Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Wow Wednesday: Cinema4D and After Effects Animation UPDATED

Hello Internet! 
I have decided to try and post two entries on Wednesdays (truly a WOW moment when I hit 'publish').

Beware, this post has a lot of caps lock.

This semester has been BUSY. Like WHOA crazy nuts.. but I am keeping it together, mostly. The big project I have been working on lately was an animation for my Computer Art: Motion class. You wanna talk about time-consuming work... holy geeze. Between modeling in Cinema4D (which is a CRAZY awesome program, by the way), setting key frames, taking the work into post-production and LET US NOT FORGET RENDERING... I would say I spent 11 days averaging 4-6 hours per day on this project. I am really pleased with it! If I had access to the software and programs I might consider teaching a similar lesson to high school students... but that's a tall order. Considering how much time the project took, critique, and the option for edits I am looking at nearly three weeks for this animation alone! SO much respect for computer animators everywhere.

 Here's the assignment parameters from my professor:
Create an animation using Cinema4D that explores the idea of cause and effect. The basic premise of the animation is that a single action will have consequences. The technical and visual components of the animation should stress realistic movement, so the content of the animation should be chosen appropriately. [Realistic movement does not necessarily mean realistic situations... sci-fi robots can move realistically.] Appropriate acceleration, deceleration, anticipation/follow-through, and overlapping action is expected.

Feb 6 (Thu) - Project Assigned.
Feb 13 (Thu) - Models, textures, and lighting completed.
Feb 20 (Thu) - 60+% of animation completed. 
Feb 25 (Tue) - Due. 

My first idea for the animation was to animate ice cream falling out of a cone.. That was shot down because of modeling time, my personal capabilities for animation and modeling, and other complications. Then I decided.. I wanted to create some semblance of spring in my mind's eye because I have not seen grass since almost October! So I modeled a picnic scene (a messy one) in a warm-colored field. I wanted to try my hand at modeling more natural objects so I whipped together a tree with bark material and some picnic tables...I am pretty pleased with it.. though there are some aspects I would change if I had even MORE time. But here it is!




Professor Comments:

The infinite horizon is odd, maybe a closer horizon and clouds? It tends to show repetitions in the grass texture too much and a lot of visual vibration as the camera moves.

(motion blur)

The bounces are a bit inconsistent -- the first one seem to not decelerate enough at the top of the bounces and the one that knocks the cup has a similar problem... they almost stick to the surface as they bounce. (The second orange bounces well, so look to that one for the motion.)

Refraction in the glass bowl transparency?

The cup seems to accelerate to get to the edge of the table as opposed to being consistent or slowing down (it should slow down)... mostly in the very last rotation before falling off.

Nice tree!



After work this evening I will go try and make some of the edits suggested - I agree with most of them. It's hard to do edits in such a small amount of time, taking into consideration time requirements for rendering and processing. That's my only REAL issue with the entire process and media - time time time! 

More soon - I have a lesson plan I am really excited about to post next :)

UPDATE

I made revisions to my animation! Here they are :)



Ms. K

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