Creating Stereoscopic 3D Images

Recreating Cameras and Lights in Maya

Original Picture

Recreation 

Different Angle

This project is harder than I imaging... I attempted to create another picture with color light, but it doesn't come out successful. I posted it here anyways. My problem is I don't know which type of lighting will produce a soft glow like in the original picture. I tried all different kind of lighting, but it still doesn't come out right. 

Original Picture

Recreation

45 degree angle

Extra Credit: Lighting a Scene in Maya

One point lighting

 Two point lighting

 Three point lighting

Building a Scene in Maya

Second Term Paper

No term paper is being submitted

Outline for the Second Term Paper

Science Fact of Cinematic Fiction ?

I.                    Introduction
- Newton’s law of universal Gravity
- How gravity and  air resistance affect the way objects fall in reality
- General rules, heavier objects should fall down faster than lighter object due to air resistance.
-The three movies contain cinematic scene that incorrectly illustrate the law of falling objects due to gravity.

II.                  The Incredibles
- The explosion
- Helen stretched her body to create a parachute for her kids
- They flew down and fall softly into the ocean
-One big and heavy piece of metal fell down on top of them several seconds after they landed while it would have fall down before them due to its mass.
 

III.                Tangled
-Max the horse and Flynn Rider both fell down the cliff
-Max reached the ground first while he was a lot heavier than Flynn

IV.                Crank
-The two men fell down from the airplane at the same time, fighting each other
-They appeared to have the same mass
-One of the men killed the other and then started to fall down faster than the death man.

V.                  Conclusion
- It’s interesting to be able to distinguish between fact and fiction in the movies.
- The law of gravity
- How objects or characters fall is often being exaggerated or bended in the movie because it may make the scene more entertaining and excited. 

Stop-Motion Character Animation

To make this video, I need to create the main poses of a walk. It is difficult to make the action figure stand in some of the poses. So I chose to take pictures from the top view down. First I create a simple set with a piece of paper.Then I take pictures of the figure. The hardest thing to do is to keep the figure in one place so the feet doesn't appear sliding. This video, I want to make the character falls down the clip then continue walking by looping the video. I did this by copy and paste the scene three times.

Reverse Video Reference of Walking

The Laws of Physics in an Animation Universe

Physics in TANGLED

Tangled is an animated feature length movie released by Walt Disney Animation Studio in 2010. This movie also celebrates Disney’s 50^th feature classic film counting from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937. Tangled continues the tradition of creating a magical world with “happily ever after” mood. The story of a lost princess names Rapunzel, who got kidnapped by Gothel and lived in a towel for 18 years before Flynn Rider came and helped her chased after her dream.  Just like other previous films by Disney, Tangled maintained Disney’s realism style of animation. This means the way the world operates in the movie is depicted very close to our world in term of physics and the appearance of the characters.  Most of the time in Tangled, the characters’ movements followed the physics rules in our world, but there are a few exceptions. In this paper, I will discuss about the center of gravity, the falls, and the way Rapunzel’s hair works.

There are many scenes in Tangled that demonstrate the rule of central of gravity. Central of gravity is the average position of an object/character’s weight distribution. The human’s central of gravity is roughly in the middle of our body. This showed in minute 8^th of Tangled, when Flynn Rider used a rope tied just above his hip to lower himself from the roof to steal the princess’s tiara. The rope must be tied precisely around his center of gravity for him to be perfectly balance and parallel with the ground like in the movie. Another rule that follows, for an object or a character to be balance, the center of pressure (a vertical line that passes through the central of gravity to the ground) has to be inside the base of support. Base of support of a standing human character is the area under and between the two feet. The makers of Tangled were also well aware of this principle. In minute 15^th, Flynn Rider stopped at a big tree while running away from the castle’s guards. He extended his left hand and rested it on the tree to shift some of his weight over to the tree. By doing so, Flynn expanded the base of support from the area between his two feet to a triangle between his two feet and the tree. With a bigger base of support, Flynn established a more stable pose, which helped him rest his legs because now his legs no longer carried all of his body’s weight. The center of pressure and the base of support principle helped making the way the character fall down more believable. When Flynn Rider and Maximus stumbled on each other to get to the tiara, Maximus bit on Flynn’s boots while he tried to run forward, making his base of support smaller. Flynn’s body is running forward, his center of pressure point fell outside of his base of support, so he fell down. The law of physics not only helped created a realistic world in Tangled; it also helped the movement of the characters look more convincing.

