Lab 6: Collaboration, Character, and Sound
IDS252: 3D Animation, Spring 2014

Goals

The goals of this lab are to:

• Collaborate with another person.
• Use gesture and foley sound effects to convey emotion and tell a story.
• Practice animating using pose-to-pose action. See book excerpt (PoseToPose.pdf) on cs-render in folder \IDS252Sp14\IDS252GeneralResources\bookExcerpts.
• Learn how to organize a complex, collaborative Maya project, including File Referencing!
• Deliverable: A 10-20 second animation with 1 or 2 characters. Gesture and sound are used to tell the "story". See Evaluation Sheet (pdf).

Maya Tutorials

• The only required tutorial is on File Referencing, but this one is VERY important. The other tutorials listed below, can be done based on interest or need. The supplementary files that you will need for the tutorials can be found, as usual, in IDS252Sp14\IDS252GeneralResources\GettingStartedMaya2014LessonData. These tutorials will not be collected.

• In Maya, go to Maya 2014 Tutorials In the contents, click on Getting Started with Maya. Do the following lessons:

  • Required:
    • Go to File Referencing and do Lesson 1: Using file references. You only need to do the very beginning of the tutorial (up to the part on proxies). Do the rest only if you are interested.
  • Optional
    • (Recommended) If you want to learn more about using images as textures, go to Polygon Texturing and do Lesson 1: UV texture mapping. This is actually a very useful tutorial!
    • If you want to learn more about skeletons, then Go to Character Setup and do
      Lesson 1: Skeletons and kinematics
      Lesson 2: Smooth skinning
    • If you want to learning about facial animation, go to Character Setup and do Lesson 3: Cluster and blend shape deformers.

  The above tutorials will not be collected.

Files and Folders

• In this lab you are to work with one other person.
• On cs-render, in folder \IDS252Sp14\Lab6\MayaProjects, create a folder whose name is derived from both partners' names, e.g. last names and first initials. Place your Maya project and editing subfolders in this folder. There should be only one Maya project - it will contain the maya scene files for both partners.
• When you have completed the lab, please copy your animation over to the folder: \IDS252Sp12\Lab6\FinalAnimations\. Name the file based on the names of both partners.

Renderfarm

Now is a good time to test out the render farm. See directions here: Farm.

Project Description and Directions

• Goal: In this lab, you and your partner are to create a 10-20 second animation. The animation should be a very brief scenerio with 1 or 2 characters. It should contain foley sound. Each group will be assigned foley sounds (see Foley Sound section below).

• Picking a Scenerio: Use the foley sound to direct what the scene is about. Listen to the sounds you have been assigned and brainstorm ideas about what these sounds represent. Remember that "Foley is the reproduction of everyday sounds for use in filmmaking." Keep the scenerio simple. It is better to have high quality animation that is simple and expressive than to have complex but awkward animation. The focus should be on gesture and sound.

• Environment: The environment should be minimal, e.g. containing only a few objects (if any) other than the characters themselves. Any objects that do appear should be there for a reason, i.e. they should play an active part in the interaction or in setting the mood or scene. Shading and texturing can be minimal, however, do pay attention to lighting and to a choice of color scheme.

• Camera: It is recommended that you use a single, stationary camera (possibly with one or two cuts).

• Storyboarding: Once you have decided on a scenerio, sketch out the key frames (very rough storyboards) on paper. DO NOT SKIP THIS STEP! It does not matter if can't draw. Stick figures are ok. Pay attention to the location and size of the character in the frame (i.e. relationship to camera) and what the gesture is. Act out the scene to get the approximate timing and mark it on each storyboard. You can change the timing later but it is good to try to get close initially. Indicate on the storyboards where the foley will be. When you are ready to animate, you are to use these storyboards to block in the key frames using pose-to-pose action.

• Characters: The characters should be chosen from the already rigged characters: Bloke, Andy or Goon. If there is more than one character in your scene, make sure they are distinguishable either by using a different rigged character or by changing their appearance. Andy and Goon have controls for changing the look of the character. In the case of Bloke, you can give one Bloke character a hat or something similar. Before you begin animating, please spend some time exploring the controls of your character.

