Project 2 : Story Boarding

Week 12 : Bounce Ball

Exercise 1 : Bouncing Ball

Finally, I can complete this animation on Maya...

When doing this bouncing ball, I face some problems of rendering.

After seeking for help from our tutor, I solve the problem and can upload successfully.

Overall, this exercise is quite challenging and fun.

Exercise 2

1) Do you need to be able draw well to create good 2D animation? Explain your view.

    

No. Actually, 2D is quite simple to draw because it does not require much details of an object. It is just drawing the surface of an object.Thus, we do not need to be able to draw well to create a good 2D animation. 

2) Do you need to be able draw well to create good 3D animation? Explain your view.

No, we do not need to be able to draw well to create a good 3D animation but we need to be able to visualize the dimension of depth, width and height of the object or character. We also can create 3D object by using polygons tool or do editing using vertices.

3) What do you think would separate a piece of poor animation from a piece of good animation? In other words, how would you go about deciding if a piece of animation is good or bad?

Animation is just like a good film, a good animation must portray itself effectively and speak to the audience. A bad animation will just leave the audience clueless on what the animation is trying to present.

4) In 2D animation, you need to be very aware of timing at a frame by frame level, using timing charts and other techniques - but for 3D animation, this is handled using the graph editor, which is more concerned with manipulating rates of change over time.

Does this affect how you approach your animation work? Explain.

This does not affect much how I approach my animation work. It is still quite similar, just that we can create more possibilities with the graph editor. We can also edit the speed of the animation from the graph editor which is extremely useful to me.

5) Give a brief critique of Maya as an animation tool. Don't just say Maya makes animation difficult, or easy, or that you need to learn a lot of stuff to use Maya - explain what Maya does well and not so well in terms of creating animation.

I felt that the placement of the animation tools is kind of messy. Instructions was not clear enough, too complicated. As a first timer, i find it rather confusing.

          

Project 1 : Progression

Progression

The steps below show how I created the trophy.

Firstly, I created the base by using a polygon cube. I then bevelled it by using the bevel tool.

I then added another polygon cube on top of the base and also put a polygon plane on the front face of the cube.

Next, I created a small cylinder, put it in the middle on top of the cuboid and bevelled it. After beveling and making some adjustments, I duplicated the cylinder. 

For the second cylinder, I put it above the first cylinder to increase the height of the trophy. Before putting it above the first cylinder, I adjusted the size of the second cylinder to make it smaller.
After that, I added a polygon cone and a cylinder. The cylinder was used for cutting out the sharp part of the cone by using Boolean > Difference. 

As for the v-shaped body, I added a cylinder and rotated it. I then traced a tile and extruded and duplicated it one by one, covering the cylinder. When the parts are done, I duplicated the whole cylinder to cover it with tiles and rotated it to form the v-shaped body. In the inner part, I created the pyramid and edited the vertex. 

After completing the v-shaped body, I added two small cylinders on the top of the v-shaped body. Then, I used the cylinders again to make the table tennis racket. For the body of the racket, I adjusted the width of the cylinder to make it flatter. As for the handle of the racket, I shaved off the sides by using the Boolean > Difference. 

   

When all the parts of the trophy are completed, I created the 3D text on the plane and added the texture for the trophy to make it look more like the real model.

I also set the background and added a spotlight to put focus on the trophy.

This was how the trophy model was done up by me. :)

Project 1: Self-Critique

 Front View

                

Back View

        

Left View

       

Right View

        

Top View

     

Bottom View

   

              

Critique

Basically, I feel that the model I have created is quite similar to the actual trophy. The lower half of the model especially, resembles the trophy exactly. However, there a couple of places which I think I can improve. Firstly, I feel that the V-shaped body of the trophy can be made wider as compared to what I did. Secondly, the texture of the table-tennis racket was made with a smooth surface instead of an uneven one. This is because I could not find any resource online to guide me in creating such a surface. 

Overall, I am quite satisfied with the final product that I did. This is the first time I do the modeling without any step-by-step guide. When I face the problems, I try to solve it in my own way. So, I feel that the project is challenging during the process of creating the model. Through the hiccups I encountered, I have learnt how to troubleshoot the issues myself. Also, the modeling of this trophy allows me to apply all the skills and technique I have learnt so far.