Creating Stereoscopic 3D Images

Recreating Cameras and Lights in Maya.

Original Photo.

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Extra Credit: Lighting a Scene in Maya

Unlit

1 Point

2 Point

3 Point

Opting Out of Third Term Paper

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

Outline of the Third Term Paper

Introduction

1. Explosions are a staple of films and video games; more so in the action genre.

2. The explosions in more dated examples, Star Wars: A New Hope (1977) and Star Fox(1996), show a big difference in how live-action film and animation go about in reproducing them.

Body

1. Star Fox.

    - The explosions in this video game are represented mostly as uniformly sized dome shaped, fire shockwaves.

    - They are semi-opaque and are reminiscent of mushroom clouds without the stalk.

    - This being an early 3D game, it is understandable why the fiery explosions are so simplified and not quite believable.

2. Star Wars: A New Hope.

    - The explosions of the X-wing fighters in the film are reproduced with the use of simple deflagration explosions.

    - Many of the explosions were filmed in a way that would minimize the plumes of smoke that would result from the explosion.

    - However, some of these filmed explosions show a very noticeable amount of smoke dragging behind and rising afterwards. This makes the explosions in space feel very inconsistent.

Conclusion

1. With more advanced techniques and a broader knowledge of how an explosion works being implemented more and more in contemporary media, VFX artists can begin to move away from more stylized and inconsistent effects and achieve more authentic results.

Stop Motion Character Animation

          For this stop motion assignment I used non-drying modeling clay for everything that would be animated. The clay made the character extremely easy to pose. I had to have my hand in some of the frames, so I went back in to paint my hand out.

Science Fact or Cinematic Fiction?

            Jumps have set principles that are often broken or pushed too far in the medium of film, television and video games. It is seen in both live action motion pictures and in animated pictures. A jump that feels stretched, a time in the air that has to be a second too long to be real, or the missing body mechanics of how a person is able to spring up in the air. These are some of the problems to be addressed as this skeptic looks at three different examples of bad jump reproductions in motion pictures and video games.

In the movie The Mask (1994), there is a scene where the main character, a Stanley Ipkiss granted god-like powers upon wearing a magical mask, breaks into song and dance and jumps off a wooden plank with inconsistent angles from takeoff to landing. The next example is found in Moonrise Kingdom (2012), when the character Scout Master Ward jumps over a strong, river-like stream of water running in between him and a flaming cabin with his superior trapped inside; in this example we see some flawed arcs of jumps. In the last demonstration, we change gears from live action film to a video game. NBA Hangtime (1996) is a basketball game that features lots of amped up action and (as one would expect) lots of hang time in the jumps and a great amount of twists, flips and dunks.

The first scene, from The Mask, features a zany character leaping into the air in a cartoonish motion. The angle at takeoff and subsequent path of action is of about thirty-five to forty degrees. It seems as if the jump would not have much airtime and distance as it does. Because the jump is split into two shots, it is possible for the director of the film to make it seem as if it is possible for the jump to have much more height, air time, and distance than it actually would have. In the second shot, the character comes in at about seventy-five degrees  near the apex of the jump before he takes a hold of a street lamp. Therefore, one can see that the jumps are two completely different leaps since there is no way the character could have gained that amount of height and distance from the takeoff in the first shot to the extravagant leap seen in the next shot. Besides the problems in the continuity of the jump, the character does not make a believable anticipating push down motion required to do any kind of jump. However, this mistake could be attributed to the director’s intention to make the character feel as zesty and cartoonish as possible.

The next scene comes from the movie Moonrise Kingdom, in which one of the principal characters, Scout Master Ward, jumps over a running stream of water to get to a cabin across the way. He then takes another leap to get back over the stream whilst carrying someone on his shoulders. The fundamental flaws with the jumps in this scene are the irregular paths of action that are not parabolic; a path of action for a jump must be parabolic in order to be considered realistic. In the first jump, the arc seems great and authentic for most of the way until the last few frames before landing. The end of the jump is noticeably extended by a foot to get the character to land on a platform across the water safely. On the way back, the character takes another leap which has problems with the arc as well. While the arc seems more consistent than the first, there is still some noticeable problems near the apex. The character reaches his maximum height for the jump but does not follow through with the arc. Instead, he moves more horizontally for a few frames after the apex which makes it feel like he begins to float a bit more than he should.

In the game, NBA Hangtime (1996), the playable characters are able to jump in extraordinarily, super-human ways. However, whether it is an average jump or a super jump,  they do not perform an anticipating motion beforehand to prepare. It looks to be more believable for the more powerful jumps since the push time for jumps of high magnification is usually very little. But the absence of the push motion looks really odd when the player makes the character jump to a normal height. Another problem with the jumps in this game happens to be of a titular aspect; the hang time of a jump. The amount of time is not so much the problem with the jumps, instead the problem lies with the timing and the spacing. There is a wholly even feeling to the character’s leaps from the point of takeoff to the landing. A good principle used for the correct rise and fall of anything is “Fourth Down at Half-Time.” This principle shows how something will fall slower at first after being dropped or falling from an apex then speed up until reaching a maximum speed; falling one-fourth of the way down in half the time it takes to reach the ground. This principle works inversely as well; objects will slow as they go up. The characters in the game do not demonstrate this rule.

