3D ANIMATION-III

Paper Code: 
BMA 503
Credits: 
8
Max. Marks: 
100.00
Objective: 

To provide a solid foundation of the principles of character animation, with which the illusion of life is created. These principles can be applied to create any style of character animation, be it stylized cartoon characters, or realism, to blend seamlessly into live action films. The goal of the course is for the student to understand the Character rigging techniques in the interface, and then to comprehend how the character rigging scripts relate to the rigging techniques.

Unit I: 

Using Joints and Constraints, Joint Basics, Point Constraints, Aim Constraints, Inverse Kinematics, IK Handle Tool, Create a Master Control. Driven Keys, Creating a Driven Key, Looping Driven Keys, Copying and Pasting Driven Keys, Animation Using Expressions, Conditional Statements in Expressions, Animating Constraints, Dynamic Parenting, Animation Layers, Creating an Animation Layer, Layer Mode, Other Options in the Layer Editor, Layer Hierarchy, Merging Layers.

Unit II: 

Animating Facial Expressions Using Blend Shapes, Creating Blend Shapes, Painting Blend Shape Weights, Adding Targets, Creating a Custom Mouth Control Slider, Connecting the Slider to the Blend Shape, Animating Blend Shapes Sequentially, Animating Object Components with Clusters, Adding Cluster Objects, Painting Cluster Weights, Applying Cluster Components, Constraining Clusters

Unit III: 

Rigging and Muscle Systems: Understanding Rigging, Creating and Organizing Joint Hierarchies, Orienting Joints, Naming Joints, Mirroring Joints, IK Legs, FK Blending, Rotate Plane Solvers, Creating Custom Attributes, Spline IK
Full Body Inverse Kinematics, Skinning Geometry, Interactive/Smooth Binding, Painting Skin Weights, Editing Skin Weights in the Component Editor, Copying Skin Weights, Mirroring Skin Weights.
The Maya Muscle System: Understanding the Maya Muscle System, Creating a Muscle Using Muscle Builder, Editing Muscle Parameters, Converting the Smooth Skin to a Muscle System, Sliding Weights.

Unit IV: 

Character Walk: Adding personality to the walk. Pose to Pose: Acting for clarity of emotion. Character Animation, Preparing to Animate. The Animation Process, Pose-to-Pose blocking, Establishing Timings, Refining Animation. Non-Linear Animation, Creating Poses, Creating Clips, Modifying, blending and Sharing Clips, Animating with Maya’s new Body IK Setup.

Unit V: 

Gesture: Clearly expressing emotion and attitude with a 3D character. Introduction to biped movement, Gesture Assignment. Body Dynamics: Understanding the mechanics of natural movement, and effect of forces and weight. Push a heavy object up an incline Assignment.

Essential Readings: 

1. Dariush Derakhshani, “Introducing Autodesk Maya 2012: Autodesk Official Training Guide”, Wiley India Pvt Ltd (2011).
2. Dariush Derakhshani, “Introducing Autodesk Maya 2013 Guide”, Wiley India Pvt Ltd (2012).