Creating Stereoscopic 3D Images

Overall, this was a pretty fun assignment. It was actually kind of exciting to test it out and just mess around with the images. Here's another one for good measure. I used my old personality walk from last semesters ANI51B class for this.

Recreating Cameras and Lights in Maya

Original

Copy

Copy II - Different View

Extra Credit: Lighting a Scene in Maya

 

One-Point Lighting

Two-Point Lighting

Three-Point Lighting

Building A Scene in Maya

Special Effects in Animation and Live-Action

My first two term paper scores were 85 and 95; I will not be writing a third term paper.

Outline for the Third Term Paper:

Introduction:

• Rain in a very common special effect since the beginning of video games.
• Often in video games, rain is used to create a feeling or frame a setting. 
• Effectiveness of the rain has drastically evolved since the 16-bit era to the current generation of consoles.
• As the benchmark for graphical prowess increases, the standards for rain effects rises as well, or else the immersion for the player is broken.

Body Paragraphs:

Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (Super Nintendo Entertainment System,1991)

• Rain effects are present at the onset of the game as Link sets out to free Zelda from the dungeon.
• Due to graphical limitations from the era, the game has extremely basic rain effects.
• Rain is a cycle of pixels in "rain line" shapes going across the screen with the occasional lightning flash.
• Rain does not interact with the environment at all, and appears to be more of an overlay over the game screen rather than an effect that is integrated into the experience. 
• However, at the time this rain effect was successful at creating the environment despite its primitive nature. Just because it was obvious that the rain is stylized does not detract too much from the game's experience.

Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag (Playstation 3-4, 2013)

• Rain effects have improved significantly over the 21 year gap and has become more dynamic compared to before. 
• Capable of randomly occurring in any part of the game, further enhancing the realism of the world by simulating the changing weather of real life. However, this effect is most notably present during the storms while the player's boat is sailing at sea. 
• Has "dynamic ripple shader" which causes the rain drops that hit the floor to react to the intensity and direction of the wind.
• Has better randomization of the rain effect, so the cycle is not as blatantly obvious as before.
• Rain now causes the ground's specularity to resemble that of a real wet surface.
• Rain can now interact with the 3D character model. (i.e. splashing on the characters model)
• Very effective to creating a mood for the environment in present day video games. 

Conclusion:

Advances in technology has now given video game developers the power to create almost life-like rain effects. When compared to the primitive rain effects of the 16-bit era, it is hard to believe the leaps and bounds the visual effects industry has progressed in a relatively short time. The advances in special effects technology helps immerse the player in the world as intended by the developers.  

Stop-Motion Character Animation

I worked in a two man group with Kevin Truong to make this Stop-Motion animation. Both of us provided one figure each to play as the main leads in this short. Initially, we drew out some storyboards of what we would roughly like the short to look like. However, we made the common mistake of over complicating the scenes, and as a result many scenes had the characters in incredibly unbalanced/exaggerated poses that just weren't possible to maintain with the limited equipment we had (the flimsy stands that come with the toys that often moved out of place or dropped the character during posing). Therefore, we cut down or simplified many of the scenes and broke the short down into the key story ideas only.

 I was in charge of posing the figures, and Kevin took care of the snapping the photos. After the shooting was completed, I compiled the images into a video in Quicktime and helped Kevin queue the audio to end at the same time the animation ends. 

Overall, stop-motion is definitely the most challenging form of animation because there are so many factors that can go wrong (such as the figures falling over). However, there is a sense of accomplishment when one see's their toys come to life. 

Science Fact or Cinematic Fiction?