            In The Mask and NBA Hangtime, the broken principles of the jumps were implemented to bring a light, zesty and extraordinary feeling to the characters. The looney Stanley Ipkiss and the superhuman basketball stars would not bring about the same reaction without them. In the tense scene from the movie Moonrise Kingdom, however, the unrealistic paths of action reveal the mechanics of stunts in movies and take the audience out of the moment. This goes to show that flawed actions, such as jumps, can either help or hurt the impact of a movie, show or video game.

Outline for Second Term Paper

Introduction

1. Intro to some common ways the principles of a jump are broken in films.

2. Introduce the scenes from the films, The Mask and Moonrise Kingdom. As well as the video game, NBA Hangtime.

3. From the shapes of an arc, misshapen arcs, to the inconsistencies between push time and jump time, it is plain to see how video games and movies take liberties with the principles of an authentic jump.

Body

1. The Mask (1994) - “Cuban Pete” scene

     - At a certain point in the scene, Stanley (with the powers of the mask) jumps off a plank of      wood at an angle of about 30 degrees out of screen. In the next shot, the arc seems to be over   60 degrees before he clings onto a street lamp.

    - To emphasize the cartoonish aspects of the character, he is just able to launch off without any anticipating push motion before the jump.

2. Moonrise Kingdom (2012) - “Cabin Fire” scene

    - Scout Master Ward jumps over a running stream. The arc is noticeably extended (perhaps by wires tied around the actor) near the end of the leap.

    - On the way back, he takes another leap. This time around the arc is extended around the peak.

3. NBA Hangtime (1996)

    - The characters in the game do not seem to push off of the ground before a jump.

    - The jumps are also very even in spacing which make them feel as if they are less affected by gravity. No Fourth Down at Half Time.

Conclusion

1. In Moonrise Kingdom, the inconsistent path of action for the jump seems to be accidental and not in aid of the scene. In the other two examples, there was definitely a zanier and/or lighter effect that was sought after to contribute to the experience.

Reverse Video Reference

Clip A.

 Clip B.

 Clip C.

 Clip D.

 

Stop Motion Animation of Falling Object

 
For my stop motion animation, I decided to do a ball drop, represented by a bottle cap, on a cork board (in our very own room 243). As one could guess, I used push pins to suspend my paper platforms and the bottle cap onto the board. I used two different pieces of paper to represent the elastic platform at the bottom one to show it's neutral state, and the other to suggest a heavy ball pressing it down and the same flipped vertically to suggest the release of pressure on the platform. I used one piece of paper in the center to draw the path of action on it; I later edited it out on Photoshop (it's pretty obvious editing). I did not use a traditional tripod to hold the camera up instead I held it up with a pile of boxes. The boxes did not provide a steady base resulting in a shaky cam effect that I thought added a certain texture to the clip and decided not to correct.

The Laws of Physics in an Animation Universe: WALL-E

    The film, WALL-E takes us from a desolate, dying Earth littered with skyscrapers of waste to an interstellar vessel inhabited by overly convenient machines and the out of shape, lazy remnants of the human race in a universe of Hi-Tech whimsy. The protagonist, WALL-E, finds himself drawn to a robot scout named, EVA as she arrives on Earth to find her objective, a living plant specimen. Upon acquiring her objective, EVA rendezvouses with the spacecraft that brought her to Earth while an infatuated WALL-E hitches onboard as well. Before going too in-depth, I would like to focus on the deviances in physical laws that this film uses to push the character animation and to show the amount of sophistication the technology has to offer. The most important observations I made dealt with the improbability of many characters’ movements, the advent of Levitation and “Tractor Beams,” and holographic projections capable of being projected onto the eye-level atmosphere.

    Something seemed strange about WALL-E’s movements right from the beginning of the story. The little box shaped robot with tracks reminiscent to that of a tank moved around with the zippiness and zest comparable to an organic creature. How could such a rigid looking thing move like that? Only through a slower frame rate did it become clear that there wasn’t any turning motion of the tracks. WALL-E was able to turn in full degree range with ease and there was no evidence of any effort put into his turns. A comparison to the mechanics of a tank’s ability to turn made me think that WALL-E must use the same system; which is to stop the left track while the right one keeps moving resulting in a left turn and vice versa. However, upon closer inspection it became apparent that that method was rarely used. Sometimes WALL-E could make a sharp turn without any movement of the tracks. It was as if inertia hardly affected him. 

Further analysis of character movement brought up the way in which the pet cockroach jumps. It seemed as if it could jump with an extreme ease as it did not seem to need to make an anticipation gesture most creature need to do in order to prepare for a leap. It hopped vertically in a way that seemed more like a strobe light than a bouncing motion. It’s horizontal jumps are as likely as the vertical, looking more like a spaceship jumping into hyperspace (or in the case of the cockroach, a twinkie).

