evaluation

I think  that I've come a long way in this part of the assignment.  I have managed to complete an animation according to my storyboard, or as close as possible, which is always a good sign of progression.  There were a lot of good and bad things about my animation.

Scene 1:
It was the best scene, probably because I didn't have to do that much.  All i had to do was move the camera back to give it the impression that it was zooming out.

Scene 2:
This scene was a bit bad as there was only one movement of the wings, despite the fact that the glider was bumping up and down, due to the path that I'd created.  In hindsight I could have made only one 'bump'  when creating the path.  Another option was to make the wings go up and down till it reach the end.  another alternative was to perhaps use the physics engine to make the glider fall.

Scene3:
This was a good scene in my opinion, as it had a lot more animation to it, albeit not very coordinated (the fact that the arms and pieces was coming off, as well as the pieces on the glider - this was due to the fact that I couldn't weld the objects together in the first part of the assignment).  This was because I managed to copy the animation that I did once.

Scene 4:
This was better than I expected, which was made possible by duplicating the path constraints to go alongside the glider.  Again, if you take a closer look you'll notice that the handle falls of the wings etc.

rendering

I had to select the Range 0-300 as is shown by the picture above.

Check on ‘force 2 sided’ so that the glider’s wings are shown as is evident by the picture above.

 

 Files to save and save it as avi-uncompressed (HDTV).  Check on ‘save file’.

 

scene 4

In order to save time I just saved the previous scene as ‘scene 4’, and my plan is to have a target camera close up of how the glider works.

In an attempt to slow down the animation I pondered about moving the camera alongside the glider so that the movements are seen.  So I’m hoping to be able to attach/link a camera to a path constraints via a dummy.  So I copied the ready-made path and I will use that to attach the camera: 

 

But somehow that didn’t work and after talking to my tutor I was on the right track, only that I didn’t need to use a dummy.

scene 3

I have decided to use the ‘Animation – path constraints & dummy’ with some animation of the wings flapping.  I first had to replace the person (3^rd model) with the biped.  After a few trial and error of trying to get the correct size of biped, in order for it to realistically fit into the glider, I realised that the pedals needed to be longer like so:

I first moved the pedal down.  Then I selected hierarchy and ‘affect pivot only’.

Using the move tool I moved the pivot up to where i wanted it. 

Then I went back to the create tab and adjusted the ‘rope’ to make it longer.  I wish I had discovered this technique in the first 6 weeks when I was doing my modelling as it cuts out alot of the tedious work of moving things around to my liking.

Problems

Email threads between myself and my tutor:

ME:

i have some trouble with my animation, when i place the biped in position it goes back to the way it was e.g. when i place the legs and feet in position and i click on empty space it 'resets'.  also i'm trying to link the biped and glider to the dummy but because i have the biped in position to the glider, i cant group them IN ORDER to link them with the dummy.  i have thought about individually selecting the object but that would take a long time, and hope you can point me in the correct/quicker way.

TUTOR:

Hello Yama, do you remember what I said to you about the part of the biped called 'Bip001' this is the centre of mass and should be linked to the dummy. If this is linked then the whole biped will move with it. 

I can't really think what could be causing the 'reset' problem other than if you are working in and out of 'figure mode'

Hope this helps, let me know if you find out any more or if you need more advice on this.

ME:

thanks for the quick response.  i have had a look at the list of object and there is nothing called 'bip001'.  i think its time to cut my losses and  go with the original model.

TUTOR:

If you have a biped in the scene, It's very odd that 'bip001' doesn't show up in the list. During Tuesday's lesson we linked this to the dummy already and then rotated and moved the biped into position. Did you not save this progress? I had hoped that you might have documented this as proof of you implementing the biped into your work.

Yes you should add this email thread as it will be important for evaluating your work and appraising your models/animations.

As you can see from the picture below, the ‘bip001’ is not there:

Due to the fact that the biped was giving me alot of problems i.e. it was not rotating properly and when I was drawing it it would draw it far away from the glider so it was hard to get an accurate size, not to mention that it wouldn’t resize for some unknown reason. so I decided to open the ‘Animation – path constraints & dummy’ and ‘scene two’ files and delete everything from the ‘Animation – path constraints & dummy’ file apart from the line/path, then I saved it and imported/merged it with scene two, having deleted the other path that was already in scene two.  I did this as I felt it would take me a long time to draw another or similar path and I wouldn’t get frustrated in trying to get the correct sized biped and I don’t have to place the arms and legs in the correct position in respect to the glider.  I also deleted all the animation from the second scene as I wanted to start again.  I did this by selecting all the objects and deleting the animation from the timeframe.

