Extra Credit

Back in March I went to the Women In Animation Event featuring Jenny Lerew, Lorelay Bove, Brenda Chapman, and Claire Keane. The event was held at Lucasfilm/ILM Premier Theater and was hosted by The Walt Disney Family Museum. It was a great event and had some very fun information!

A group of us at ILM

An image of my ticket

Creating Stereoscopic 3D Images

(Green/Magenta)

(Green/Magenta)

(Green/Magenta)

This was such a fun assignment! It's so cool being able to create these stereoscopic images! I made quite a number of them, but these are the three that I thought turned out the best. The last one by far was the most difficult to make work. I was playing with trying to make that fountain in the far back at the left feel quite far away, like you have to refocus to look back there. Getting that to work without making the image difficult to look at overall was tricky, but I did my best!

Recreating Cameras and Lights in Maya

For this assignment we had to recreate an image given to us as well as we could in maya. It was very tricky, but also very fun!

Original Photo

Maya Render

Extra Credit: Lighting a Scene in Maya

One-Point Lighting

Two-Point Lighting

Three-Point Lighting

Building a Scene in Maya

Special Effects in Animation and Live-Action

My first two term paper scores were 95 and 90; I will not be writing a third term paper. Thanks!

Outline for the Third Term Paper

Special Effects in Animation and Live-Action

Special Effect: Explosions

Games: "The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker" and "Battlefield 4"

The Legend of Zelda:

Wind Waker: Extremely stylized. There are little plumes that are designed, then combined, overlaid, and animated to create a animated explosion. Not a lot of variation from explosion to explosion. Works very well because of the stylization of the game. (Overlaying of graphic plumes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zG5gHLCp7g, explosion examples: http://youtu.be/Ob-yWsolAzw?t=13m56s)

Battlefield 4:

Realistic explosions that are simulated using a virtual physics engine. Requires much more processing power than the explosions in Wind Waker. Attempts to simulate realistic chaos in an explosion, while making it feasible to compute. Very successful because it is able to balance what is designed and what is calculated by the computer, and the result looks quite realistic. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2vOu8QkPd0)

Outline:

I. Intro:

Thesis: Explosions can add a lot to the epic feeling of a video game, and can be done right in multiple ways.

II. Body:

The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker

• ·         Explosions are extremely stylized to fit in with the stylized world.
• ·         All of the explosions for a bomb are really basically the same explosion, but it isn't distracting due to the extreme stylization. When the explosions go off, the camera shakes a bit (as well as the world) to add to the impact.
• ·         Works very successfully for the game as the explosions look visually appealing and add to the feeling of action in the world.

Battlefield 4

• ·         Explosions are far more realistic and use more of a physics engine to simulate them.
• ·         There is a large variety in the explosions, and depending on what weapon you use, what you are exploding, and where you hit what is exploding the explosion will look different.
• ·         Works successfully because the play station has enough processing power to calculate the complex explosions that the creators have set up. Things blow up in an way that is done as realistically as any game ever has.
•  

Conclusion:

Whether simple and designed or more chaotic and physically accurate, explosions can add a lot to a game.

Stop-Motion Character Animation

This was such an incredibly fun project to work on, and I worked on it with some very entertaining people--Kristin Campbell, Eric Garcia, Lancing Chen, and Sony Tran. The work between us was quite well distributed I thought too and everyone had some part in almost everything that we did, which made for pretty a smooth production process. I supplied most of the equipment for the animation: the computer, software (monkeyjam), camera, tripod, and clay for the animation. Since I was operating the camera and software most of the time I was able to add input on how the characters were staged and posed in each shot, and I helped make sure that each character and object animated as smoothly and realistically as possible from frame to frame. I also helped physically animate the murderer, who had some rather tricky movements. After watching Cassidy Curtis' lecture we felt inspired to include a smear frame even, which added a lot to the feel of the stabbing motion I thought. It was so interesting having to animate everything straight ahead, and it took a significant amount of thought to plan out each character's movements and actions. We adjusted the timing after everything was shot and done, and then took it into premier pro where Eric added a title and credits. Then Kristin, Eric, and I added some sound effects to give the animation its finishing touch! I had such a great time working on this project and creating something with my brilliant friends!

Smear frame

Our animation setup

Cast Group Portrait

Science Fact or Cinematic Fiction?

