UV Mapping is a 3D modeling process in which a 2D image is projected to a 3D model's surface. A good analogy to understand UV mapping is cutting up a cardboard box. The box is a three-dimensional object which is similar to the mesh cube in the 3D program. If you were to cut the seam or the fold of the box, you would be able to lay the pieces flat on a flat surface. In 3D the u is considered the horizontal part of the texture and the v is the vertical ("Doc:2.4/Manual/Textures/Mapping/UV - Blenderwiki"). Therefore the image is essentially converted into two dimensions.
The purpose of UV mapping is to make texturing easier, and to make the texture look good without stretching and pulling of the image. When a box is reassembled, a specific uv location is transferred to an (x, y, z) location on the three-dimensional box . This is what the 3D programs (Maya, Blender) does with a 2D image by wrapping it around a 3D object. When uv mapping your model it is good practice to assign a checkered board texture to your model to see if there is any warping, stretching or pinching. A good uv mapping should have squares that are relatively equal in size or kept at the same aspect ratio. This helps to preserve the quality of the texture you assign to the 3D model.
Rigging is also known as Skeletal animation. Often when an model is complete it is static 3D mesh, almost like a statue or just a skin without bones. Therefore after modelling a character it is very important to rig (give the mesh a skeleton) it before handing it over to the team of animators. It is important that the rigging is bound to a hierarchical set of joints and control handles so that the animators can animate the poses and key-frames of the mesh. If a mesh does not have a rig it is very difficult to animate, deform and transform it (Slick, J).
This animation technique of rigging is not limited to just humans and organic modelling, this same technique can be applied to any object as well, such as a computer, a door, a book or a planet. Rigging is basically to help deform the mesh or 3D model for the purpose of animating and posing.
This animation technique is basically used in all animation systems and these systems can range from simple to complex. Setting up the basic structural skeleton of a human model can take a few hours but to go into more complex rigging such as facial features, weight distributions of skin can take days or weeks before it is ready to be animated (Slick, J).
Placing the skeleton of a mesh is probably the easiest part of the rigging process. It is made up of joints which are sometimes called bones. When rigging a character it is good to keep in mind that each joint should be placed in the same way as a human body. Joints are the points in which you deform a mesh, for example - when rigging an arm, you would put a join by the shoulder, another in the elbow and another in the wrist, which allows the animator to rotate, bend or shift the model in a realistic manner (Slick, J).
IK (Inverse Kinematics) means that the child node within a rig's hierarchy can influence the movement of its parents ("Key 3D Rigging Terminology To Get You Moving"). For example when you move a character's wrist or hand the rest of the arm will be be calculated and positioned according to where the wrist or hand is placed.
FK (Forward Kinematics) means that the character will obey and follow the hierarchical chain. This gives more control over the character but it means that you would need to position each joint independently to one another. For example if you move a wrist of a character it will not influence the rest of the arm, but if you move an elbow it will affect the bottom half of the arm (the wrist, hand and fingers), and if you move or rotate the shoulder it will influence the whole arm (the elbow, wrist, hand and fingers). Therefore this gives the animator more control and allows joints to be placed exactly where it is desired.
Here is a video tutorial which will help to understand rigging in Maya2016:
For more information on rigging, check the references below.
References:
"Key 3D Rigging Terminology To Get You Moving". Digital-Tutors Blog. N.p., 2014. Web. 2 May 2016.
Slick, Justin. "How Are 3D Models Prepared For Animation?". About.com Tech. N.p., 2016. Web. 2 May 2016.
"Skeletal Animation". Wikipedia. N.p., 2016. Web. 2 May 2016.
Stop motion animation (also known as stop frame animation) is an animation technique that captures one frame at a time, by physically moving objects between frames. The illusion of movement is created when you play back the sequence of images quickly. Stop motion is very similar to 2D animation (early Disney) where each frame is drawn differently to create movement between each frame. Stop motion is similar except it uses physical objects instead of drawings ("Introduction To Stop Motion Animation | Dragonframe"). Here is a helpful video for how stop animation works:
Stop motion is very popular, it can be seen in numerous areas of the media, such as music videos, advertisements, shows, YouTube and feature films ("Introduction To Stop Motion Animation | Dragonframe"). It is common for people to think that there is only one style of stop motion but there is actually a wide range of techniques and styles to create stop motion animation.
Here are some well animated stop motion animations, some of them took very different approaches in creating their animation. "Stop Motion Animation. Magic Water": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSzCLf8tjP4
In film making, visual effects (abbreviated VFX) is a way of mixing false or animated images with real film shooting. There are many examples, for instance when a movie shows a hero jumping off the ground and flying through the air, or when a character performs things that are impossible to perform. The Avengers Movie is a very good example of vfx, a lot of the action scenes are created with visual effects. The visual effects are incredible in this movie and takes a lot, I mean a lot of time to create. Here are 2 videos which show some of the visual effects:
The majority of films today use a lot of visual effects as it helps create an environment which looks realistic, but would be too dangerous, expensive and impractical to capture on film. Visual effects have become very important in the filming industry as it often becomes integral to a movie's narrative and appeal. Visual effects is often applied after post-production but it is carefully planned in pre-production and production. The visual effects is led by a visual effects supervisor and is usually involved closely to the director and the production of a film, as this helps guide and lead the visual effects teams to produce what is desired for the film. Another really great movie that uses special effects is the film, Jurassic World:
Life without lighting would not make sense at all. It would be impossible to imagine life without lights. In animation, lights are what brings things to life to a character or a room or an object. Lighting is essential in animation because it really helps make a scene real, it helps create real characters and gives something life from something static. Lighting is one of the key aspects of animation, it plays a vital role in defining how a scene will look. It helps create depth and complexity and the overall mood of the scene.
Within 3D lighting there are 2 main purposes. First is lights produce shadows which help ground the 3D models and make them appear clear; the second is it helps add depth and complexity to the models through use of several techniques such as shading and texturing.
In 3D animation a scene cannot work without any lights. When a scene is rendered, the whole appearance of the scene can only be visible through lighting. The textures and models need lights or they will appear dark in the scene. Therefore lighting can make or break a scene. Lighting can be a difficult aspect to deal with as it can cause unwanted scenes - a scene being too bright or too dull. Thus it is up to the animator to work and experiment and research with the lighting. The same scene can look very different with different or even the same lighting, therefore lots of experimenting helps to understand what works and what does not work.
Effective lighting can help a scene tremendously. It can create the mood and atmosphere of a scene. The use of colour plays a critical part for setting the tone of the scene. Colours evoke different moods. Colours like red can create warm or happy scenes while green or blue can create some calm scenes. Shadows also help to enhance the mood of the scene. Crisp shadows can be created by hard, distant lights - it helps set the mood of really hot environments or dark, mysterious scenes. Therefore lighting has multiple approaches to it and requires experimenting. Here is an interesting page that may help with lighting: http://www.3dartistonline.com/news/2015/04/24-things-you-need-to-know-about-lighting/
Animation and Music are both different fields of entertainment but they both have a very close relationship with one another. Music is very important for animation and animation works extremely well with music. Both create emotional associations through our most influential senses. A certain tune or melody can remind us of a place or an event. And for people who grew up watching animation can sometime instantly associate the animation with the music. Animation is very similar to music in terms of timing/texture and rhythm.
A film like Walt Disney's Fantasia is a very good example of how the music in the film injects character and personality to its characters. The sounds and music of Dukas' Sorcerer's Apprentice, which created a feeling of a mischievous mouse and an army of broomsticks - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHEMkbyXFxs.
More examples that have shown a lot of integration with animation and music are Tarzan, The Jungle Book and Nightmare Before Christmas. If you mute some parts of the animation there is a massive difference in how you read the animation, and thus it shows how important musicality is.
