For this lecture, we were introduced to the brief and George demonstrated how to do a bouncing ball animation in Maya.
We were shown a good YouTube channel, 3D Animation Internships, which shows shot progressions from various big 3D Animated films.
For Maya, we were first shown how to set up a new project:
File > Set Project…
Then George showed us how to change preferences and the best preferences to use:
Windows > Settings/Preferences > Preferences
Once we had set up the new project and our preferences, we then downloaded a ball rig from Behance and referenced it into Maya. George then drew out how to time out the bouncing ball, explaining how the motion and energy of the ball drops off steadily until it comes to a stop. He also explained how the ball will be at its slowest at the top of its arc, and fastest at the bottom, and drew the timing of these frames accordingly. As a class we followed along with George as he animated the ball in Maya using the drawn out timing as reference, first blocking out the ball at its lowest and highest points, then the arc of the movement, then the speed. Finally, we added in some squash and stretch. He also explained how even realism animation has squash and stretch, just not the change of volume that stylised animation has, such as crouching before a jump and then stretching out during the jump.
George also explained that rotation order when animating is important to avoid gimble lock, which can cause animations to bug out and not work as wanted. When using the rotation tool while animating in Maya, the rotation order should be x>y>z. This can sometimes differ between different software.
Before the next session, we need to make a SyncSketch account (for feedback sessions), finish the ball shot, and upload it to Syncsketch. We should only playblast our shots for these feedback sessions instead of rendering, which we should do for the final submission.
We were also told to buy a copy of ‘The Animator’s Survival Kit’ which I already own from my previous studies.