         On the other hand, the makers of Tangled bent the rules of physics to create a magical world with contrast outcomes for the protagonist and the antagonist. For example, the same unfortunate events like falling down a high position for both characters, the protagonist tends to survive while the antagonist most the time would die (as if gravity favors the good ones). In Tangled, Flynn Rider and Maximus flied up and fell down several times and ended up being perfectly fine. To break down one of the falls, Flynn and Maximus fell for 11 seconds down a high cliff while fighting over the tiara. At first they were holding onto a tree branch, so air resistance was blocked by the tree branch, hence they fell down with the same velocity. Then, the branch hit a rock and broke in half while Flynn and Maximus continued to free fall to two different directions.  Without the tree branch, Flynn with the weight of about 170 pounds, will fall much slower than Maximus with the weight of around 1300 pounds (an average horse weight) due to air resistance. However, when Maximus landed on the ground, he stood up right away, unhurt and started looking for Flynn, who was already well prepared and hid behind a rock not far away. In reality, Flynn would fall down at least a few second after Maximus due to his much lesser weight, so he would not have enough time to hide, not to mention that both characters should be seriously hurt from such a brutal fall. Another example is at minute 80^th, when the Gaul thugs wanted to rescue Flynn from the castle. They put Flynn standing on one side of the seesaw and had another big guy jumped on the other end. The big guy took around 2.5 seconds from his original position to the seesaw and that force sent Flynn off flying for about 5 seconds and landed on the back of Maximus, who were waiting outside the castle wall. This can actually be done if the pivot of the seesaw is closer to where Flynn stood. However, Flynn landed his butt on Maximus’s back unhurt was not how things suppose to happen in real life. Flynn’s is around 77 kg, while free fall on Earth, he would pertain a force of around 1,735 Newtons on Maximus’s back. Because Maximus is a horse with bigger mass, he would probably be fine after Flynn landed on him, but based on Newton’s law of reaction: “for every action, there will be a reaction”, Maximus’s back will exert the same amount of force back on Flynn when he landed, which will cause his body some serious pain, or even bounce up after he landed. With the same concept, at the end of the movie, when mother Gothel fell from the towel to her death, her body disappeared before she crash to the ground. Suppose if her body did not turn into ashes, she would still die from the fall due to the force of gravity pulling her body down, and there wasn’t enough time for her body to reach terminal velocity. Predictably, antagonists falling to their deaths in the end are very familiar in Disney’s classic movies.

            

It would be a regretful thing to not mention Rapunzel’s hair in this paper because after all, her hair is the root of the story line. Rapunzel’s hair is very special, she has magical hair and for eighteen years of her life, she never cut it. Her hair is around 70 feets long and weight around 16-18 pounds. With a petite body structure like Rapunzel, carrying that much weight on her head is a burden. Yet, in the movie, she is a very energetic young girl, who jumps and dances around a lot. Of course in real life she would not be able to do all that with 18 pounds of hair dragging behind.

 However, this is still a magical world, so the animators have to make Rapunzel’s hair appear with less burden to Rapunzel, yet still maintains its weight. To make this movie, the film makers used software to stimulate the hair and make it look as believable as possible. One of the obstacles they faced was the fiction between the hair and the ground. If they keep the fiction match with real life then when Rapunzel walk, her hair will drag behind so much that it will create a 30 degrees angle from her head, which make it looks like she is really struggling with her hair. It doesn’t look very appealing to the audience. They tried to lower the fiction on the grounds, so that it would appear as if the hair is sliding on ice. This won’t work because her hair will end up sliding faster than her when she walks. To fix this, they would cut Rapunzel hair into two separate parts with two different level of fiction. They will decrease the level of fiction to the part of hair that connected with her head, so that when her body and head move forward, the hair will move closely with the body while the end part will move slower. There is another question that challenges the rule of physics in Tangled: how strong is Rapunzel’s hair, physically? Or more accurately, how strong is Rapunzel? She used her hair to grab, pull, hold on to objects or characters, and most of the time, she does it very effortlessly with a few exceptions. For instance, when she wrapped her hair around Flynn Rider and pulled him toward the closet, she had to use all of her strength. Then a few minutes later, she tied Flynn onto a chair with her hair and used only her left hand to easily move the chair around. Another time, she used her hair to grab Flynn’s hand and swing him across a 50 feets wide cannon. This shows that the actual physical capability of Rapunzel is very inconsistence. However, as an audience, I don’t find this distracting at all because this contrast is what makes up Rapunzel, who is sweet and innocence, yet also strong and independence.

            Disney’s 50^th animated feature length movie Tangled follows the tradition of creating a magical yet realistic world. This movie is a huge success for Disney Animation studio due to the excellent and refreshing animation, beautiful graphics, breath taking concepts, brilliant sound tracks and engaging story line. It has all the elements that a great entertaining movie should have. The animators are well aware and respect the center of gravity principle, which makes the characters move in a smooth and believable way. They also know when to bend the law of physics and gravity to support the story line and the outcome of the movie. One of the most fascinating things about this movie is Rapunzel’s hair. The way Rapunzel’s hair work in Tangled is most different thing in term of physics compare to the way human’s hair work in our universe.  And that created a beautiful and unique world in Tangled. 

