Final Animation render

Now that my final tennis animation is complete and I'm happy with it, the next task is to render it out instead of having the video done from playblast. This was the first time I had properly rendered an aniamtion and for a few hours when starting this I didn't know what I was doing at all. Once I had set the correct settings I hit batch render and I rendered it with mental ray. Then I was left with 214 still frames and I was struggling with what to do with them next. I didn't know hwich software I use to put them in but I knew I had to have the video files play in Quicktime. So the only video software I had was Windows Movie Maker. I just guessingly dragged all 214 frames into movie maker, but then the frames where playing but he video was in total 17 minutes so for around 20 seconds oyu would see one frame. I managed to somehow adjust the time lenght of the video and get it down to 8 seconds which was the exact lenght of my animation. All I had to do then was find a video converter and I was done. I had to do this three times one for the front view, one for the side and the other an angle of my choise. After looking at the final product I'm reaaly happy with it.

Lip Syncing

The last task we were set for this term and for this year would be the lip syncing task. Our teacher Sam told we would be doing this task after the Easter holidays and I was really looking forward to being able to do this task. In our first lesson back after the holidays I satrted to collect various sound clips from different movies like Shrek,  Toy Story, The Shining, The Blues Brother and Harry Potter. Basically I collected sound clips from my favourite movies. One thing Sam said that was important was to choose a sound clip that we wouldn't get bored of. I choose one that I found really funny and I was hoping it start to annoy me once I had heard it like 100 times.

The line I choose was from the film Shrek and it's Donkey telling Shrek "Please, I don't want to go back there, you don't know what it's like to be considered a freak. Well maybe you do?" I thought this would be really funny to do and I could get Max moving quite a bit.

When starting I imported the sound clip into maya and began aniamte Max's body to the audio, once I was happy with that, then I would start to aniamte his mouth. This was another important thing Sam told us to do. When starting to animate his mouth I drew out how I thought his mouth would move and look like when he his talking.

These drawings and using a mirror both helped me with how Max's mouth should look when saying certain words.

Here's the playblast video of the Max lip sync task.

After looking at the animation back, I am really happy with and I'm proud of it. This is the first time I have done a character talking and you can tell. At some points his mouth moves quite fast so if I was to go back I would have his mouth moving less, but near the end I think It does look like he is properly talking.

Final Animation Project.

For the modeule Intro to Aniamtion we have a final assignment which the past few weeks have been leading up to. The assignment is to produce a 6 - 10 second animation based of an Olympic sport, we had 5 to choose from which were high diving, tennis, hammer throw, 100m sprint and archery. After looking at a lot of videos for each sport to help me get a clear understand of each sport and ask myself realisticly whic could I do and which do I think I won't get bored of as this animation I would be working on for the next few weeks. But more importantly which could I do well. In the end I went with tennis as it's a sport I enjoy personaly and I felt I could produce a good aniamtion that lasts between that 6 - 10 second guidline.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkuBUEep8eg

Once I felt I had watched enough tennis videos on youtube, started to black out a quick aniamtion of what I wanted Max to do. I wanted him to start of crouching down with a tennis racket in one hand and a ball in the other that I modelled in maya and then have him lift himself up and throw the ball up into to air. He would then hit the ball around three times to finally have a celebrate a win.

Having done the black out aniamtion for all this I found rather easy. However the most tricky problem I had with trying to get the tennis racket and the ball to stay in Max's hand. I started to key frame the racket and the ball but this looked stupid because sometimes the ball would be moving faster than the arm or sometimes it couldn't keep up. So would always delay doing this part of the aniamtion because of this and start t add more deatil into the aniamtion of Max.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkDNwFZgc-Y

One night when trying again to try to key frame the racket to match up with Max's arm I just googled the question "how to attach an object to a character in maya" to which I found a video on youtube which I have put a link a bove showing me how to link the racket and the ball to Max's hand. To do this I would use a link constraint. The tutorial really did save my life because I was always thinking when key framing for the racket was there must be a easier way than this and there was. Once following the video My aniamtion was starting to take real shape with it looking loads better with Max look like he is actuallt hitting something and adding to the belivability.

When going into more detail in Max's movement like at the start I just had his feet sliding across the floor, so I needed to make his foot lift off the ground to look like he has moved properly. This was were my understanding of the walk cycle I had done a few weeks ago came really handy as I had a better understand of how his leg and foot would move, with any step he does in the animation.

During this animation this would be the first time to use the dope sheet properly since the golf swing task. The tool was extremly helpful and saved my life getting this aniamtion to runsmoothly as this aniamtion is the most improtantly out of all my previous works, so it had to look it's best.

Once I was finished I was really pleased with the final product here's a playblast video of my animation. Next I need to render it out properly.