Carlos Baena (Pixar / Paramount Pictures / Animation Mentor Co-founder) said "As I learned more about musical terms I found their equivalent in animation terms. Things like tempo, beats, accents, phrase, rhythm, legato, staccato, adagio, presto, finale, monotone to name a few all have things that you can apply to animation in some way or another."
Most people often believe that animation from gaming and film are the same because they use the same principles of animation, and the same set of tools. Even though the same tools and principles of animation apply to both mediums, the processes and techniques actually differ greatly between the two. There are many differences and techniques that are required to make a game. In games you need to create animations that respond to the game-play, storytelling, combining them both together and making them work to allow the game to flow, and be successful. In movies, animation is more of looking at what the animator has presented and animated; it is less interactive and less freedom for the view as they are stuck with what the camera displays.
Games Animation
Gaming is made to be interactive with the player. When a player plays a game, he/she has complete control of the character and the camera. The player has the power and in the one who is directing the story forward and making the character move. Therefore the animation needs to look good from all possible angles in relation to the story.
For example, if a game can be set to a new camera angle - in third person, and the player has the option to rotate the camera around during a walk or run cycle; then the new angle should reveal the necessary movements or actions. Examples such as arm movements or knee pops; these actions may not have been visible the normal camera view, therefore it is necessary for the game animators to take into account that their animations function at at any given times of the game to whatever the player may throw at it.
Animations within movies is not as strict as animating in gaming, not to say the one is easier that the other but there is a difference. In movies the animator does not necessarily need to worry about all the angles of a character when it is performing an action, because the animator chooses the angle of the camera, and chooses what will be displayed. But for games most of the angles need to look good as the player has control of the camera view. For instance the arcs of an animation within a game need to be nice smooth arcing motions from any camera angle.
Movie Animation
In movie animations, the animator is responsible for animating what is in the view of the camera shot. In other words, mainly need to worry about one camera angle at time.
For instance, if you are watching a movie, you are not in control of the camera angle and therefore cannot rotate around to look at the whole set. You are basically stuck viewing at whatever the camera is aimed at.
This allows animators to cheat in a way while animating their characters and objects, because they know that the shot will only been seen at a specific angle. So if it looks great from that angle then ultimately that is all that matters.
This does not mean that one is more difficult that the other when it comes to animating, both have a fair share of difficulties and obstacles that are different from one another. In movies the animators need to consider the angle of the camera very delicately as they do not give freedom to the viewer to rotate the camera like in games. Specific camera angles can tell the mood or the atmosphere of the scene and therefore needs to be positioned well to get the message across to the viewer.
What is anime and what is animation? People often distinguish the two to be very different from one another and often seen as against one another. Anime is seen as Japanese (Eastern) and Animation is often seen as Western or American. Both are very different in terms of style and in how they produce their work but both are still animation.
Anime is short for animation but it defines a very specific style of animation which is very different to Western animation. Ever since Japanese animation (anime) became popular in many continents, especially in the American scene, it is interesting to note the differences between Japanese and American animation styles. From the standard that Walt Disney presented which is still largely upheld, the goal of animation was to "imitate life"; the goal is not to make objects move as realistically as possible, but rather make them move as fluidly as possible. Good animation needs an entirely different laws of physics.
There has been some conflicts of which style of animation is better or superior. Some American animators and animation enthusiasts have scorned the Japanese style and method to be lazy; and Japanese animation enthusiasts have said that the American style as clunky or too comical. For me, I think that both are very unique styles and are very interesting to see, and how they are integrated in their stories and animations.
In Japanese animation there is very distinctive style that is used in the design of human characters. The main hallmark of anime is the distinctive large eyes with lots of details added; numerous reflective highlights and detailed colour. Another distinctive aspect is the small noses and mouth which is often drawn as minimal lines. The Japanese style itself uses many angles and flowing, thin lines to define their characters. A lot of attention is directed at the eyelashes, hair and clothing, especially in the colour as well. A variant of colours and shading is applied to non-outlined highlights and shadows to create more depth and detail.