Video games have come a long way from the past. It's incredible to think about just how far they have come, having begun with games that consisted of  little more than a few squares all the way to today's triple A titles that cost and make millions of dollars. Now days it takes hundreds of artists, creative talent, and technical minds to bring the world of a game to life and to build a convincing illusion of reality. While a lot of video game get a lot right, as games have become increasingly more representative of the real world, it has become more important to emulate real world physics, which becomes more difficult to simulate as games continue to get more complex. Since there are so many natural laws that function so flawlessly in life, it can be incredibly difficult to include these physical realities into games, and it's important to be able to recognize and analyze the difference between what represents accurate physics, what is intentionally chosen to be altered from life, and what is simply incorrect. One of the most basic principles in physics is Newton's Third Law of Motion, which states, "for every action force there is an equal reaction force in the opposite direction." This principle of action-reaction affects virtually every aspect of movement, action, and motion, so quite obviously video games have to incorporate this into their worlds, but how they do it, where they leave it out intentionally, and where the mistakes are is what is interesting and vital to take note of.

            Portal is a video game developed by Valve, which is a studio that has made a number of games that play with physical laws and push scientific possibilities. In their game the primary game mechanic is a device that defies the laws of nature, a gun that can essentially allow the character to teleport via "portals." However, the piece of in game technology that I would like to focus on is the "Aperture Long fall boot," which, as the name suggests, are essentially a pair of boots that allow the character, Chell, to fall incredible distances without receiving injury. Now there are a few problems with the physics behind these boots that regard Newton's Third Law.

 In the video above (at about 0:50), she is falling from heights and at speeds that would normally kill a person--or at the very least injure them--however, the game has her falling and then quickly capable of maneuvering after a land. According to the equation (change in momentum)=(force)x(time) though, the fact that Chell can land and stop with the immediacy that she does, from the height she falls, and with the weight she has she simply would not be able to have such a fast change in momentum. Since she requires these boots to survive a fall one can assume that Chell is a normal human being that would die from such a fall without aid; however, with the apparent functioning of the current boot design it does not seem that it helps slow the time of impact enough to reduce the momentum in a useful way, nor does it appear to have the means to effectively distribute the force in a way that would help reduce the impact overall. The force has to dissipate somewhere on Chell's side of the action, as the ground is reacting to her and pushing back on her with the same amount of force as her hitting the ground, but since the boots are only connected up to her ankles, where would that force be dissipated to help her survive? Her feet may be safe, but her body would still react in the same way as a normal fall because anything the boots seem capable of doing would either not have enough of an effect or would just transfer the force to somewhere else on Chell, and her body should still crumple on impact. So while it is absolutely a necessary game mechanic so players can have a smooth and easy to maneuver experience, the boots are not really physically feasible according to the action-reaction principle.

            Another Valve game that pushes the limits and expectations of physical laws and realities is Half-Life 2. There are so many laws that are broken or suspended by the game intentionally--including time travel, inter-dimensional rifts in space, and suspension of gravity to name a few--but it is certainly still useful to take a look at the more basic physics behind how some of these things work and if they're accurate or realistic, because it's many of these basic principles that lend believability to the bigger steps away from reality. There is a weapon called the "gravity gun," which is capable of suspending quite a number of physical laws, but essentially it is able to pick up objects with virtually any mass and suspend them in the air as if unaffected by gravity. The gun is also capable of drawing an object toward the character from a significant distance away, as well as propelling objects away at high velocity (as viewable in the video below about midway through).

 So, focusing on the action-reaction principles operating behind the gun and looking at the gun's ability to push or pull massive objects with ease, one has to ask, where are these forces coming from? Taking a look at the push the gun is capable of, there doesn't really appear to be enough of a reaction on anything for the rather large objects to move so rapidly. It's hard to breakdown and separate the complete fiction in the game from what could be physically possible or inaccurate, and with the firing of the gun one does see a small lightning bolt and a tiny recoil of the weapon, but those massive objects would still require some large force to move them at such high speeds, and that force does not seem to exist. Perhaps this lack of force is even clearer when looking at the weapon's ability to pull objects toward it. According to Newton's law the movement would require some sort of reaction or action in order for the object to be moved towards the gun, however, as it is there is no visible force acting on the objects. The gun would need to create an imbalance of force on the object, by either creating some force behind it or perhaps somehow reduce the force in front of it an impossibly significant amount, but nothing seems to be created by the gun to act on the objects. There is just some inherent sucking or drawing power that the gun has, which is not physically possible. Though it does create an interesting and unique game mechanic, since it is something that one cannot see in life.

