Lab 4: Animation and Music
IDS252: Computer Animation Production, Fall 2007

Goals

• Animate using path constraints.
• Create a 10 second animation loop with music.
• Learn how to use the renderfarm.

Directions

Note, you will need headphones for this lab.

1. Tutorials In the Getting Started with Maya tutorials, go to the Animation section and do lesson 3 (Path Animation). The file you need is PathAnim.mb. It should be located on the C drives of the machines in 411 at

   C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya8.5\GettingStartedLessonData\Anim Make sure you copy this file over to your H drive before you begin working on them.

   Note: These tutorial animations are not to be turned in. They are purely for you to learn how to animate!

2. 10 Second Animation Loop With Music:

   In this part of the lab, you are to download a music file created from one of the music students.

   Music Files: Your assigned music file is given here.

   You must work on \\home\enfuzion and not on your H drive. Why? - because you run the risk of running out of space on your H drive (and will lose files) and the renderfarm can only be run from \\home\enfuzion.

   You are to create a 10 second (300 frames) animation that goes with the music. Your animation should again be a loop (the last frame is the same as the first frame).

   To load music into your scene:

   1. Inside Maya, create a new project on \\home\enfusion in the folder IDS252Fa07\lab4\your_name. Make sure you include an "images" folder when you create the new project. Create a new scene and save it into your project.
   2. Outside of Maya, copy your assigned music file to the newly created project folder.
   3. Directions for importing sound files can be found in the Maya Help. Just do a search on Import an audio file and click on 62. Import an audio file,
      or, under Contents, click on Using Maya; Animation, Character Setup, Deformers; Animation; Animation Basics; Add sound to your animation; Import an audio file.

      Here are a couple of the main things that are explained in these help pages:

      • To load in a sound file, go to File;Import... from Maya's main menu. Choose your sound file (which should be located in your project folder).
      • To hear the sound, you must go to Windows;Settings/Preferences;Preferences... and click on Timeline. In the Playback section, set the PlayBack speed to Real-time (30fps).
      • To see the sound wave in the timeline at bottom of Maya window, right click on the timeline, choose Sound, and pick the name of your sound file.

3. To create an animation do not try to match the movement in your animation precisely with the music. Maya doesn't give you enough control to do this well. Try instead to capture the overall feel of the music rather than the details.

   Back-up your work frequently!!! Keep multiple versions of your scene file.

4. Normally, your rendering is all done on your local machine. This can be slow if you are rendering many frames for an animation. To speed up rendering, you may use the renderfarm which "farms out" your render request to multiple machines. Instructions for how to use the renderfarm are given here. These are a little out of date but are pretty close to what you need to do. You may submit jobs to the renderfarm either from within Maya or outside Maya. Remember that your project must be on enfuzion for the renderfarm to work. We will go over all of this in class. Be sure to come to lab if you have questions.

5. Creating the animation with sound: Even though you imported the sound into Maya, the frames you render will not contain the sound. You must add it back in using Adobe Premier when you create your quicktime file. The process of saving your animation to a quicktime file is identical to what was done in lab 3 except that you must also add in the audio. If you don't remember what was done before, begin by re-rereading the instructions in lab 3.
   • To add the sound in Adobe Premier, click Add Media and open your sound file. Drag the sound file to the audio track in the timeline. Your animation frames should be in the video track. Export the animation with audio to a quicktime file as before.
   • Place your final quicktime animation on \\home\enfuzion in the \IDS252Fa07\Lab4\FINAL_ANIMATIONS folder.

     !!!!Back-up your Maya (*.mb) file along with the music files. Make sure that you are able to retrieve them at a later date!!

Evaluation

Critiques will be done jointly with the music students on Wed Sept 26. For this reason, it is especially important that you get your work done on time.

At that time,we will ask the following types of questions: guide.