked on it. I’m glad I had a chance to put more of my own ideas into my shot though 🙂
MVP (minimum viable product) just means doing something quick and/or easy (minimum) but still useful (viable) in solving the problem. As a newbie animator sometimes I need to rig up a prop for a shot. I have a LOT to learn about modeling and rigging, but while I’m busy learning animating (I have a lot to learn there, but at least I’m actively learning that!) this is my approach. So far it’s getting me by (probably because my props only need to work in a student assignment shot, so being “viable” is pretty easy).
Making a stapler
Plan! What is a stapler and what does it need to do in the shot? In this case, the rig just needs to be able to “staple” (open and close like a stapler). I know from experience (I may have stapled a few things in my time) that a stapler has a bottom, top and that metal bit under the top that holds the staples. And I know when I staple something, I press the top down. The top and the metal bit don’t move at the same speed. So I want a rig that can do that!
Also I want to refresh in my mind: what does a stapler look like? Google images is great for this!
Simple model
Start building the main parts. For the base I went with a simple block polygon. I edited the size in the channel box to use whole numbers, just to keep it simple. No idea if it’s to scale with the characters I use. I make sure the block is centred in X, Y and Z, and then I adjust Y so that the base of the model sits on the ground. By default Maya puts the centre on the ground, so half the block is below ground. I don’t want that when I import it into another scene, so I shift it up by half it’s height (I type the numbers in the channel box so it’s exact).
I drew a second block approximately the same size, but taller, then edited all the sizes in the channel box. But the top of a stapler is a bit more jaunty so I switched to edge mode and did a little chamfer here and there. (I used “chamfer” in a post!) Turning off ‘discrete move’ in the tool settings helped, maya was snapping to the grid or something and not letting me get the fine tuning I wanted. Even in MVP I have standards!
There was one other part I added to the model: the bit that holds staples. It’s called the “magazine”. How do I know that? I looked up staplers on Wikipedia! I also learned the ‘top’ is called the ‘arm’, and in maya I named all the polygons thus: stapler_base, stapler_arm, stapler_magazine.
Rig it!
The first rigging step, to me at least (after the planning above), is to organise the polygons and add a root/layout control. So I grouped everything twice. The group named ‘stapler’ will hold the entire rig. The ‘grp_stapler’ inside that will hold all the parts AND the base control. I’ve learned to always (?) attach controls to groups. That way you can change the items inside that group without having to adjust all the animation already applied to a rig in a shot.
The base control is just a nurbs circle on the ground. MVP remember. Make it large enough to fit around the model. Centre it at 0, 0, 0 then parent it to the ‘grp_stapler’ group. Test it out by selecting the control and rotating it or moving it about. Everything should work nicely. Zero it out again and save. That’s the first version of your rig! If your rig doesn’t have any moving parts, you’re done!! 🙂
Rigging the stapler arm and magazine
Moving parts challenge me and this is where I know more can be done (but I don’t know how yet). Ideally I would like a control where I move the stapler arm and it moves, and at the appropriate time it also moves the magazine until it connects with the base and then the arm pushes down on top. That’s the control I want as an animator! But it’s beyond my rigging knowledge atm, so I’m going to make 2 controls: one for the arm and one for the magazine. It means more work when animating than I’d like, but it will be functional.
I only want the arm to move one way, and that’s to rotate open and shut. Nurbs circles are the most common controls I’ve seen for rotations. They need to be centred around the pivot point. I tried adding one in the front view, but then realised the circle would look exactly the same no matter how the arm was rotated. That’s not helpful!
So I moved around 90° and looped the circle around the arm. I had to guestimate the position to be where I thought the arm should pivot from (better planning might help that!). I made a second controller, slightly smaller, and centred it on the same point (using the channel box values).
Time to setup more parent constraints! The process is very similar to the base control, with one important step at the start. These new control curves are not centred in the scene file, but we want the values to be zero for animation. Use ‘freeze transformations’ on the curves. It sets the values to zero without translating the objects.
Those parenting steps again:
freeze transformations on the control curve
create a group for the rig part(s) being manipulated
select the control
shift-select the group
choose ‘parent’ from the constrain menu.
Done! Test out each controller and make sure everything moves how you want. Try zeroing-out the values in the channel box to make sure that behaves as well. If you make any mistakes (I made a few), just delete the constraints in the outliner and try again.
During this testing I noticed the controls let me drag the stapler parts all over the place, or rotate them on the wrong angles. I selected the curve controllers and then locked all the channels except for Rotate Z (which moves in the open/close direction). I’ve seen rigs that completely remove unused channels (like elbow and finger joint rotations) but I don’t know how they do that. (Yet.) Locking helps me when animating from accidentally moving the control the wrong way.
Save it. Your rig is ready to use 🙂
Here’s the final structure in the outliner:
Somewhere along the way I also added some basic colours for the rig. I went with a dark grey blinn for the plastic on the base and arm, and a light grey phong for the metal magazine.
Enjoy!
You can grab the stapler rig I made today from github. Free to use!
Kudos to Animation Mentor for the Maya Workshop course they offer. I wouldn’t know any modeling or rigging if not for that course. One year later I’m making staplers, woot! ~:)
It’s fun to compare where an animation shot began and where it ended up. One way to do this is to create a video that plays the different stages side by side. QuickTime Pro can do this, although the menus are a little hidden.
Here’s one I prepared earlier:
Here is how I made it!
Open all the videos in QuickTime. Each will open in a separate window.
You will need to copy all the videos into a single file. In this tutorial, I’m going to copy them into the reference video. Let’s start by copying the finished shot. Go to the video you want to copy and select all. You can select all by dragging the handles, using ‘Select All’ in the ‘Edit menu, or with the keyboard shortcut: ‘Ctrl+A‘ (Windows) or ‘⌘+A‘ (Mac).
Got it selected? Now copy it. You know the keyboard shortcuts for copy? ‘Ctrl+C‘ (Windows) or ‘⌘+C‘ (Mac). They work in almost every program. If you like menus, ‘Copy’ is in the ‘Edit’ menu again.
Go back to your first video (the reference video in this example). Do not use paste (anyone know what Paste does?) There’s a fancy option named ‘Add to Selection and Scale’. That’s the one we want. I’m not 100% sure here, but I suspect you want to make sure that (1) nothing in this movie is selected and (2) the movie you are adding is a similar size and length. Otherwise, you might need to tweak this step to suit.
The ‘Add to Selection and Scale’ will drop the copied movie right on top of the original one.
Wait, that’s not what we want. We’ll need to move it so they are presented side by side. To do that, we need to edit the movie properties (found in the ‘Window’ menu as ‘Show Movie Properties’).
Click the second video to select it and go to the ‘Visual Settings’ tab.
The ‘Offset’ values are how you move the video tracks around in 2D space. In this example, both videos are 720 × 405 pixels in size.
Now, in my example I had the original video (reference) offset on right. We’ll actually need to select ‘Video Track 1’ for that. Let’s offset it 720px from the left. That’s how many pixels we need so we can see all of the other video (it’s 720px wide, so we leave a 720px offset for it).
You should see your movie shoot out to twice the size in the background (you may need to press ‘Tab‘ first).
Just close the properties box when you’re done. To add the other videos, you need to repeat the ‘Select All’, ‘Copy’ and ‘Add to Selection and Scale’ steps for each video. Open the properties and offset the video tracks.
You can do all the copying first and the offsets last, or offset each video as you add it. You can also scale (for insets), flip, make semi-transparent and more. Who knew so much power was tucked away in QuickTime?
To finish up, export your movie! (You probably don’t want to save over the original file.)
This tutorial was done with QuickTime Pro 7.7.6 on Windows. The ‘Pro’ version is a paid unlock for the free QuickTime player.
Here’s another “non-height” approach to slide down transitions: use scaleY (I haven’t checked this for browser support yet, I think IE9 at least will need a prefix for transform-origin).
Neat, I kinda like this one too. The overshoot on the slide down (where it goes a bit further and bounces back) is a touch of exaggeration, easily achieved with cubic-bezier timing. That sounds confusing! But it isn’t all that hard! Use Lea Verou’s amazing preview tool. Here’s the curve I came up with: http://cubic-bezier.com/#.2,.38,.72,1.3
So this approach is still different to animating the height. The jquery slidedown adjusts the box height, revealing more content. The scaleY property squeezes the content which may look weird. Again, a little fade in while sliding may help. Also, scale is more attuned to squash and stretch so, you know, that’s something to play with!
That’s right, Animation Mentor is back on and it’s term 2: Body Mechanics! Term 1 flew by, here’s my progress reel:
First week of term 2 is posing, then we get into full body walks and really learn body mechanics—how people move. Fascinating stuff. If you catch me staring at you, I’m probably watching your balance and weight shifts and filing it all away for future animating. And if you catch me wobbling about like a bit of a puppet, I’m probably trying to get a feel for some sort of imagined mechanic. All perfectly normal behaviour for an animator—do not be alarmed!
When I first opened Maya, I remember looking around and going “yep” and closing it. It was pretty complex software and I had no idea what any of the controls did. Even moving the view around was beyond my ken. I’m pleased to say I can do lots now! (Though I can tell there’s so much more Maya does!) Oh, and moving around: tapping space brings up a nifty menu to switch between the perspective and orthographic views (so glad I studied graphics in high school!) and holding Alt while in perspective view will help with panning, rotating and zooming in the view (when combined with the 3 mouse buttons and mouse movements).
So here’s what we got up to over 6 weeks! (I’m shamelessly copying the first 4 weeks from a previous post).
Time to share some progress! The Maya Workshop at AnimationMentor is excellent, there is plenty to learn! I’ve been playing with lighting, shading and rendering this weekend. It’s good to get the basics down and overindulge a bit now so I can focus on character animation when the time comes!
Basic modelling
Basic staging and motion (rolling)
Orbits and shading
Bouncing and lighting
The next 2 weeks cover working with rigs: a robot arm and a one-legged ball. Bring it! 🙂
Week 1 Maya workshop exercise was to create the objects on this bookshelf. Was a good introduction to moving objects (and the workspace) around in Maya. Word of the week: nurbs.
Hopefully I’ll sort this blog out so I can post it up in 3D. Now, to read up on WebGL…
Twenty years ago, 1994, I was at the Queensland College of Art in my first weeks of studying animation. Well, that was aborted when I got distracted by computers and switched to Multimedia—it’s all my art theory lecturer’s fault. He didn’t like my handwritten essay, I bought a PC, …
Today I’m studying animation again! Woot! Really looking forward to this 🙂
Ben Boyle lives here! 