            Lastly, Skyrim, which is an open world fantasy game created by Bethesda Game Studios, has a massive universe that shows off a lot of technological mastery. Games like this are so open and free that it can be hard to account for how everything will react physically in every scenario, so there are times where the physics fall short of reality, often to quite humorous effect. So, this example is different from the previous in that it's rather pronounced how unrealistic it is, and it perhaps could even seem like a glitch, but at least for a time the game developers decided to intentionally leave it in the game. The scenario I'm talking about specifically involves a particular enemy called giants. In the game, when they use a certain attack, it will launch any character hundreds of feet into the air at an incredibly high speed (as seen in the video below at about 0:25).

 Now, there are a number of reasons for why this is not possible according to the action-reaction principle. For one thing, the giants are hitting the character by swinging down, and that is resulting in them flying up hundreds of feet into the air. The amount of force it would take to propel a human body that high and that fast hitting in the upwards direction would be incredible, but the fact that the giant hits downward into the ground and then the character essentially bounces that high--even assuming that the body is capable of not crumpling under such an impact--that is a virtually impossible amount of force. However, even if we assume that the giant is capable of creating that much force, then the more realistic problem with this situation is that the giant is not reacting in a way that would reflect the amount of force he has exerted. One can't be sure of exactly what the physiology of the giant is, however, it's within the realm of acceptability that they are not hyper dense and are rather constructed similarly to a human, just on a bigger scale. So, with the amount of force that is apparently exerted--judging by the character that is jettisoned hundreds of feet into the air--the giant doesn't have enough of a reaction or recoil. Realistically, the giant himself would probably be flung into the air, at least a little and probably significantly. Without this reaction, the action simply cannot have the amount of force that it has.

            Video games have a particularly difficult challenge when faced with creating believable worlds, particularly because it's difficult to predict or control what a player will exactly do in them. So though games may try very hard to create universes that operate accurately, believably, and realistically, sometimes they fall short of this target. Sometimes it's an intentional choice to tweak physical properties, in order to add to the game play and entertainment. However, regardless it is important to have a keen sense and understanding of the underlying physics behind how things work so one can understand when something is working and when something isn't, and utilize that knowledge to make those important choices about what physical laws are vital to make things feel believable. Newton's Third Law is operating behind every action, and so while it can be pushed or broken to descent effect, it is vital to maintain an understanding of when an action is in fact breaking away from reality.

Outline of the Second Term Paper

Scientific Principle: Newton's Third Law of Motion
"For every action force there is an equal reaction force in the opposite direction"

Three video games that break the principle of action/reaction:

1. Portal - Character's jump boots allow the character to land after falling extreme distances. This is not physically possible because a change in momentum = (force) x (time), and the amount of time it takes for her to stop would not counter the momentum she gains (clip: http://youtu.be/wX9Sc88qreg?t=40s)
2. Half-Life - Gravity gun in the game suspends a lot of the physical laws of reality. However, focusing on action/reaction, when the gun is pushing or pulling a massive object, where does that force come from? It is seemingly conjuring force out of nowhere, particularly for the pull (clip: http://youtu.be/Zam5yw8idDg?t=1m39s) 
3. Skyrim - Rather pronounced how unrealistic it is, and seems more like a glitch, though it is in game! When the giants in the game use a certain attack, it will launch any character hundreds of feet into the air, violating the principle for a few reasons: the giant is hitting the person down, so they would have had to lose a significant amount of energy into the ground before that flight into the air (which means the force would have to me immense), and with that amount of force exerted onto the character, the giant should react accordingly. (clip: http://youtu.be/yp58uykSEmA?t=25s)
4. 
   

Outline:

I. Intro:

Thesis: Some video games violate Newton's Third Law of Motion

II. Body:

Portal: Chell's boots

• The boots allow Chell to fall incredible distances without receiving injury
• According to the equation (change in momentum)=(force)x(time), the fact that she can land with the amount of time she does from the height she does with the weight she has, she could not possibly have such a fast change in momentum.
• If she did have that fast of a change in momentum, the boots may save her ankles, but since they're to only her lower leg and don't have any brace for the rest of her body, her body would break in order to give enough force to account for the stopping in that short a time.

Half Life: Gravity Gun

• The gravity gun is capable of suspending many physical laws, but essentially it is able to pick up objects of virtually any mass and suspend them in the air, as if without gravity, and is also capable of drawing an object in from a significant distance and also propelling the object away at high velocity.
• Not enough of a reaction happening for really any of the gun's effects to take place, even if the gun was capable of generating "weightlessness." To jettison something forward like that, while we do see a small lightning bolt and a tiny recoil of the weapon, it would require some large force to move masses at high speeds.
• If that isn't enough, how can the gun's ability to pull objects to it be explained. It would require some sort of reaction (or action) for the object to be moved towards the gun, but as it is there is no visible force acting on the objects.

