Building a Scene In Maya

I just realized I posted these on my main blogsite instead of here... whoops!

Extra Credit: Lighting a Scene.

One-point lighting

Two-point lighting

Three-point lighting

Third Term Paper

I will not be writing the third term paper. My first two term paper scores were 90 and 90.

Outline of the Third Term Paper

For this paper I will be studying rain effects in TV and film, both animated and practical.

Pacific Rim: fight scene in Hong Kong. This is a very long fight that takes place in the rain. All of it is computer generated. Combined with good lighting and texturing, the rain appears very real. Everything looks wet, and is reflecting the colorful lights of downtown Hong Kong.Very effective at looking real and at setting the mood.

Gotham: Episode 4 climax. An assassin is coming to kill his next victim, but Jim Gordon gets to the house first. The scene is set up outside the house, where it is raining. The rain is meant to change the mood and get the audience ready for the confrontation that is about to happen. The rain is a practical effect and was filmed outside in the daytime. It can clearly be seen that it was sunny when it was filmed due to the shadows in the street in the background. This creates a weird scene, which doesn’t portray the right mood. It looks like actual rain, it just doesn’t look like it should be raining at the time. 

Stop-Motion Character Animation - Team Grilled Cheesy

   

   Team Grilled Cheesy's stop-motion short! My fellow teammates were Kaitlyn Joe, Lauren Chin, and Jessica Lin. We started out by finding characters we could use to animate and then shaping a story around that. We had a lot of pairs of characters, so we eventually came upon the idea of having a lonely character looking for a friend and grieving an old one. Each of us took a part of the story and did storyboards for it. Then we came together and consolidated the story and did a quick animation run through. The next day we spent entirely on animation, followed by a day of editing.

Story boarding!

   Our setup was a simple table with white cloth pushed up against the wall. A camera was set up on a tripod slightly above the table level. We didn't have much to hold the characters in place, so we had to use tape, or hold them up with our hands,which were later edited out.

Editing time!

   In terms of how the work was split up, Kaitlyn was directing from behind the camera, and the rest of us took turns animating. I ended up animating on the later scenes. Mostly the Pikachus, the paper flying towards, and the rolling Pooh bear at the end. During editing we each took a chunk of the film. This involved photoshopping out our hands and other objects used to manipulate the animation, as well as timing out the animation. Jessica took charge of directing us in how to composite our photos. I edited the opening scene up to the page turning scene using Photoshop, and compiled it in After Effects. Each piece was then put together for the final film.

Science Fact of Cinematic Fiction?

                Animation is a medium based on the bending of reality to get a more real look, or sometimes just goes for the dramatic effect and throws realistic physics out the window. Often in animation, objects gain and lose energy, appear from thin air, and can grow and shrink in size. All of these break the law of Conservation of Energy, which is fundamental to our world. Without it, every law or principle in physics would make no sense, because energy could come from nowhere. In animated worlds this is fine, and often can be rationalized, though most times it is just to serve the purpose of the filmmaker; to tell the story.

                Sometimes seemingly realistic scenes are actually breaking the Law of Conservation of Energy. In the beginning of Rango, the title character’s home, a reptile tank, falls out of the back of a moving car. The car had just run over an armadillo and was swerving around a highway. When the car swerves, the tank flies up off the junk it is placed on, and out the open back window. This would not normally happen. As the car slows down and swerves, the tank’s inertia would keep it moving forward instead of backward.  In order for this to happen the car would have to be speeding up considerably, which it doesn’t, because later it is clear that the car pulled over, and would have been slowing down. Either that, or there is a very high speed wind blowing through the car at that moment, and the tank gets blown out the window. The scene after shows there is no wind on this desert highway, and the air moving through the car, which is probably going about 80 mph and decelerating, would not be enough to push a whole lizard tank out of the car while it should be moving the opposite direction. Somehow the tank inexplicably loses kinetic energy. Similarly, when the tank hits the ground and shatters, the hero does not have a reaction to hitting the ground. He does not bounce, but simply lands on a piece of glass and lays there as it slides down the road. The character loses energy somehow when landing on a hard surface. If it was something more pliable like marshmallow this would be understandable, but he is landing on glass, which is also landing on pavement. Now, all of this was shot in slow motion can be used in film to disguise the physics of a situation. It was barely noticeable on the first watching of the movie, which means it succeeded, as well as the cinematographer focusing more on the feeling of the character in free fall. We are led to connect more with the character than think about the physics going on in the scene.

