BigDog Animation

(1) If engineered or programmed badly, BigDog would fall over. Watch the full video again, and describe how BigDog’s legs move while walking– what is the sequence of leg movements for one complete step? Use the terms BL, BR, FL, and FR for the back-left, back-right, front-left and front-right legs.

Answer:  
The sequence of BigDog's leg movements for one complete step is 
FL and BR → FR and BL → FL and BR → FR and BL → BigDog's legs movement stabilizes

(2) Explain how this sequence of movements manages to balance BigDog’s body weight.

Answer: 
Since BigDog has been kicked towards its right, its body weight will naturally fall towards the direction of force to balance itself. With that said, after BigDog has been kicked, his FL legs moves towards the direction of force (together with its BR leg). After which, BigDog balances its bodyweight by bringing its FR and BL legs followed by its FL and BR legs over towards the right. This is where its FL and BR legs has just crossed its FR and BL lehs and at this point of time, BigDog's FL and FR legs are spread very wide apart to prevent itself from falling down. Lastly, BigDog brings its FR and BL legs towards the right and this is where BigDog's body's position is stable enough to allow its 4 limbs to stand and balance itself stably. This shows that BigDog moves its legs alternately to keep itself stable and that BigDog has its center of gravity of keep itself balanced.


(3) Look at BigDog_kick_slow_motion.mov. Draw a storyboard of BigDog stabilising itself after being kicked. You should draw the key poses. You don’t need to draw well – but you must show the leg positions and the body rotations around the X, Y and Z axes for each key pose.

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Clara's BigDog Animation

I was tasked to animate BigDog's movement on Maya. It is shown as above.

It was a relatively challenging for me to create this animation. The main problem that i faced while animating BigDog was i had a hard time coordinating its body and legs' movements. It took me a couple of tries before i managed to make BigDog move smoothly from its left to right. I rotated the body as it moved from its left, and i ensured that I set a keyframe everytime I move a leg or change any position (I was very careful in this area because i am very careless!). I was also very careful with the amount of space i had allowed between BigDog's FL and FR as well as the length of space between its BR and BL. I ensured that BigDog's FR coordinates with its DL (and vice versa) by selecting both FR and DL and moving them to BigDog's right (because direction of force is towards its right) together. I have also learnt that if the legs are spread out too wide apart, the whole animation would not look realistic at all. 

All in all, I am satisfied with the outcome of my hard work and i had fun creating this BigDog animation. Although there are still quite a bit for me to improve on, I have learnt a lot about leg movements and this will definitely benefit me in my upcoming projects.  

Spiderman Animation

The video above shows the animation of the spiderman shifting weight which i have created from the raw file provided by Mr Douglas.

I personally feel that this was a difficult task to do because i had difficulties trying to move spiderman's hips upwards without making his legs "float" in the air. I managed to move his hips from its left to right and the shifting of his weight can be seen with the movements of his knees. I faced a lot of problems while animating this. I changed spiderman's (facing) direction from left to right by adjusting his shoulders. I rotated them carefully so that his arms will not look dislocated. I also adjusted his hands and fingers, allowing this fist to clench as he turns from left to right. It was easy for me to change the direction that he is facing. I simply rotated his head and followed the spiderman video i had to follow. In this lesson, Mr Douglas taught the whole class how to set key frames and animate the poses. I have also learnt that we can save time setting keyframes by checking the "auto-keyframe" button. I have come to a conclusion that animating can be simple and less time-consuming if you were to switch on the auto-keyframe option. when you are careful with setting your key frames right because if you were to accidentally change the position of any part of the spiderman at a random keyframe, that key frame will be automatically set (without you knowing) and this may lead to having an undesired pose when the animation is bring played. After having completing this exercise, i have learnt a lot about shift weight animation but there are still rooms for improvement for the animation that i have done.

Project 1 - Spiderman Poses

Pose 1

The image above shows the spiderman pose I was tasked to follow. The screenshots below show the results of this pose that I have created using Maya.