  Bloke

  Andy

  Goon

• Division of Labor:

  • Break the scenario into 2 or more "shots". A shot is normally a camera cut (e.g. camera changes position) but it can also just be a convenient spot for a transition (e.g. a character walks off the screen at the end of shot 1 and comes back at the beginning of shot 2). Each shot should be assigned to one of the partners. Each partner is responsible for all of the animation in their assigned shots. Each person must do some amount of animating - it is not ok for one person to do it all.
  • Decide who will do the lighting and environment modeling (keep these simple).
  • Decide who will do the editing (Adobe Premiere) and project backup.
  • Put the above in writing - this is your contract to each other. You can change these along the way but it is important to have a starting point. Create a document (e.g. Word or Excel, e.g. see shotTaskList.xls) containing the items below and save it into your \IDS252Sp14\Lab6\MayaProjects folder.
    • Shot List: The list of the shots, where each shot includes a very brief description, an estimated number of frames, who is to animate it, the name of the maya file containing the animation.
    • Task List: The list of all tasks (e.g. backup, editing, animating, lighting, etc) and who is responsible for each.

• Project Setup:

  • You and your partner are to create a single Maya project in which to work. All scene files should be in the scenes folder.
  • Each character and environment object should be reside in a separate Maya scene file. Each shot will have its own scene file. Each scene file for a given shot should reference (NOT IMPORT) the character and environment scene files. When possible, avoid multiple levels of referencing (e.g. a file references a file which references a file ...). Before creating the references, be sure that the characters and environment being referenced are cleaned up.
  • Make sure that all assets (e.g. textures, maya scenes, sounds, source images, etc) are somewhere inside the project folder.
  • Don't use the default lambert shader (lambert1) because Maya will get confused if different referenced files have a different "default" shader. Instead, always create new shaders for your models.
  • Layers: Learn how to use layers so that you can focus on only the parts that you are working on (ask if you don't know what these are).

Foley Sound

You and your partner will be assigned several foley sound effects.

• Use at least two of the sounds. You may use more if you want. Each sound may be played once or twice in the animation.
• Listen to your sound and decide what simple event might have generated that sound and what emotional state you want the sound to provoke. Note, a given sound could provoke any number of different emotions depending on your scene, e.g. one reacts differently to a gunshot if it is during a robbery as opposed to a hunting party. This sound will be the trigger for the interaction of your two characters.

Sound Assignments: You will find sounds in the folder \IDS252Sp12\Lab6\FoleySounds. Assignments will be made after you choose a partner. We want to make sure at least one sound from each musician is used.

Loading Music into Maya:

• Import the sound as you did in Lab 5. You can shift the sound so that it starts at a different frame by right clicking on the timeline, selecting Sound, and then select the small box to the right of the name of your sound. (see picture below) This will bring up the attributes for the sound. Change the Offset to move the sound to a different frame. For example, set Offset to 5, to shift the sound over by 5 frames.
• If you want to use a second sound, import it as you did the first. To see both sounds in the time slider, you need to right click on the timeline, select Sound, and then select Use Trax Sounds. You may need to open up the Trax Editor by going to the menu Window → Animation Editors → Trax Editor.
• When you render the animation in Adobe Premiere:

  Jot down the sound's offset from Maya. You will need this in order to correctly place the audio in Premiere. Note, in Adobe Premiere, the time units are hours, minutes, seconds, and frames. For example, the time of 00;00;02;8 corresponds to 2 seconds (i.e. 60 frames) plus 8 frames or, in other words, the 68th frame.

Evaluation

On Mon, Feb 24, the class will review your storyboards, shot list and task list. Nothing is actually turned in but you will be graded on what you have to show to the class (5 pts).

Before class on Fri, Feb 28, place your final animation on cs-render in the folder \IDS252Sp14\Lab6\FinalAnimations. Animations will be graded (20 pts) based on the evaluation sheet, which will be discussed during the critique.

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