Skyrim: Giant's attack

• The giants in the game are capable of doing an attack that swings down into the ground and causes the enemy it strikes to be launched hundreds of feet into the air.
• It would take an immense force to hit something with the mass of a person that high into the air if it were striking upwards, but what it's doing is even more impressive because it's striking the character into the ground and they are then bouncing that high.
• With the amount of force apparently exerted on the character that has been launched into the air, the giant's should react accordingly according to Newtons third law

Conclusion:

Though Newton's third law is broken, it's done so in a way that helps the entertainment factor of the game (whether by making game play smoother or just more entertaining)

Reverse Video Reference

Here's my attempt to recreate the movements in the clips for the assignment! So tricky trying to capture everything!

Stop Motion Animation of Falling

Here's my stop motion fall! So I shot this using a webcam that was attached to a tripod overhanging my bed (as seen in image below). I used a software called monkeyjam to shoot, edit, and put together the different images, and I used a wireless mouse so I could capture a frame without having to move over to my laptop. For the actual animation I used a small sculpture of a skull (which has magnetic parts, making some of the earlier movements separating the jaw and the skull a bit difficult) and the set was simply some tombstones that I made out of artists tape and attached to my bed. I also used a straight piece of tape that I marked with the proper spacing for the falls. Then it was simply a matter of aligning the falling piece with the marks, and then animating the impact straight ahead. It was quite a fun little project! Especially for really my first attempt at stop motion!

Messy room and MacGyvered setup, but it worked alright!

The Laws of Physics in an Animation Universe

            In a world filled with superhero's, how do you make those powers feel real? How can extraordinary powers that don't exist in real life ever feel like they are believable? A large part has to do with understanding the physics behind it and knowing when and where to bend the rules. Pixar's The Incredibles does an excellent job of this, and they build a very interesting and believable world that contains these supernatural abilities. Creating a world that feels believable physically with only a few alterations to serve the story adds greatly to the effect of creating convincing super powers, which is vital to the Incredibles' success.

            First of all, The Incredibles has to have a strong and well established baseline for physics in the universe in order for the bending and breaking of the rules to feel incredible and yet believable, and to make the super abilities feel super. They achieve this by utilizing very realistic physics in virtually every scenario other than those that involve the super abilities. You can see the realistic simulation of physics throughout the vast majority of the film, but there are some clear examples that stand out. A lot of things go flying through the air in this film, and a lot of the arcs feel right. Objects travel on a parabolic trajectory whenever they move through the air. This can easily be found in scenes such as when Mr. Incredible jumps across the gap between two sky scrapers in order to save a suicidal man, when Dash tumbles through the air, or when Elastigirl is throwing herself over building tops. 

There are also numerous examples of centripetal force throughout the film, including the scene right before Dash flies through the air when he grabs on to a vine and is swung around a tree, and once again in that same scene where Elastigirl is throwing and holding herself to building tops. 

Throughout the entire film there is also a very strong and correct sense of balance and weight. This accurate sense in weight is very apparent in scenes where Mr. Incredible lifts enormous objects and they feel balanced right. 

All this to say that there is a strong sense that the physics of this world is similar to our own so that when rules are bent or pushed they are surrounded by a context that makes them feel even more extraordinary.

            Throughout the film there are dozens of characters introduced that have abilities that allow them to either suspend or bend certain laws of physics. One example of this is Mr. Incredible's super strength which allows him to jump long distances, lift enormous weights, and in general exert an incredible amount of power. In the universe of this film he is exempt from a lot of the rules that exist in our own. For instance, assuming that Mr. Incredible is capable of the strength it would take to lift a train—though it is more than a stretch of physical reality that any human could actually have the brawn of Mr. Incredible—the physics of the world are still bent slightly to allow for a more interesting and readable show of his power. In the scene where he is exercising by lifting two train cars (shown below), he is lifting objects many times his own weight by pulling down. However, applying Newton's laws would require that the "object [Mr. Incredible] will always change its velocity in the direction of the unbalanced force." Unless he weighs as much as the train, the net force comparing his weight versus the train's would weigh in favor of the train. So, to be physically accurate in this scene, Mr. Incredible should be lifted into the air when he pulls on one chain for the train, because it would require the weight of the other train in his other arm to lift the one. In fact, he would not be able to lift the train until there were tension between the chains and him, and then he could utilize the weight of both to lift each. Throughout the film one can see similar suspension of the rules surrounding Mr. Incredible, however, the rule bending makes sense because it serves the purpose of the story well and often creates a more interesting or non-distracting effect, and the strong and accurate feel of the physical world around these moments allows them to feel believable.