The screenshot above shows my spiderman hanging upside down. His hands are actually grabbing an imaginary rope from above, allowing him to hang himself upside down steadily.

From the original spiderman position, i started out by rotating spiderman upside down.

For spiderman's posture, to make him look balanced, i had to ensure that his back is slightly bent. To be able to do this, i made use of all three spine controls and rotated them accordingly to make his body curve proportionately. Next, I adjusted spiderman's thighs, legs and feet using forward kinematics. It was slightly tricky for me in this area as I was very confused with which joint i had to rotate in order to achieve a certain angle. I played around and managed to get the best result as shown above by rotating spiderman's hips, thighs and legs using the forward kinematics control. As for this feet, i simply rotated them upwards so that they look pointed. To straighten spiderman's arms and allow it to grab the imaginary rope, just like the original image, was the toughest part for me. I used inverse kinematics and rotated spiderman's arms around. I was restricted to only rotating/moving his wrists, elbows and and upper arm around so i faced quite a bit of difficulty in this area. To be able to grasp the rope, the spiderman's fingers are wrapped around the rope, where his four fingers on both hands are curled inwards in the same directions respectively, and his thumbs over his fingers. I simply adjusted the finger's positions by selecting and changing their values.

Pose 2

This pose above was found on http://marvel-movies.wikia.com/wiki/File:Spiderman_leap-up.png. Spiderman looks like he just jumped off an edge and is "flying" forwards for something.

For this pose, the legs were similar to that of pose 1's leg position. Similarly, I made use of forward kinematics and rotated the thighs, legs and feet. I found out that to make spiderman look more like he is about to jump onto something/someone is to adjust his posture and make his upper back bend forward more. To achieve that, i rotated the back spine controls. The trick is also to rotate his shoulders and bring them backwards while his elbows are lifted about just as high as his shoulders. I had a hard time bringing spiderman's elbows up to the height of his shoulders because I was quite lost and i did not know which part of the arm to handle in order to bring his whole arm up. After approximately 20-30 minutes of trying and getting odd looking arms, i managed to get my final results by rotating spiderman's shoulders and elbows backwards and doing so carefully step by step. To make it more realistic, i rotated his wrists as well. In this pose, spiderman's fingers remain clenched and i did not face any problem with that.

Pose 3

The image above was found on http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-tvmPtJBXCIc/TrTd2lfbGaI/AAAAAAAAAJA/mFU9VXZLag0

/s320/spiderman.jpg.

As we all can see, spiderman is bent forward on both limbs, with an arm swung backwards with his fingers spread out evenly, indicating that he is ready to pounce on something/someone.

I rotated spiderman's left shoulder and his upper arm, followed by his wrist to make spiderman's left arm swing backwards. It was rather tricky because i had to rotated slowly and carefully because if i were to rotate to the back a little too much, his left arm would look unusual and dislocated and that is not what i want. For his fingers, i adjusted every single finger and gave them a wider spread and bent every finger to make them look more curved. For the legs, i rotated spiderman's hips and adjusted them slightly higher and made his back bend more. This will allow his shoulders to come forwards and downwards, enabling this right hands to easily touch the ground. As for his foot, his left ankle was rotated downwards to make it look like it is flat on the ground. As for his right foot, i made his toes point towards the ground, making him look like he is balancing himself with his left feet. 

Pose 4

I came up with a fourth pose because I played around with pose 3 after achieving my result. I thought spiderman look really cool posing like this thus i couldn't not resist posting this pose up :) 

As you can see from the screenshot above, i had curled his fingers and made them look like spiderman is ready to shoot his web but he is just chilling and waiting for his prey to appear in sight. 

After having completed project 1, i have learnt how i can make use of inverse kinematics and forward kinematics to create 3 dimensional character poses. I have tried my best to model all the poses as shown above. Overall, i had fun with these spiderman poses and i felt it got smoother and i got the hang of it as i played around with the rotations and adjustments. I have had an enjoyable time modeling these poses and i certainly hope to be able to learn more and create even more complex poses.