Creating Stereoscopic 3D Images

This is a pretty cool assignment, but I'm not sure if I did it 100% correctly.

Recreating Cameras and Lights in Maya

Original Image: 

Maya Images:

Building a Scene in Maya

                                                                             EC

My first two term paper scores were 87 and 89; I will not be writing a third term paper.

Outline of the Third Term Paper: Effects Animation

1. Intro

a. Video games and movies use different effects to create interesting situations.

b. By comparing a movie derivative and the original show could be used as comparisons to see which one worked better.

Thesis: By using the Avatar: the Last Airbender show and the Avatar: the Last Airbender movie, we can compare how these two movies approach water effects.

2. The effect

a. When Aang controls a tidal wave to repel the Fire Nation invaders, it is a giant wave that destroyed their ships in the movie.

b. In the animated version, Aang infuses with a spirit and rampages against the enemy troops with a variety of water magic(water bending).

3. The movie critique

a. For such a big tidal wave, the eventual crash seemed underwhelming.

b. Even if the tidal wave is magically controlled, it would take quite a considerable effort to keep it standing still for so long.
c. The rising of the tidal wave seemed more powerful than it pitifully collapsing down, considering the size of the final tidal wave.
4. The cartoon scene
a. The smaller tidal waves were moving fast enough to knock over the tanks.
b. In that form, the water spirit was able to cut ships down. Water could be pressurized to cut a lot of things including steel, although its quite a bit of a stretch since magic is involved.
c. The same huge tidal wave was actually as powerful as it would be to a bunch of ships.
5. Conclusion
a. It is obvious that the critically panned movie was not as effective as the animated series.
b. Just because animation can get away with impossible scenarios, it doesn't mean that some of effects couldn't work scientifically.

Second Term Paper: Science Fact or Cinematic Fiction?

            Action scenes in movies are the part people remember the most. They use the drama and the uncertainty to keep the audience eyes glued onto the screen. The hero is usually in trouble or something happens to create a strong sense of tension which causes an action to occur. These high tension action scenes are usually put in chase scenes or drawn out fights. These great moments of films are always exhilarating, but ignoring scientific facts is rather lazy on the film makers end. There are ways to create tense action scenes without making an interrupted jump trajectory seem unrealistic, because the audience wants to be immersed in films. Even though animated scenes can get away with breaking rules of reality, there are always moments that break our suspense of disbelief. There are certain scenes in these movies that run into these issues: Batman: Under the Red Hood, James Bond: Quantom of Solace, and Iron Man 2. Because actions shots are more emotional and use tension to sell a scene, there are a lot of mistakes in action sequences in terms of inertia.

           Batman: Under the Red Hood is the first film to be critiqued in terms of improper physics. Batman: Under the Red Hood is an animated Batman film dealing with the aftermath of the death of the 2^nd Robin, Jason Todd, and how the lingering guilt affects Batman. However, an unknown figure with a red mask named the Red Hood threatens Batman by taking control of the criminal element. Red Hood's techniques gives Batman pause as it seems too reminiscent of someone close. In the first chase of the movie, Batman chases the Red Hood and almost catches him by shooting the grappling hook at his leg and try to snag him from his jump. At the split second it hooks onto Red Hood's legs, he snaps it free with a quick knife swing and continues his jump away to freedom and shakes off his tracks. This moment alone breaks the rules of inertia. While he is moving during his jump, the inertia of his jump should be affected in someway by the force of the grappling hook. The hook is the opposing force and that small split second alone should be enough to ruin his jump trajectory towards freedom. The raw force of the jump have to be so powerful to overpower the split second snag of the rope on his leg for it to not affect his jump arc. Had proper physics were to be applied to the same jump, the Red Hood would be in a bit of a pickle now that his jump away from the Batman is ruined. One could argue that it's animated and that these characters are super heroes, but most of the cast of the Batman series are essentially just human.

