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.