          In entertainment today, it is not uncommon for our television screens to be bombarded with over the top action. The movies, television series and video games that we consume are avenues of escape from our mundane everyday lives. A lot of the times it may not be blatantly obvious that these forms of entertainment are constantly breaking the rules of physics. However, there are times where physics have some glaringly obvious errors, but we as viewers buy into it without question. In this sense, 2D and 3D animation are highly pliable mediums that allows for intense distortion of real world physics in order to create an entertaining experience for the viewers. Many times in animation there are instances where there is a disproportionate relationship between the amount of acceleration applied to an object and the resulting force of the object. It is a violation of Newton's Second Law of Motion, that states that as the acting acceleration upon on object is increased, the force is increased. As mentioned before, while sometimes these inaccuracies are subtly hidden, there are other cases where it is thrown to the forefront and emphasized to create a serious or comedic effect.

         In Asura's Wrath, a video game developed in 2012 by Capcom, this disproportionate relationship between force and acceleration is used to create comedy. Asura's Wrath is a game that is notorious for being completely over the top while mimicking the style of a Japanese super hero anime. So in this case, the distortion of real world physics is used to create a colorful world for the player to experience. Asura, the game's titular hero, is a demi-god, who wields enormous physical power. Power that is enormous enough for him to uppercut another character from the face of Earth all the way to the Moon. Logistics aside, such as both characters even surviving a trip to the moon without any sort of protection, it is not possible for a normal human being to have enough force in his one punch to launch someone to the moon. Furthermore, Asura's fist does not bounce off the other character upon impact and the resulting lift off is more akin to a rocket taking off rather than punch to one's chin. In this case, the believability of the action takes the backseat to the entertainment factor presented by the ridiculous premise of the game. By this point in the game, the audience has already been desensitized to the over the top nature of the game, and they will most likely suspend their disbelief and sit back and enjoy a corny action sequence for the sake of entertainment.

          In the 2013 cult hit anime, Attack on Titan, by Hajime Isayama, the universe is mostly grounded in real world physics. However, in areas where the Isayama wants to lift some of the tension off the viewers, the characters are allowed to break the rules of physics. This sort of idea is very common in 2D animation in order to create comedy. There is a scene where Sasha Braus is being punished for disobeying the rules of the military academy and as such she is forced to run laps around camp for 5 hours without any meals. However, Sasha is a glutton archetype character and after serving her punishment a friend comes to her aid and sneaks her a loaf of bread. In this moment, Sasha darts across the screen about 20-30 feet to snatch the food from her benefactor. If one classifies this as a hero jump, then her short push time (around 2 to 3 frames) corresponds with the believability of the lunge. However, in reality, a lunge of this magnitude would not be possible due to the enormous leg strength needed to pull of the maneuver thus creating a disproportionate reaction between what is presented and what could actually occur in reality.

         Perhaps the biggest offender of the laws of physics is Square-Enix's 2005 CG film, Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children. During the climax of the movie, the hero, Cloud, is fighting a colossal dragon thousands of feet in the sky above a futuristic city. Cloud breaks the limits of human movement when he jumps about 10 stories high in a single leap. Cloud performs a super hero jump with a short push time, however, the resulting jump is much too lofty and feels more akin to an actor being pulled into the air by a wire. Furthermore, in order for Cloud to chase the dragon as it ascends higher above the city, his friends come to lend him their aid. However, this comes in the form of them jumping insanely high as well, and then throwing Cloud higher into the air with only their arm strength. There are assisting characters that appear to just be giving Cloud a boost with their hands, but when they release Cloud, he disproportionately shoots into the sky. With the amount of acceleration needed to toss another human 5 to 10 stories into the air, it is surprising that the cast of characters are not breaking their arms, throwing out their shoulders, or inflicting some other sort of bodily harm to themselves. Finally, to top it all off, when Cloud falls hundreds of feet from the sky, he lands as gracefully as a cat with zero regard for the accompanying G-forces acting on his body. If a normal person fell from the sky at the height that Cloud did, they would reach their terminal velocity on the descent, and perish from the impact. As silly as this scene ended up appearing, the audience already expects this kind of action from the cast and they do not question the scene on their initial viewing of the film.