American animation has very different styles, one of them aiming for a comic-book style realism (as realistic as it can be drawn) or extremely exaggerated, comical cartoon characters with rounded, highly exaggerated features. There is often very little detail in the drawing, and less attention to the shading; more solid single colours are used for the characters. American animation may lack in this aspect but it makes up for it in the amount of animation done. American animation pays a lot of attention the the animating aspect of animation in contrast, anime uses a lot of cheats: long scenes in which only the mouth of a character moves during delivery of key information, or even extreme fast motions of a character frozen in an action pose against a moving stylized background that requires little animation. This is why Japanese animation is sometimes labeled as "lazy" by American animators.
Another difference in style between east and west is 3D and CG. American animation has moved in the direction of 3D, as Disney had to close its 2D animation studios in 2002. Japanese animators have chose to integrate CG with traditional 2D, in order to enhance the 2D world they have created, such as the CG castle in Miyazaki’s Howl’s Moving Castle, it displays a beautiful painterly feel with a touch of CG detail. Disney’s 2010 Tangled was very successful in terms of the detail that was gained in 3D, but there was also a loss elegance of 2D. As Rapunzel’s kingdom in Tangled was modeled after the elegant lines and curves of the old Disney's Cinderella. I think that American animation studios could try to integrate 2D/3D in their future films.
The stories told through Japanese anime often tend to be more diverse, as anime reaches not only children but also an older group of audience. And it is not limited to family, friendly fairy tales. Anime often explores and looks into the darker areas of the human condition and addresses them in graphic detail, and the stories do not always follow the stereotype of a hero’s journey. Pixar’s Pete Docter, director of Monsters, Inc., commented on his visit to Studio Ghibli, the amazing grounds of Hayao Miyazaki, famed director of the Oscar-winning Spirited Away, that stories were spun out through a more organic and intuitive process than the 5 points of logic that Pixar tends to follow.
Both styles of animation seek to tell a story through an animation and through their mediums, using both digital and traditional methods. Both use exaggeration to emphasize the emotion in character actions, as well as other tricks such as anticipation,well-timed music, and squash and stretch. Both follow the principles of animation and require a lot of dedication to their creations and animations. I feel that in the end there is none that is better; it's just a matter of taste and preference.
Squash and stretch was know to be perfected in the 30's and 40's. It was thought to be the ultimate technique and the most important animation principle out of all the other animation techniques. It added tremendous flexibility and life to the characters being animated. When an object moves, its movement indicates the rigidity of the object. Objects of the real world have little flexibility, such as furniture, however most of the organic objects have some level of flexibility in their shape. Anything that is composed of living flesh will show a fair amount of movement in its shape while performing. For example the movement of a bent arm. Usually when someone bends his/her arm their bicep will raise slightly. In animation an arm would usually be drawn as flat as possible and when the arm is bent the bicep that is raised would be raised a lot higher using squash and stretch to create an exaggeration, and to make the animation more interesting.
Even facial expressions contain lots of squashes and stretches, whether it is chewing, smiling or even to show a specific expression. These can be applied by making the eyes bigger and stretching the face for surprises or eyes and ears being squashed downwards to show sadness, here are some examples:
Squash and stretch can also be applied to the body of a character as well. Here are some examples:
Another example that is widely used is the animation of a ball. When it is and its lowest it is a squash and when it is at its highest it is a stretch.
Squash and stretch makes the ball more flexible and more interesting. The squash and stretch that is applied to the ball defines the rigidity of the material making of the object. For example a bowling ball would not have a lot of squash and stretches because it is made up of hard material substances, but for a bouncing ball it would be the opposite - more squash and stretch would occur.
When animating using squash and stretch, in order to get a good result there is one important rule. CCV - Constant Consistent Volume.
Maintaining the volume of a character or object is very important as it can affect the image, weight, material and movement of a character or object.
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