           The second film in the discussion will be the film James Bond: Quantom of Solace. If there is anything the James Bond films have in common over the years is that: there's is several chase scenes, an over-zealous villain who almost kills Bond but their pride gets in the way, and being a lady's man. In this particular film, Bond is fighting this villain and it lands them into an under construction area with scaffolding. During the fight, the two swing across the ropes mid chase and they both slam into the ceiling and fall. The villain lands safely on one of the scaffolding, while Bond tumbles and his leg gets caught on the rope and breaks his fall. In the tense moment of the two reaching for their gun, Bond grabs his gun first and shoots the villain while being upside down from the rope. The problem with this scene is that from such a high fall, his terminal velocity should have dictated a much different outcome. With the speed of his terminal velocity and his weight, his ankle cannot support the weight of a fully grown man and prevent him from slamming his body onto the ground below. The reason why some people live falls is because there is something to decrease their speed before the impact. Air bags in cars create a delayed reaction so that the possible injury in car accidents are reduced. A rope cannot create a sense of a delayed action just because his body gets a little caught up in it. The reality of this scene would be that not only his ankle would break because of his terminal velocity, but also he face plants onto the ground.

           The final film that will be analyzed will be Iron Man 2 and the scene when Iron Man and Warmachine crashes through the building and land on the ground. In this scene, Warmachine's armor is remotely controlled and the two friends are forced to fight. As they fight in the air, the two tackle and crash lands on the ground from a high height. The problem with the scene is that the two gets up like nothing happened and the scene continues on. The armor may be strong enough to survive the impact of the landing, but the human body is still in motion and the abrupt stop from such a high height is sufficient enough to instantly kill them. This is a continued concept from the James Bond paragraph because of the concept of inertia is in play. From such a high height, the fall must be cushioned so that the vulnerable human body inside the armor can prevent damage. Just like swerving inside a car, the human body will keep going. Unless the armor has some gravity technology to act as a way to shield the body from any harm during falls, it's likely that the frail human body can't handle the impact of the fall. So the high speed of the rocket boots of the armor plus their weight with the armor on should easily create a lethal situation where the two won't easily stand up.

             We get caught up in the action of the scene to not notice these things in action scenes, but there is always a way for directors to make a scene more believable. There is always that fine line to be struck between breaking the rules and making the scene more realistic in movies. In the end, these scenes worked for the most part and people were sold despite the errors in physics. Whether or not the laws are broken, the directors should know concepts and know how to break them. As long as the suspense of disbelief isn't broken completely, people will buy that a hook won't mess up a jump, a rope can break someone's fall, and a robotic suit can protect someone from a high fall. Action movies tries to blur reality by pushing tension in a shot, science and reality says otherwise however.

Outline: Science Fact or Cinematic Fiction

Outline:

Intro: Because actions shots are more emotional and use tension to sell a scene, there are a lot of mistakes in action sequences in terms of inertia.

1. Batman: Under the Red Hood
Batman shoots a grappling hook to snag Red Hoods leg, but doesn't mess up his jump trajectory

• but even the split second it hooks on before he cuts it, it should be enough to mess up his jump arc
• the strength of his jump has to over exceed the speed of the grappling hook for this to barely make a factor.
• If something snags the leg for even a second, its a force powerful enough to create a reaction.

2. James Bond: Quantom of Solace
 Bond and villain smashes into the roof while swinging with ropes and tumbles down, Bond however gets his leg caught in the rope mid-fall and that breaks his fall, rather than his ankle.

• From that high of a fall, it should at least break his ankle if it does properly break his fall.
• Because an adult weighs a lot, he would be falling at a speed fast enough to shatter his leg AND slam his face into the ground instead of dangling safely.
• The height of the roof doesn't help, in fact it should contribute to the speed that he should be falling in.
• the ankle doesn't have enough strength to hold an adult male's weight and the combined force of his acceleration and his weight.

3. Iron Man 2
When Iron man and War machine crash land back into the stadium and they stand up just fine afterwards.

• moving at missile speed and crashing down will not only damage the suits, but because human flesh is soft.
• Because of the high acceleration and the sudden stop on the suit, the body should be completely wrecked by the impact because it's still in motion.
• It doesn't help that humans weigh enough for the damage to matter.

Conclusion: Action movies tries to blur reality by pushing tension in a shot, science and the laws of inertia says otherwise.

Reverse video reference

Here are my attempts at recreating the motions in the videos, and some of them presented a bigger challenge than others.

Clip A

Clip B

Clip C

Clip D

Stop Motion Animation of Falling

I had a camera held in place above a table and took shots of the frames and I felt out the motions of the arcs.  After compiling the shots onto the computer, I used Quicktime Pro to put it on 2s.  The reason why I picked the leaf test was, because it was a familiar animation from my previous animation classes.

