Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 23:29:01 -0500 (CDT) From: Mark Jacobson To: 810-088-11-spring@uni.edu Subject: Storyboard and For For Da Birds....boop boop bee doop Hi Maya students, 1. The take home quiz will be handed out in class on Wednesday and will be due the following Monday. There will NOT be an in-class quiz on Wednesday. 2. Storyboard for the following URL: i. A ball shrinks and then grows back to its original size again. ii. The ball then jumps up in the air and over a wall. iii. The ball then rolls from the front of the scene (stage) to the back of the stage, and it squeezes itself through a pipe about halfway across the stage. iv. The ball then rolls back to its starting point, again going through the narrow pipe to do it. This was my entire storyboard rough plan for the animation you can see at: http://www.cs.uni.edu/~jacobson/m/wk14/pipePath/squeezeThruLattice.html Notice that I either forgot or decided not to go with ii. as stated above. My talented animated ball jumps up in the air, but it does NOT jump over a wall. --- --------------- ii. The ball then jumps up in the air and over a wall. --------------- The whole purpose of the storyboard exercise is twofold: 1. To get you to come up with a rough idea of what you might do for your last Maya open-ended assignment, so you at least get started on thinking about it before the last minute, or writing down a description of what you have already done, if you started a week or two ago, and 2. to give you the experience of the planning phase and non-technical brainstorming phase that occurs BEFORE going to computer graphics software where you just sketch out and/OR write out a description and/OR a couple drawings of what you might do. I suppose I could add to my storyboard above a diagram or two, but that is not required and if you do that it does not have to be anything more than a sketch that helps convey what things look like and where they are and where they might move. You can also mention where you might like to place a light such as a point light or a spotlight. http://www.cs.uni.edu/~jacobson/m/wk14/pipePath/squeezeThruLattice.html The following example that we spent the entire class on this morning would be even simpler to describe a story board for, but its fairly challenging to do and get the bounces right. http://www.cs.uni.edu/~jacobson/m/wk14/bouncingBallApr18.html Squash and Stretch Cartoon Ball and Animation Curves and using the Graph Editor is what the class did focus on this morning. We did NOT get to the Lattice Deformers (squeeze the ball through the pipe effect), but you have a handout on how to do that (its from the textbook that a few of you own, detailed instructions on how to do the Lattice Deformer). We will cover that briefly on Wednesday, and also how to animated an object to follow a PATH you have created. squeezeThruLattice.html - you can see the bright green PATH curve with 30 and 90 on its ends, indicating that it starts at Frame #30 and ends at Frame #90. The ball does its leaping during the 2nd and 3rd seconds, if the frame rate is about 30 frames per second. 1-29 frames ball shrinks and then grows again. this ball then becomes invisible. 30-90 frame range an identical tourgoise colored ball becomes visible and follows the path created so it jumps over an imaginary wall. 91-200 frames the jumping over wall ball becomes invisible at 91. a tourgoise identical ball becomes visible at 91 in exactly the same location, and that ball is keyframed to move to the back of the stage and then back to the front of the stage where the entire animation began. Since the lattice deformer is in its way, the ball has to go through that lattice deformer which narrows to be the same size as the pipe that you see on the stage. Thus we see the ball "SQUEEZE" itself through the narrow pipe. Truly, a talented ball, ha ha! http://www.cs.uni.edu/~jacobson/m/wk14/pipePath/squeezeThruLattice.html Mark ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- P.S. For For Da Birds....boop boop bee doop - Pixar short 2:48 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfZ_dxt8MlM If you remember the cover of one edition of the book The Art of 3D Computer Animation and Effects (3rd edition) by Isaac Kerlow had two birds above the title and Shrek below the title. I showed the class the covers of the 2nd, 3rd and 4th editions of this book by Isaac Kerlow. Anyway, the youtube video above shows the Pixar short and those characters (the cute little birds - 15 of them) who meet up with a big bird. Only a couple students seemed to guess that those birds were from a Pixar short film or commercial. They are fun to see and part of a great story idea for such a short (2 minutes and 48 seconds) cartoon animation. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------