3D Animation

Bouncing Ball Animation

As an introduction to animation in Maya we were tasked with animating a bouncing ball using pre-rigged asset. I decided to have the ball bounce off of a few objects during the animation.

At the basic level, animation in Maya consists of moving the model to key positions and 'keying' them, which causes the model to smoothly move between each key, creating movement. After setting up the objects I keyed the ball at a beginning point and at the top of the first object. Using the rig I was able to create a squishing effect as the ball bounced off the surface. I did this for each object, and put extra keys in between each position to make the ball bounce rather than move in a straight line.

The finished product is a little stiff but I am satisfied with it - considering it was my first try. The arc of the bouncing could be more consistent and the compression of the ball isn't very convincing. I could fix this by considering the ball's velocity more when I planned the animation and by adding extra key frames to perfectly time the compression.

Character Animation

Our second task was to animate a walking cycle using a pre-rigged model of a character. This was a lot more difficult than the ball, as there were many parts to animate and time correctly. The rig allowed for movement of many parts of the model, and included options to realistically move the arms and legs. I started by animating the legs. My first key had one leg out and one straight down, and I planned to switch the positions of both legs before returning to the starting position to create a loop.

It was difficult to make the movement smooth, realistic and correctly timed. I tried to add details like the foot pushing off as it leaves the ground and having the leg bend and extend realistically.

I then moved on to the arms. These were a lot easier as I decided to have them simply sway back and forth. I added frames similar to the legs where the arms started in opposite positions, switched, and returned to the starting position. I also made the hands turn into fists in an attempt to make it look less robotic.

The final product looks decent for a first try. The legs are a bit unsynchronized and floaty, which could be fixed by using reference for the animation. I also thought about copying the animation on each leg so that they are identical, but I wasn't sure how to do that.

Looking back, I quite enjoyed animating in Maya. I had few issues with it and found it quite intuitive.