Lab 4: Music and Animation
IDS252: 3D Animation, Fall 2008

Goals

• Become familiar with setting and adjusting keyframes and timing.
• Import music into Maya.
• Create an image or animation that responds to a sound.
• Combine the image or animation with the sound using Adobe Premier Elements.

Directions

1. File Location: For this lab, you should work on the enfuzion drive and not on your H drive. When you create a new project, place it in the folder \IDS252Fa08\Lab4\your_name on the enfuzion drive. When you have completed the lab, you will copy your final images over to the folder \IDS252Fa08\Lab4\FinalWork Make sure that the name of the file you copy into this folder includes your initials or login name.

   When you create your new project (through Maya) on enfuzion, please include an "images" subfolder. The reason for this is that, when you create animations, you will be generating hundreds of images (i.e. frames). Your project folder will get very cluttered if these images are not rendered into a separate subfolder in your project. By including an "images" folder in your project, Maya will know to store all of the images in this separate folder.

2. Tutorials: In Maya, go to the tutorials on Animation (under Learning Resources;Tutorials;Getting Started with Maya;Animation) and work through

   • Lesson 1: Keyframes and the Graph Editor

   The file you will need for this lesson is Keyframing.mb which can be found on the C drive at

   C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya2008\GettingStartedLessonData\Anim

   Once your project is created, copy (through Windows, not Maya) the Keyframing.mb from the above folder into your project folder on the enfuzion drive. Please do NOT work from the file on the C drive - copy it over to your folder!!!

   Note, the above lesson will not be collected.

3. Responding to Music

   In last week's lab, you created a scene that conveys a mood based on a word that you were given. In this lab, you will be assigned a sound and asked to respond to that sound. You may choose to respond either by creating a still image or a very brief animation of no more 1-4 seconds. If your sound is longer than your animation, you can fill the beginning or end of the sound by extending the first or last frame of your animation (directions will be given later). If you are using a still image, then you will create an "animation" that lasts as long as the sound while displaying the still image. All of the needed steps will be described below.

4. Music Assignment: The sound files can be found on enfuzion in the folder: \IDS252Fa08\Lab4\SoundFiles.

   Your assignment is as follows:

   Jose	Minami.wav	Lydia	Minami.wav
   Brooks	Nick Gesture.wav	Ben	Nick Gesture.wav
   Travis	Kakeru N.wav	Solomon	GestureDan.wav
   Matt H.	Kakeru N.wav	Caitlin	GestureAndrew.wav
   Sam	Brian Sound.wav	Nick	Jessica.wav
   Ellie	Jessica.wav	Renee	Minami.wav
   Devon	GestureAndrew.wav	Tyler	Brian Sound.wav
   Matt W.	GestureDan.wav

   Before beginning this part of the assignment, copy the above sound into your Maya project folder.

5. Loading Music into Maya:

   If you choose to do an animation, you will need to load the music into Maya. If you create only a still image, you don't actually need to load in the music, but try loading it anyway since you will need to know how to do this for later labs.

   Instructions:

   1. It is assumed that you already have your project created and have copied your sound file into this project.
   2. Below are the key things that you need to do. Note, more detailed directions for importing sound files can be found in the Maya Help (do a search on "import an audio file") :
      • Before you begin, you need to set the frames-per-second (fps) to 30. The tutorials use 24 fps but for digital (as opposed to film) 30 fps is the standard. To set the fps, go to the main Maya menu, choose Window;Setting/Preferences;Preferences.... In the Preferences window, click on Settings. In the pull-down menu labeled Time, choose NTSC (30FPS). This sets the animation to 30 frames per second (fps).
      • While still in the Preferences window, click on the Timeline category. Where is says "Playback Speed", select "Real-time (30fps). Note, if you don't do this, you won't be able to hear the sound. Click the Save button to exit.
      • To load in a sound file, go to File;Import... from Maya's main menu. Select the sound file you copied into your project folder.
      • To see the sound wave in the timeline at bottom of Maya window, right click on the timeline, choose Sound, and select the name of your sound file.
      • You need to expand the time range slider so you can see the entire sound wave. To do this, put a 0 into the boxes on the bottom left (below the slider) and put a large number (e.g. 1000 or more) into the boxes on the right. The sound ends where the green sound wave stops. Readjust the bottom right boxes so that they are set to the time value where the sound ends.

