Now that you have gone through all of the trouble to painstakingly setup your alien and saucer rigs to be animated it is now time to actual do the animation. Yay!
Remembering back to our first assignment involving the solar system we created a very simple animation of planets orbiting around the sun and the moons orbiting around the planets. While the execution was simple the actual process is identical no matter how complicated the animation itself is.
Remember the art of animation is simply the process of showing images (frames) in rapid succession (rate) with slight differences between each frame to create the illusion of motion. If we were creating an animation for film that was hand drawn we would need to draw every frame for 24 frames per second of the film. Do the math :)
Fortunately for us we are using a computer program that can help us produce an animation at 24fps without having to explicitly make a change for every single frame. All we have to care about initially is just key moments in the animation. These key moments are represented by keyframes. Usually a keyframe is set when a major change in direction or value needs to happen. For our solar system this was simply the beginning where we told the planet to have a starting point and the end where we wanted it to end up. For something like a ball bouncing up and down the key moments that describe the motion are the point where the ball hits the ground and when it reaches the peak of each bounce. Everything else "in-between" those key events are the "in-betweens" or the "tweens" and in Maya that motion is filled in for us.
The art of producing animation is extremely extensive and I have a series of 3 classes you can take here at UNM as electives to focus solely on it, but for this class we will be looking at just the introduction of creating animation. The important thing to remember is we direct our characters (or objects) that we want animated by dictating the key moments in the motion across the timeline by setting keyframes.
Take a look at these videos for an overview of how animation basics work as well as some other helpful information for making animation processes more efficient and predictable.
For your assignment this week you will be creating an animation of your choosing with your alien and saucer rigs. Once complete we will be creating a playblast of the animation and submitting it to UNM Canvas.
Please take a look at the following videos that walk through aspects of the animation process for your rigs. You don't have to follow my exact plan, but keep your animation less than 240 frames or VERY close to it.
Your final deliverable will be a playblast movie export out of maya. Submit this file on UNM Canvas to Assignment 7.