                In a more fantastical setting the Law of Conservation of Energy is consistently broken, often times attributing such happenings to “magic.” This happens abundantly in Adventure Time, but there is a character that breaks it simply by existing. Flame Princess is a being made of fire. She can grow and shrink in size and is constantly burning. Combustion requires fuel, oxygen, and heat in order to react. When growing to sizes of three or four stories she does not consume any fuel. She is noticeably hotter, which causes things around her to burst into flame. A larger reaction requires more of each ingredient, meaning more fuel, more oxygen, and more heat. When growing to large sizes Flame Princess is outdoors most of the time, meaning there is a large enough supply of oxygen. The heat generated by the reaction meets the minimum requirement for heat in a larger reaction. The only thing missing is more fuel. Growing up she was imprisoned until the age of 14 and has no concept of eating. Without consuming anything she is constantly burning, which means she is not conserving energy, but somehow creating it. Adventure Time does not explicitly explain this, but as with many of the creatures in the Land of Ooo, there is magic, which makes sense in an animated children’s show. The creators of the show are taking advantage of the medium to create interesting characters to interact with Finn.

                Sometimes physics goes out the window just to get a laugh. While a gag may not be physically possible, it follows the logic of that world and gets the point of the story across. The Reward is an animated short film that centers around two young treasure hunters who travel for years following a map. In the end they reach their destination to find only a large mirror reflecting their older and more awesome selves. They two friends execute a high-five so epic it creates an explosion seen from space; larger than any manmade nuclear blast. The amount of energy needed to create this is huge, and again there seems to be no fuel for this reaction. No noticeable chunks of their hands were missing, which could have been the fuel. While this could be explained by magic, because one of them is a mage, it is much more likely a flare for dramatic effect, and to get a laugh. It comes at the climax of the film, as the two have just realized the true treasure was their friendship all along. The theme of this film is clearly demonstrated in this dramatic, but not even remotely possible, animated sequence.

                Animation is a world of extremes. The stretching of reality can create a more believable experience that makes us feel the characters. These examples tie in themes, moods, and the overall world consistency to further the story and get the creator’s point across. The most successful of these moments are done in a way that follows the logic of that film, while pushing the boundaries of our suspension of disbelief a little bit. The laws of the universe are not broken often, but are in moments when it is most needed to get to that crucial point of the story.

Outline of the Second Term Paper

Conservation of Energy

Scenes: The Reward High Five scene!
             Rango the highway scene, tank falls out of the car (action/reaction?)
             Adventure Time Season 4 Hot to the Touch  Flame Princess is constantly burning, but never                  losing mass,
         

Thesis: The Conservation of Energy is a principle of physics that is often broken in cinema to further the story.

In Adventure Time Flame Princess is made of fire. Fire needs a constant source of fuel and oxygen to continue burning, She can grow to large sizes without consuming any fuel, and she can spew sustained flames from her body without a noticeable change to her form. She must be powered by magic as is much of the show.

A more realistic scene. In Rango, the yet unnamed hero is knocked out of the back of a family car. The car had run over an armadillo that caused his tank to fall out of the back window. Were this to happen in real life, it would mean the car was speeding up rapidly while the lizard tank's inertia kept it going the same speed. This is not the case because the car is swerving and pulling over, which means it is slowing down. So the tank lost some kinetic energy while it was in the air.

In The Reward short film, the hero character realize their treasure all along was friendship, and they do a high-five so epic is causes an explosion seen from space, larger than any nuclear weapon. There is no fuel for this explosion, other than friendship, which is a not a physical object, so this clearly breaks the law of the Conservation of Energy.