        In conclusion, there are many instances in animated mediums where the physics are pushed to the limit, but the viewers do not question it. Of course there is always the risk of pushing the boundaries too far, this ruining the experience for the viewer. But as mentioned before, animation is a powerful medium that allows creators to surprise their viewers with the unexpected. It has the unique ability of pliability that allows the warping of real world physics in order to evoke a feeling that can be serious or comedic in nature. Whether it is Asura punching someone to the moon, Sasha doing an impossible lunge for her bread, or Cloud and his friends taking to the skies to defeat the colossal dragon, the worlds that are created are so fantastic and wondrous that we can often accept these blatant inaccuracies in real world physics simply because the result is so entertaining.

Outline for Second Term Paper

Introduction:

• Animation is a pliable medium that allows the intense distortion of the real worlds physics for the sake of entertainment. 
• Often in animation, there are actions that have disproportional reactions from the amount of force put into the action.
• Violates Newton's 2nd Law of Motion.
• F=MA
• The amount of force produced in these actions are disproportional to the amount of acceleration the characters utilize.
• As the acting force upon an object is increased, the acceleration is increased.
• Sometimes these disproportional actions are subtly hidden away, other times they are laid bare to evoke a certain response from the audience.
• This is often applied in a serious or comedic way.

Body Paragraphs:

Asura's Wrath (2012)

• Introduce Asura's Wrath
• Violation of physics are often applied in video games to create extravagant worlds to entertain the player.
• Asura's Wrath: Main character of over the top 2012 video game, Asura's Wrath, is a multi-armed demi-god, whose uppercut has the ability to carry the victim to the moon. 
• Over the top violation of physics that creates comedy.

Attack on Titan (2013)

• Very often exhibited in 2D animation as a way to break away from the reality of live action.
• Sasha Braus is a glutton who was denied her daily meal for breaking rules in the military training. When in the presence of food, she lunges to snatch it away.
• She is only crouched for a moment (around 2-3 frames), and even then, there is no way for her to lunge across the screen based off of this.
• Lacks appropriate push off force to travel the distance she did.
• Another case of violation of physics that creates comedy and builds character's personality.  

Final Fantasy 7 Advent Children (2005)

• At the climax of the movie, the hero named Cloud, is launched hundreds of feet higher into the sky to fight a dragon.
• Already takes impressive and unobtainable leg strength to jump around 10 stories, 
• Friends throw Cloud up the height of a sky scraper with their bare hands.
• With the amount of force needed to throw another human that high,and realistically their bodies would not be able to withstand the force.
• Despite falling a few hundred feet after slaying the dragon, he lands as gracefully as a cat.

Conclusion: 

Animation is a powerful medium because of it's ability to twist the rules of physics to evoke a feeling whether it is serious or comedic in nature. The worlds that are created as so fantastic and wondrous that we often neglect to notice these blatant violations of real world physics simply because they are entertaining. Yet we believe it because animation is a pliable medium, able to shape itself to whatever the creator needs it to be.

Reverse Video Reference

Stop Motion Animation of Falling

 When I was planning this shot, I marked off the path of action and where the pencil should be by placing an X on the the white backboard, and I roughly drew in the arc of the bounce based off my video reference. For the drop, I followed the Odd Rule. I shot numerous reference videos for the pencil until I found one where I thought the bounce looked interesting and fun to animate. It was a fun experience also really just observing how differently the pencil would move depending on the angle that it was dropped at. I learned that shooting without a tripod is incredibly hard, but the results even with a shaky camera (while imperfect) is kind of charming in my opinion.