6. Creating the Animation:

   If you are creating a still image, you can ignore this section.

   • Listen and respond to the sound as a whole. Don't try to animate to specific beats or other effects in the music. You just don't have this much control within the Maya software.
   • Some of the sound pieces are rather long (e.g. 30 sec). You are not to create an animation of this length. Your animation should be at most 4 seconds or 120 frames. If your sound is under 4 seconds (120 frames) then you should plan on an animation that is no longer than the sound. If your sound is longer than 4 seconds, you should plan on animating only at most 120 frames within the window of the music. I suggest that you animate the first 120 frames.

7. Generating the Frames:

   If you are creating a still image, you can ignore this section.

   In Maya, you will generate your frames as follows:

   • On the main Maya menu, choose Window;Rendering Editors;Render Settings.... First, set the Frame/Animation Ext to name#.ext and set the Image Format to be jpg. Make sure the Start Frame and End Frame are set to the first and last frames of your animation.
   • Under Resolution, choose the Presets to be 640x480. Note, if rendering is slow or files are really big, you might want to set this to 320x240 instead.
   • Choose the Maya Software tag and set the Quality to Production Quality. This will slow down the render process so you should use this setting only for the final render. Use a lower quality for previewing. Close this window.
   • To render all of the frames, set the menu selector (drop down menu at top left corner of screen) to Rendering. Then, go to Maya's main menu, choose Render;Batch Render. To see the status of what is happening, you can choose Render;Run Render Diagnostics.
   • When you are done you should have all of your image files (i.e. frames) saved in the images subfolder of your Maya project. Outside of Maya, go to this folder to make sure they are really there.

8. Saving your Animation:

   If you are creating a still image, you can ignore this section.

   You can view the animations either by using the time controls at the bottom of the Maya screen or by using Playblast. Playblast gives more accurate timing. Both of these are described in the tutorials. However, to view the animation outside of Maya, you need to save the animation to an animation file. We will use the quicktime (*.mov) format. The first step is to generate the individual frames in Maya. The next step is to generate the quicktime file from the frames. Both are described below.

9. Combining your Sound and Frames (or Still Image) in a Quicktime file: To combine the frames (or still) with the music, you need to generate an animation file. We will use the quicktime format. To do this, you will be using software package Adobe Premier Elements. Note, Adobe Premier Elements 2.0 is available on the five computers in Collins 412. To get into 412 the room, there is a lockbox with a combination lock containing the room key. In class, you will be given the combination.

   • Open up Adobe Premier by clicking on the icon on the desktop. Click on "New Project" and save it somewhere in your Maya project folder on enfuzion (use the browse button).

   • Click the Add Media button (top left area of screen) and choose "from Files or Folders". Go to the images folder where either your still image or you sequence of jpg files are stored. If using a still image, select it and choose Open. If using a sequence of frames, select the first image in the sequence. Click the checkbox labeled "Numbered Stills" at the bottom. Finally, click the open button. This should add the still image or sequence to the Media Window located in the top left portion of your screen. . Similarly, open your sound file. With the left mouse button held down, drag the sequence down from the Media window to the Video 1 timeline making sure that it lines up with t=0 on the left. If the sound and video are of different lengths, ask the instructor to show you how to fix it.

   • To save to a quicktime file, go to the menu File;Export;QuickTime. Under "Custom", choose LAN(1024k) 640x480. A window will appear asking where you want to save the quicktime file. Save the file in your project folder on enfuzion.

     It may take a little time to do the conversion. When Premier is done, close Premier and rename the quicktime file to include your name and the lab number. Place your final animation on \\home\enfuzion in the folder IDS252Fa08\Lab4\FinalWork.

10. Back Up Your Files!: Make sure that you backup both the quicktime animation and the Maya project folder for this animation (minus the individual image frames/files - you can always regenerate these) to a CD or flash drive.

Evaluation

Place your final animation on \\home\enfuzion in the folder IDS252Fa08\Lab4\FinalWork. Be sure that the file name contains your initials or login name.