Goals

• Continue practice using keyframes
• Learn how to import and respond to sound.
• Learn about path animation and (optionally) skeletons.
• Deliverables: A 10 second animation loop that responds to a 10 second sound loop. Place in the designated folder on cs-render. See Evaluation Sheet (pdf).

Files and Folders

• When you create a new project for the animation, place it on the cs-render drive in the folder: \IDS252Sp18\Lab5\MayaProjects\your_name. Be sure to follow the directions for setting animation parameters.
• When you have completed the lab, please move your final animation over to the folder: \IDS252Sp18\Lab5\FinalAnimations\
• Make sure that the name of your final animation is named in a similar manner as in previous labs.

Reading

• Experiment more with camera cuts but, before you do, you should read about the "line of action" and maintaining continuity. See chap 8 in the readings in folder \IDS252Sp18\IDS252Resources\booksExcerpts\StoryBoarding
• If you do want to use camera cuts, you might want to organize your shots using Maya's camera sequencer and ubercam. Go to Maya help to read about these. Otherwise, you must manually do a separate batch render for each camera sequence.
• To learn about the power of sound to help tell a story, read Designing a Movie for Sound by Randy Thom

Maya Tutorials - Path Animation for Airplane, and Rigging a Mechanical Arm

In Maya, go to Help → Tutorials → Maya Tutorials. Click on the link Getting Started with Maya 2015. In the contents, click on Getting Started with Maya, and then Animation. Do the following lessons:

• Lesson 3: Path animation. You will need the file PathAnim.mb. Download and place it into your project's scenes folder.
• Lesson 4 (Optional): Do this tutorial if you want to learn about skeletons and inverse kinematics.You will need the file IK_MechArm.mb. Download and place it into your project's scenes folder.

The above tutorials will not be collected but are strongly recommended!

10 Second Animation Loop

• Project Setup: Your project should have settings as described in the directions here.

• Music Assignments: When these become available, you will be able to find your 10 second music loops in the folder \IDS252Sp18\Lab5\MusicLoops. Your assignment will be made once the music files are available:

  Music File	Animators
  assn7.1_rms.aif	Bailey, Cam
  asst7.1_ck.aif	Dolan, Michael
  asst7.3_ew.aif	Sam, Joya
  asst7_cp.aif	Marco, Anna
  asst7_KB.aif	Whitney
  asst7_mm.aif	Christy, Colin
  asst-7_RO.aif	Nathan, Elizabeth
  asst7_rw.aif	Jeff
  ASST7_SP_Audio_2.aif	Dylan
  ASST7AudioVers2_SAO.aif	Trent
  asst7-dad.aif	Tom
  Ast7_BY.aif	Chris
  tg_ani_loop.aif	John
  audio-th.aif	Niki

  You may select another music file or swap with someone. The only requirements are 1) each music file must be assigned to at least one but no more than 2 animators and 2) you must get approval from instructor before making a change.

• Loading Music into Maya:

  Importing music into Maya is for the purpose of helping you line up the animation with the music. It is not very precise. When you render, Maya does not include the music in the rendering since all you get out are rendered frames. You will need to combine the frames and music later in Adobe Premier Pro (or whatever video editing software you have.)

  • Copy your sound file into your project and place it into the "sound" folder.
  • Below are the key things that you need to do to work with sound:
    • If you haven't done so already, remember to set the frames-per-second (fps) to 30 and the "Playback Speed" to "Real-time (30fps)". Note, if you don't select "real-time", you won't be able to hear the sound.
    • To load in a sound file, go to File;Import... from Maya's main menu. Select the sound file you copied into your project folder (if your project is not set, Maya will place you in the wrong folder. You should always set the project).
    • To see the sound wave in the timeline at bottom of Maya window, right click on the timeline, choose Sound, and select the name of your sound file.
    • You need to expand the time range slider so you can see the entire sound wave. To do this, right click on the time slider and choose "Set Range to → Sound Length". The length should be very close to 300 frames assuming the sound is 10 seconds long. If it is close but not exactly 300 frames, use whatever length the sound is. If it is really different than 300 frames, let the instructor know so you can be given a different sound.
    • More detailed directions for importing sound files can be found in the Maya Help (do a search on "Add audio to your animation").

• Creating Your 10 Second Animation Loop: Listen to the sound multiple times to develop a sense of the movement and feeling of the music. Based on this, create an animation as a response to the music (remember, there is no right or wrong). As in the last lab, your animation should be a loop, i.e. it's end should transition seamlessly back into the beginning. Be prepared to discuss how you applied at least several of the animation principles listed below. Refer to UW Principles for detailed explanations.

  Squash & stretch Anticipation Staging Follow-through Overlapping action Slow-in, slow-out Arc vs linear motion

  Secondary action Timing Exaggeration Knowledge of technique Observation and translation Appeal Imagination

• Combining Sound and Animation: When you render the frames in Maya, the sound is not attached. You must combine the frames and the sound separately. To add sound to the final quicktime animation, you will need to load the sound file into Adobe Premier along with the image frames. (See directions). The frames are dragged down to the video track and the audio needs to be dragged down to the audio track. Make sure the video and audio are properly aligned. Generate the quicktime as you did in the last lab.

Evaluation

Before class on the due date listed above, place your final animation (in quicktime format and with sound attached) on cs-render in the folder \IDS252Sp18\Lab5\FinalAnimations. Your Maya project should be in the folder \IDS252Sp18\Lab5\MayaProjects. Animations will be graded based on the evaluation questions discussed during the critique (see link at top).

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