Another anomaly encountered in the film comes from the morbidly obese future human beings Wall-E comes to save from their own sloth and apathy of the world around them. These descendents of modern humans are said to have lost bone mass over time and seem like they weigh an average of 320 pounds each. However, after generations lacking any movement that required them to sustain their own weight,  they seem to be able get the hang of walking rather easily. People today can struggle for years trying to regain mobility after an impairment. Furthermore, it usually boosts the process if one is under the care of a physical therapist. It seems to suggest that perhaps gravity on Earth and in their interstellar spacecraft is not as rigorous as in our present.

Many of the robotic characters, including EVA, have the ability to levitate without any indication of any propulsion system. In the case of EVA, one can see that she has a perfectly smooth, oval shape with no vents or jets built into her frame. In the universe of the film, levitation seems to be a much simpler act that does not require any system producing a force strong enough to lift an object into mid air. It almost looks as if the robots choose to ignore gravity. Furthermore, these robots can fly in a horizontal direction fast enough to temporarily produce a sonic boom.

However, one can deduce that the slightly vertical wavering motion the robots make is similar to that of someone holding two magnets with the same polarity pointed to each other will push each other away. It is possible that in the future of this universe, negative mass has been discovered and applied as a means to cause an object to repel gravitational pull; resulting in levitation.

Beyond levitation, some security bots in the spaceship have the ability to use what seems to be a “Tractor Beam” to grab objects and even other robots with ease. It produces a red beam that surrounds the object in an aura-like energy field. This further shows how the robots in this universe are capable of bending the laws of gravity at will. 

    One can begin to build another hypothesis upon the “Tractor Beams” used by many of the robots in the film. The beams produce a near opaque field of light which seem pretty natural; except for the fact that light needs particles in order to be seen. A look at the uses of the tractor beam whilst onboard the ship reveals that there are no particles (i.e dust, aerosol) that would make light visible. Another example of visible light lies in the use of digital projections the humans use on their hover chairs. These projectors work as they should; they project an image. Except they do not need a solid surface for the images to be seen, the light stops in mid air (without any dense atmosphere). So, it is clear that light does not need any solid surfaces to be seen.

    There are other anomalies to be discussed in this film. There is the question as to how WALL-E can fit his limbs, tracks and head into his body when he hides inside of himself. Then of course there is the moment in the film in which WALL-E and EVA are almost sucked out into the vacuum of space as it would in our universe. However, it seems like no other objects are affected by the vacuum. Those are definitely topics worth exploring. But for now it seems like enough has been covered to show how the creators of the world of WALL-E played with a few principles of physics to shape a more whimsical world and to create a bit of conflict to make a more interesting story.

Outline of the First Term Paper

Introduction

A. Introduce the film, Wall-E.
B. The film, Wall-E, has several aspects that demonstrate a slightly warped sense of physics intended to give a morbid world a bit of whimsicality.

Body

1. The Improbability of Some Character's Movements
 - Wall-E can turn without his tracks actually moving.
 - He can also shuffle sideways which seems quite difficult for a robot with a stiff structure.
 - Wall-E's pet cockroach can jump with seemingly no anticipating motion to prepare for any leap.
 - The incredibly obese people who live in the BnL ship are able to walk with a diminished bone mass and an over-abundance of fat.

2.  Levitation and "Tractor Beams"
 - Eva can inexplicably levitate and fly without the use of any propulsion system.
 - Many robots can use a "tractor beam" to pick up objects and even restrain other robots.
 - Counter Hypothesis: Perhaps the robots that levitate are using an anti-gravity component that can push them away from gravitational pull.

3. Atmosphere is Capable of Sustaining Projections.
 - The images projected from the hover chairs the humans ride around in stop in mid-air without a solid surface.
 - The aforementioned "tractor beams" produce light that are almost opaque.

Conclusion

- Other anomalies in the way the physics in the world of Wall-E seem odd include:
      - A seam leading out to the vacuum of space that affects only some characters.
      - Although Wall-E fits his limbs and head inside his body, it seems highly improbable that he
      would be able to do so.
- The oddities serve the character's appeal and help to add conflict to the story.

Video Analysis of Path of Action

Tracker Video Analysis of Falling

Shooting Video Reference

Here is the breakdown showing the "Fourth Down at Half Time" rule.

Mini Portfolio

My name is Edgar Hernandez, I am a Senior Illustration student. I am primarily interested in the Illustration aspect of the Animation/Illustration program here at SJSU. I have not taken many science courses besides the required GE courses. However, I have recently gained more of an interest in underwater life, so perhaps Marine Biology would have been worth exploring. Being on the verge of entering the “real world,” I have been searching and working towards finding my unique and distinct artistic style. The two images below are a good example of where I want my artwork to go.

                                                                      

"Stroll"

       "Molded"

   An advertisement for Good Books International, because none of my videos were loading correctly. I really enjoy the style used in this.