Project 2 Mani Walk Cycle

Part 1 - Walk Cycle

For this exercise it is very fun to do, the important points are the legs. For example while walking you will tilt your leg down, including your toe (toe curl) and when you are going to land u will automatically lift your hill and ur toe will curl upwards and land down returning it back to normal.

Part 2 - Emotional Walk Cycle

For part 2, the emotional walk cycle that I did was happy walk. I encounter some problems as the legs did not move smoothly. However, I approached Mr.Douglas and he taught me and fixed my problems. Beside that, Mr.Douglas also taught me some tricks to animate the right and left legs which really make my life easier. 

BigDog Exercise 2

In this exercise, we had to create an animation for "BigDog". Mr Douglas told the class to  animate the body first before animating the legs. I tried it and found that it was quite fast and much more easier rather than animating the BigDog as a whole. 

BigDog Exercise 1

i)   If engineered or programmed badly, BigDog would fall over. Watch the full video again, and describe how BigDog’s legs move while walking– ie. 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.

The sequence of the leg movements for one complete step is alternate leg move and cross leg move. The front and the back legs take turns to cross their legs while moving. Let's say if the BigDog is moving to the left, the FR will actually cross over FL from the front first while BL and BR will stay on the spot. Next will be the back legs' turn to cross over. After FL cross over FR from the back to stand back to the original position, BR will cross over BL from the front to continue the movement to the left while the front legs will stand till apart to balance out. Then BL will cross over BR from the back to complete one step.


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

The centre of gravity depends on the surface area and height of the object. In order to balance BigDog's body weight. We have to ensure that the leg movement have to be coordinated to ensure that BigDog can be balanced enough. 

iii) 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.)

Other Poses of Spiderman

After learning the robes of animating/adjusting the joints of the Spiderman Model, it was much easier to  create the other kinds of poses. In this pose, I have created Spiderman flying in the air with his hands spread out. The hand was easy to do as when someone tries to jump in the air, the hands would spread out. As for the legs, I had tried my best to make an exact replica whereby the legs are folded. It may not look exactly the same, however I am satisfied with the outcome of this pose.

Spiderman Flying Pose

Edited with Maya

Front View

Side View

Back View

Spider Posing

After Project 1, we started to learn animation. For this Spiderman, the hardest part to animate/adjust was the legs. As you can see from the edited scene, the spiderman that I edited is not exactly same as the original pose. As for the arms, it was pretty easy to animate/adjust as hanging upside down requires strength to hold on to. However, with many attempts, this was the closest and best shot I could get.

Spider Upside Down Pose (Original) 

Edited with Maya

Front View

Side View

Back View

Reflection
Overall, this exercise quite challenging. It helped me in understanding the basics of creating and adjusting the types of movement of Spiderman and on how to switch between IK and FK. Although I faced problems when doing this exercise, but I managed to solve it by keep trying to adjust it.