The Laws of Physics in an Animation Universe

     Wreck-It-Ralph is a 2012 Walt Disney Animation feature film directed by Rich Moore, and written by Jennifer Lee and Phil Johnston. The story is about Ralph, a 30 year old video game villain, who is tired of being viewed as the bad guy by his fellow video game colleagues. In his rage, Ralph travels through a myriad of video game worlds in order to find a medal that he can bring back to his game so that everyone will acknowledge him as a hero, rather than a villain. Although Wreck-It-Ralph is a film that takes place on Earth, I believe that there are distinct sets of physics for each of the video game worlds that vastly differs from reality in order to create a clear distinction between the real world and the video games. In these video game worlds, the physics are often pushed to the extremes, with an impossible sense of gravity and highly exaggerated actions, in order to create a humorous and entertaining experience for the viewer.

     In Wreck-It-Ralph, much of the animation is silky smooth, as one would expect from a modern day 3D feature film. However, there are many instances in which I believe the graph editor for the animations appear to be in stepped form rather than in smooth curves. For instance, in the world of Fix-It-Felix Jr, the game that Ralph and Felix live in, the town is populated by many munchkin sized citizens known as Nicelanders. However, unlike Ralph and Felix, these characters have choppy and poppy animation, which is a nod to the old choppy animations of the 2D sprites from the early era of video games where things were not nearly as nicely animated as they are today. However, after re-watching the film, there were a few instances where even the Nicelanders had smooth animations, but they were mostly reserved for their facial expressions. In contrast to these vintage video game characters, Wreck-It-Ralph also features nods to the more recent era of video games with games such as Hero's Duty. When Ralph visits the world of Hero's Duty, all of the animation returns to being smooth to help differentiate the advance in technology between the new video games and the vintage ones.

Example of Felix and the Nicelanders Dancing

     The characters in Wreck-It-Ralph seem to have their own set of physics depending on their size. As one would expect, Ralph has huge, lumbering movements, whereas the significantly smaller Vanellope has sprightly and abnormally lofty movements. These are really common types of movement styles for these particular character archetypes and we expect them to move in these ways, however there are instances where Ralph seems to weigh a lot less than he appears to weigh. When Ralph visits the Sugar Rush video game, he is able to support his entire body weight with one hand, while hanging from a candy cane without it breaking. However, this can also be attributed to the video game not allowing the candy cane to break, which brings us to another idea that each video game has a set of very specific rules on what is possible and what is not within that world. In addition, it seems that gravity can be overridden by story-telling, as the Nicelanders of Fix-It-Felix Jr. are able to lift Ralph, a character many times their size, over their heads and toss him off a building with ease. Furthermore, King Candy is also able to bend the law of gravity just by the pure force of his giddiness. When King Candy tell a jokes, he can suspend himself in the air just by fluttering his limbs, an action that is clearly not possible to do in real life. Prior to re-watching the film, I hypothesized that the human characters in the real world would not be subject to the outlandish physics of the video game worlds, and I was correct in that there were no instances in the film where the real life characters were subject to exaggerated physics. All of the real life characters were located in the arcade, and they mostly just walked around the venue like one would expect in real life. Despite being characters in an animated film, they are firmly grounded in reality.

King Candy briefly floating in the air due to giddiness.

     Lastly, this film is full of highly exaggerated and impossible actions. For instance, Vanellope is able to warp in and out of existence due to her nature as a glitch, which she herself jokingly refers to as "Pixlexia." This is a clear violation of physics, since matter cannot simply just disappear and reappear on a whim. Vanellope uses this ability numerous times in the film to avoid danger, or simply to speed past her fellow racers in order to gain her place in Sugar Rush's daily playable roster. Ralph's final descent upon Diet Cola Mountain is also highly impossible. At the climax of the movie, Ralph takes a dive from the clutches of Turbo and into the Mentos covered roof of Diet Cola Mountain in order to create a beacon for the Cy-Bugs to rally to. However, to fall from that height and not break some bones, let alone survive, is impossible for a normal human being, but we buy into it, because this is an animated film. Felix also breaks the boundaries of physics numerous times, however most notably, Felix ricochets off the walls like a super ball when he is dodging Calhoun's gunfire.

Vanellope using her glitch abilities to phase out of her unwanted attire.