After talking with my tutor he pointed, I realised that I had to click all the followings in red in order to get bip001:

The next problem I had was when I clicked on follow it seems to turn all of the objects (biped and glider) backwards. Like so: 

The way I fixed that is by rotating  the dummy like so:

In an attempt to make the animation easier I first moved the pivot point on both wings to the corner like so:

Then I tried to link the handle to the wings which worked. But in an attempt to link the arm to either the wings or more preferably the handle failed.

In order to get the movement of the rotation localised I had to change the view to localised like so:

Due to the fact that I animated the wings to move at 35 degrees the ‘flapping’ was not noticeable so I had to increase the degree of movement.

When I was happy enough I copied the animation by holding shift and dragging the frames along like so:

storyboard

Scene one:
Close up of the glider (second model). As the camera zooms out, it becomes apparent that the glider is on top of the Giotto's Bell Tower (first model). The scene fades out.
[7 seconds]
Scene two:
Close up on the person (third model), getting ready to fly the glider, the camera then zooms out showing the dome behind the tower. As he jumps from the tower, using the reactor I hope to show that the glider has splattered on the ground making it look like the test was a failure. The scene fades out.
[11 seconds]
Scene three:
Looking out from the tower I hope to show that the glider is flapping away.
[6 seconds]
Scene four:
As the glider is flying, the camera fades in on how it is possible, for example the arm and leg movement on the glider.
[15 seconds]
Scene five:
Credits
[8 seconds]

Scene two

Problems

For some reason the z axis was not working as is evident by the picture below: 

After researching it I found that I somewhere along the line I must have accidently press x.  When I pressed it again I was able to move the z axis.  http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=58761

In order to get scene two done I pondered about using the earlier animation (Animation – path constraints & dummy) but for some unknown reason I couldn’t move the key along the frame so I could extend it with zoom out, because by the time the glider hits the floor (or appeared to have hit the floor) it would approximately be 19 frames.  Although it will be appropriate to make the glider fall really fast, I needed it to fly (or hang in the air) whilst making the glider flap its wings at least once.  So with all this in mind I felt it was prudent to draw another, shorter path.

I drew a slightly bent line like so:

I then moved it into position like so:

To add more vetex so I could move the line, i had to right click on the line and click on refine. 

 

The reason why I set the path constraints like the picture above is because the glider’s wings are going to coming down so that would lift it just a little bit.

As I thought more about how I’m going to animate it I came to the realisation that I might have to change the person the biped.

First things first, I had to apply the dummy and link the hip to it.  I did this by hiding the other elements/objects in the biped except the hip.  And I placed the biped on the glider, due to the proportional size of the biped it wouldn’t fit in the glider so I decided to make some changes to the glider.  I did this by selecting the glider and group > ungrouping it.  I first made the pedals longer like so:

There are some issues such as the arms not going through the rings as the picture above demonstrates.

Once I was happy with it, I pondered the quickest way to group the glider.

I clicked on ‘select by name’ and i selected all the objects that I thought made up the glider like so:

Next I had linked the glider to the dummy and the dummy to the path.

I first had to figure out how a person would fly the glider and came to the conclusion that when the wings are up the arms/wings go up, where as the knees are bent, vice versa when the wings are down. 

Then I had to ungroup the glider in order to animate it.

After hours of positioning and rotating, the wings, cameras, and other things I’m finally in a position to say that scene two is done. 

 

Scene 1

I had to first save it under a different name so that I could make some changes such as deleting the man (person), path constraints and the dummy, thus leaving the glider on top of the tower.  I then adjusted the camera to be as close up as possible.  The picture below is a the camera view.

I then selected auto () and set key () at frame 0. 

 

I went to the 175 frame and set a key:

 

I then had to place the camera in order to make it appear that it was zooming out.  I did this by placing the camera as far away as possible from the building, while at the same time having the target set on the glider.  The picture below is the outcome.

As you can tell from the picture below, not all of the objects are in view such as the top of the dome.  So I have decided to extend scene one and add some pans at the end of scene one.  I am now planning to add pan while the scene fades out as my story board suggests.

I did this by simply adding a set key at the 250^th frame and then moving the target up: