Lab 5: Creating an Animation Loop with Music
IDS252: 3D Animation,
Spring 2014
Due Date: Wed, Feb 19, before the beginning of class.
Evaluation Sheet (pdf)
Goals
- Continue practice using keyframes, path animation, etc.
- Learn how to import and respond to sound.
- Learn a little about skeletons, forward kinematics, inverse kinematics.
- Deliverables: A 10 second animation loop that responds to a 10 second sound loop. Place in the designated folder on cs-render. See Evaluation Sheet (pdf).
Files and Folders
- When you create a new project for the animation, place it on the cs-render drive in the folder: \IDS252Sp14\Lab5\MayaProjects\your_name.
- When you have completed the lab, please move your final animation over to the folder: \IDS252Sp14\Lab5\FinalAnimations\
- Make sure that the name of your final animation is named in a similar manner as in previous labs.
Maya Tutorials
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The supplementary file (IK_MechArm.mb) that you will need for the IK tutorial listed below can be found in the same folder (called Anim) of tutorial files which you downloaded in the previous lab.
In Maya, go to Help → Tutorials. Click on the link Getting Started with Maya 2014. In the contents, click on Getting Started with Maya, and then Animation. Do the following lessons:
- Lesson 3: Path animation. Do this, if you didn't do it for the last lab
- Lesson 4: Inverse Kinematics.
The above tutorials will not be collected.
10 Second Animation Loop
Project Setup: Create your new project, following these directions for folders and other settings.
Music Assignments: Hopefully, by the lab time, you will find 10 second music loops in the folder \IDS252Sp14\Lab5\MusicLoops. Below are the assignments:
loop_audio_am.aif Casey, Zander loop_audio_cmkl.aif Andrew, Amanda loop_audio_csli.aif Adam, Misha loop_audio_DA.aif Tim, Travis loop_audio_DOD.aif Robin, Theo loop_audio_NR.aif Ricky, Rich loop_audio_rc.aif Rigo, Max loop_audio_tg.aif Ellie, Saran loop_bounce_bb1.aif David loop_audio_BR.aif Jeff Note, if two people want to swap sounds, you may, but let Prof Orr know before making the swap. If your assigned sound is also assigned to another person, then you may switch to a sound that is assigned to only one person but you must first check with Prof Orr to make sure no one else has already done this.
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Loading Music into Maya:
- Copy your sound file into your project and place it into the "sound" folder.
- Below are the key things that you need to do to work with sound:
- If you haven't done so already, remember to set the frames-per-second (fps) to 30 and the "Playback Speed", select "Real-time (30fps)". Note, if you don't select "real-time", you won't be able to hear the sound.
- 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 (if your project is not set, Maya will place you in the wrong folder. You should always set the project).
- 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, right click on the time slider and choose "Set Range to -> Sound Length". The length should be very close to 300 frames if the sound is 10 seconds long. If it isn't exactly 10 seconds long, use whatever length the sound is.
- More detailed directions for importing sound files can be found in the Maya Help (do a search on "Add audio to your animation").
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Creating Your 10 Second Animation Loop: Listen to the sound multiple times to develop a sense of the movement and feeling of the music. Based on this, create an animation that is your response to the music (remember, there is no right or wrong). As in the last lab, your animation should be a loop, i.e. it's end should transition seamlessly back into the beginning. Be prepared to discuss how you applied at least several of the animation principles listed below. Refer to UW Principles for detailed explanations.
- Squash & stretch
- Anticipation
- Staging
- Follow-through
- Overlapping action
- Slow-in, slow-out
- Arc vs linear motion
- Secondary action
- Timing
- Exaggeration
- Knowledge of technique
- Observation and translation
- Appeal
- Imagination
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Using a Rigged Character: If you wish, you may use the rigged character bloke (bloke_v2.8.ma), whose maya file may be found in the folder on cs-render in \IDS252Resources\RiggedCharacters. You need to copy the file over to your project.
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Combining Sound and Animation: When you render the frames in Maya, the sound is not attached. You must combine the frames and the sound separately. To add sound to the final quicktime animation, you will need to load the sound file into Adobe Premiere elements along with the image frames. The frames are dragged down to the video track and the audio needs to be dragged down to the audio track. Make sure the video and audio are properly aligned. Generate the quicktime as you did in the last lab. (See directions)