This is a crude version of what may happen with real world physics.

            Dash is another great example of how the physics of the universe are adjusted to fit the needs of a super ability. Dash can move and run at extremely high speeds and it is done in a very believable manner, as with most of the other super abilities. However, the creators pushed some physical laws in order for him to feel even faster. For instance, Dash is capable of essentially accelerating and decelerating instantaneously. In the real world, this kind of acceleration and deceleration is really not seen coming from anything with Dash's mass. He is able to start and stop on a dime, while being able to run hundreds of miles per hour, and in order for him to move that fast with real world physics it would take him at least some slow-in and slow-out. We can even see an example of this contrasted in the movie, when we see Dash run into swarm of insects and trip and fall we then see a more physically realistic slowing-in, for an object with his mass moving at that speed, as he tumbles across the forest floor. 

However, even though his ability to accelerate is not entirely true to reality, it functions in such a way that serves the purpose of his ability because if Dash could not control his acceleration as well as his speed, he would have quite a difficult time using his ability, and most likely would not even survive long. Furthermore, if it were in the real world, the speed at which he moves would probably cause some reactions in the environment around him that would be disruptive to the function of his character and abilities as well. There's a scene in which Dash moves across a classroom and back so as to leave a tack on his teacher’s chair, all in less than one frame of a video recording.

 Utilizing a table provided in the uniform motion video, he was moving at least 650 miles per hour assuming the distance between his seat and the teacher's is about twenty feet. The speed of sound is 761 miles per hour which would create a sonic boom, and since Dash had to be moving only at least 650 miles per hour to move faster than the recording of the camera it is quite possible that he actually reached 750 or more in speed. So in the scene Dash is trying to be sneaky, but realistically there would have been a sonic boom alerting the class of what was going on, and at that point the thumb tack on the teacher’s chair would probably be the last thing he'd worry about. So it makes sense why some of these physical rules had to be bent for Dash. Also, the friction involved with that kind of speed with his clothes and the air would probably also have some negative results. However, the minds at Pixar did in fact address this thought regarding friction with a bit of technology within the Incredibles universe.

            There is a significant amount of technology that plays vital roles in both the film’s story and its physical rules. Some examples of this are with the clothes that Edna designs for the super family. She is able to construct uniforms that are capable of matching their wearer's abilities. This includes garments that can withstand heat over 1000 degrees and enormous friction without heading up or wearing out, can turn invisible, can stretch incredible amounts and still retain its shape, be bullet proof, be virtually indestructible, and can even be machine washable. 

Now, most of this is far beyond the realm of what current fabrics or technology are capable of, yet in one scene the film essentially says, "These materials are possible and exist," so that as an audience we can move forward and fully believe and excuse the show of superpowers and the bending of a number of physical laws.

            There are other pieces of technology that seem to fall under the "super" laws of physics, and that includes the giant robots, who act essentially as anti-heroes. In many ways they behave very realistically according to real world laws of physics, but again, some rules are pushed to positive effect for the sake of the story. The main things that stand out is their incredible dexterity and ability to maneuver. 

There are a number of scenes in which we see these giant machines moving undoubtedly thousands of pounds quickly and seemingly effortlessly. Particularly with the arms, there seems to be quite a bit of mass to them, and yet they can wave around easily, almost as though they're more similar to the mass of a regular human arm. The amount of momentum they should realistically have with the speed at which they are moving would take a strength in material, engineering, and energy that does not seem currently feasible to create. However, without this ease in movement these monstrous machines would not pose much of a threat to the heroes, and so it seems like an important rule to bend. Finally, perhaps one of the biggest and most apparent break away from realistic physics is Syndrome's built ability "zero-point energy." 

This ability that Syndrome uses allows him to nullify the effect of gravity and the movement of a target. He can also move them anywhere in space as though they have no mass, so there's minimal momentum and no resistance, at least as long as the "energy" is active. This is quite clearly a break from reality, but it is a seriously awesome piece of technology that adds a lot to the show of superior engineering capabilities that this villain has. It falls into a similar category as something that has been a part of sci-fi for decades: anti-gravity. While I'm sure many scientists and physicists would like to make such a technology a reality, the laws of physics that it overcomes makes it a target that seems like it will remain only making our tales and epics feeling more incredible.

            The Incredibles is a wonderfully crafted film, and clearly an incredible amount of thought went into every aspect of its creation. The physics are carefully and intentionally pushed throughout the film in order to make the universe feel epic and extraordinary. The standard rules of the world are only broken in ways that allow these super characters to feel truly incredible, and to help make for a very entertaining world to watch.