Outline of 1st Term Paper

Movie name: Tangled

I.                    Introduction
a. Introduce movie (title, year, animation studio, brief summary of the movie)
b. Walt Disney’s style: realistic, follow the law of physics
c. Hypothesis

II.                  Body 1: Center of Gravity
a. Minute 8, when Flynn go down from the roof to get the princess’s crown, the rope were tight around his center of gravity
b. Minute 15, when Flynn stopped by the tree to catch his breath, he has one of his arm against the tree, to create more base area for his body.
c. Minute 16, when Flynn is running away, he changed direction suddenly, so to balance out, he put one of his leg out.
d. Minute 18, when Maximus bite on Flynn’s feet, make the base of support smaller, and the center of gravity is outside the base of support, so he fails down.

III.                Body 2: The Falls and consequences
a. Minute 18, the horse Maximus and Flynn both fall down the cliff for 11 seconds. Both of them are physically fine about such a big fall, which won't happen in real life
b. Hour 1:20, Flynn was lifted up and landed on Maximus’s back
c. Hour 1:25, Maximus and Flynn flied out of the castle’s wall and land on the street
d. Hour 1:25, Rapunzel’s mother fall to her death from the towel

IV.                Body 3: Rapunzel’s hair
a. her hair is magical, main point of the movie
b. how strong is her hair in this movie is not consistence
c. Minute 10, she used her hair to pull Flynn with all of her strength
d. Minute 28, she moves the chair with Flynn on it with one hand easily
e. Minute 30, used her hair to come down the towel for the first time
f. Minute 45, used her hair to swing across a 70 feets wide cannon
g. Hair simulation in the movie and how Rapunzel use her hair to grab things very precisely.

V.                  Conclusion
a. realism in Disney’s movies
b. Physics laws are taking into consider
c. Physics laws were broken to remind the audience that it’s a magical world 

Stop Motion Animation of Falling

When I came across this assignment, I wanted to use squash and stretch to make the fall more believable. Here I ran into my first problem, I tried to use the normal tennis ball, I wasn't be able to change it shapes, so the stop motion appear very dull and lifeless. Then I realized that I need to find something that I can easily change the shape so I can do squash and stretch easier. I finally figure out I can use one of my socks and make it behave like a ball. This way I can really make the the "sock ball" stretch when it goes down to indicate that it's going down fast, and squash after the contact so indicate its weight. After shooting a sequence of pictures, I encountered my second problem: the technical part. I tried to use the Samanimation website, but unfortunately the website was temporary shut down. So I then used Photoshop to create a GIF file, and finally figure out how to post it on Blogger.

Video analysis of path of action

I thought I jumped really high, but I guess not. Gravity won!

Tracker video analysis of falling

The plot for vertical position (y) is roughly a parabolic arc if we take out the still frame when the ball hasn't release from my hand. I tracked the ball too early.

Video Reference

Fourth Down at Halftime

Mini-Portfolio

I started college as a Business major concentrated on Accounting. I chose this rather "dry" major because I'd always wanted a simple 9-5 job that could make a decent amount of money.So that was my plan when I was 18 years old. However, after I took my first business course, I realized that this wasn't what I wanted to do for the rest of my life, so I went on and change my major to Heath Science. Again, I wanted to find something "easy" to do, which wasn't easy for me because my heart wasn't in it... Then at the end of my second year at SJSU, I took 2 beginning art classes, and I'd finally realized that doing something I really enjoy doing is more important than how much money I make in the future. And that's how I'd given art a chance. I'd always love drawing since I was a kid. Actually, I love seeing the final product of my work. I love the satisfy feeling of finishing a piece of art. Today, I'd officially became a BFA student in Animation/Illustration program. I am looking forward to the challenges that I will face and the satisfy feeling when I overcome those. For once in my life, I choose a hard road rather than an easy way out, and so far I'm glad made that decision because I remember a quote from the A/I website, "if you want to success, choose something hard and do it better than anyone else."

First Post of the Semester

Today is the second day of school, and also the first class of Physics of Animation. The room was a little hot, hopefully by the next class, there will be AC or at least the fan would be turned on. Other than that, the experience of the first class was awesome. The "VAMPIRE" demonstration was really 'thrilling'. Although I don't know what is it for. I guess it's to proof that Mr. Garcia's body is harder than the brick ? jk. I'm looking forward to learn more about physics through out the semester.

Lilian Giang