     As one would expect from an animated feature film, the physics have been pushed to limit and the laws we experience in the real world are broken on many occasions. However, in Wreck-It-Ralph case, it served not only for entertainment, but as a way to differentiate the numerous worlds in the story, whether it was reality or a video game, old or new. The usage of different types of animation, the abnormal gravity, and the exaggerated actions all come together to form a fun filled film, and refreshing entertainment experience that people have come to expect from Disney over the years. The culmination of all these factors makes the beauty of animation apparent. It is an amazing medium where the creators are able to do things that cannot be done with live action actors. Animation makes creating these fantastic worlds a possibility and it can help the viewer escape from their mundane reality, even if only for an hour or two.

Term Paper Outline : Wreck-It-Ralph

Introduction:

A) Introduce Wreck-It-Ralph
B) Thesis: Although Wreck-It-Ralph takes place on Earth, there are distinct physics for each of the video game worlds that vastly differs from reality in order to create a clear distinction from the real world and video games. In these video game worlds the physics are pushed to the extremes in order to create an entertaining feature.

Body Paragraph:

1) Usage of Different Types of Animation:

In Wreck-It-Ralph, much of the animation is smooth as one would expect from a modern day 3D feature film. However, there are instances where the curves graph editor of the animations appear to be in steps rather than smooth curves.

• Characters from the old video games move in stepped animation to emulate retro video games.
• The characters in Fix-It-Felix's game are all animated in stepped curves and often spring about the screen.
• However, not all of these characters animations were choppy, there were some minor animations that were animated smoothly.
• Characters from the modern video games are animated smoothly.
• Characters from Sugar Rush, and Hero's Duty have been animated smoothly to differentiate them from the older games.

2) Abnormal & Regular Gravity:

The characters have their own set of physics depending on their size.

• Ralph has mostly grounded and heavy lumbering movements.
• Vanellope moves in a very sprightly and abnormally lofty way.
• King Candy is able to suspend himself in mid-air just by fluttering his limbs.
• Also exhibits no gravity when King Candy is altering Sugar Rush's code.
• Real world characters seem to act under normal circumstances, or there were no instances where abnormal gravity was exhibited.
• The weight of objects seems to not matter in the game worlds.
• The townspeople of Fix-it-Felix can lift Ralph with ease, despite being many times smaller.

3) Exaggerated/Impossible Actions:

• Vanellope can phase out of existence and reappear somewhere else while she is glitching.
• Ralph's final descent into Diet Cola Mountain would most likely have killed or caused severe bodily damage, but he is left unscathed. 
• Felix ricochets off the walls of Hero's Duty in order to avoid Calhoun's gunfire.

Conclusion:

Physics can be stretched and pushed to the limit in a 3D feature film in order to create an entertaining experience for the audience. . If a film is too grounded in reality, then it may appear boring to the audience. The deviation from actual physics can be a refreshing experience, as long as they are not so outrageous that they take the viewer out of the experience (unless that effect is intentional)

Video Analysis of Path of Action

                             

Tracker Video Analysis of Falling

Shooting Video Reference

                                 

Youtube Version

                                   

Mini-Portfolio

Here is a little bit of my work from the last year at San Jose State University. The most recent class I have taken is Ani113B with Bunny, and as for sciences, I believe I took a beginning biology class back in my freshman year.  The animation at the end of the post is my teams submission to last years 24 Hour Animation contest, my teammates (Samia Khalaf, Katherine Chung, Khanh Nguyen, and Danielle Case) and I ended up getting the runner-up award with "Curiosity." Despite this, by the time I graduate, I want to specialize in illustration. I wish to improve my painting skills, both digital and traditional, and hope to do concept art in the future.

Color Still-life from Ani113A

Hero Tree from Ani113B (Day)

Hero Tree from Ani113B (Night)

The First Post

Another school year is starting, how exciting! Eager to see what this class is about.