The Laws of Physics in an Animation Universe: Rango

        

            Rango is an animated movie that gives a respectful nod to the western genre.  It is a heavily motion-captured 3D animated movie following the thespian Chameleon who ends up lost on the highway with no name to himself.  After he escapes death from a hawk, he enters a western styled town and uses his acting talents to weave a false story for himself and a name: Rango.  A lot of the realistic animations are motion captured by the actors themselves, but they make use of cartoony animation to push the scenes in the story.  The animation directors paid close attention to these extremes in animation by executing well enough to not break the suspension of disbelief.  Some of the things that are pushed includes things like stretching, and exaggerating effects.  Rango plays along with realism and cartoon-like moments to create a humor driven movie, and to keep the suspense of disbelief

            The animators plays with cartoony physics for comedic effects and to increase tensions in certain scenes.  One of the scenes where this is employed is the very beginning when Rango gets pushed out the door, literally.  He gets flung out of the car after his owners get in an accident and lands with the broken glass of his tank on road.  If that wasn’t enough, the scenes ramps up to where he latches onto a truck shortly afterwards.  He ends up getting flung from that truck into a car antenna from the counterbalance and gets flung again into a car windshield.  The directors uses slapstick to really sell the resiliency of Rango and to ramp up action.  Scenes like this are reminiscent of stuff like the Looney Tunes that also used fast paced slapstick comedy.  Another scene where the physics is pushed is when Rango is dropped inside the bottle from a high height and that impact didn’t outright squish the frog, or break the glass.  When the talons cleaved the Peptobismol bottle, it cleanly falls over to the side instead of lopping over or fling over to the direction of the force.  The only possible outcome would be if the bottle had the drag effect, where the motion was fast enough that the pieces wouldn’t fling away.  Another ridiculous scene is when Rango doesn’t get ripped in two when the hawk was tugging on the rope on his waste with full strength. 

            Scenes worked in the movie as well as they did because some characters were given unnatural powers at that time.  One scene in particular, the hawk was blinded by diving into a can and rampages across the wooden settlements in the chase.  The hawk easily bulldozes through the whole town, despite that hawks are rather light.  The hawk carried a ridiculous amount of momentum for just running around the city, since all the smaller forces of the buildings should have stopped it earlier.  Another ridiculous feature the hawk sported in the movie was the power of its claws.  When Rango hid in the bathroom, the hawk swiped away the Peptobismol port-a-potty with one slash of with its talons.  This wouldn’t work in real life since a hawk’s talons are tailored by evolution to give it grip rather than swiping power like a feline does.  It would be able to poke holes through it, but slicing isn’t a feature birds are known for.  The armadillo survives being ran over and walk over to talk to Rango in the movie.  This is absurd since it would die in reality, although one could argue that the armadillo might be a hallucination.  Rango had the strength to somehow latch onto the water tower, despite the much more powerful hawk tugging on the rope attached to his body.  The animal townspeople in the movie seem to have a ludicrous amount of strength for their size, since they seem to be able to spin the wheels to turn on the water.

            To contrast the cartoony nature of animated films, motion capture and feasibly possible moments gives audience a visual break.  Early in the movie, Rango is dropped by the hawk when he was inside the bottle.  If he were to fall from that height, he would survive since the speed of his terminal velocity won’t be fast enough to kill him.  Rango is too small to reach a faster terminal velocity, even with the bottle adding some weight.  When Rattlesnake Jake finally meets Rango, Jake milks his venom into a shot glass to intimidate him.  Snakes can be milked of their venom for research rolling in shattered in half upon hitting sharp rock.  The bottle still kept moving because of the laws of inertia and it also was moving in a constant motion until it hit the rock.  Some of the more unlikely scenarios include any of the ricochet moments with bullets.  Calculating ricochets would involve precise measurements of the angles and the texture of the objects the bullet is hitting.  Rattlesnake Jake unloads the bullets from Rango’s gun by hanging the revolver in his tail-gun and shaking off the bullets.  When a revolver’s cylinder is exposed like that, removing bullets become rather easy.

            From the use of motion capture to the use of traditional animation effects, the directors use these effects to entertain the audience.  The audience won’t really pay attention to all of these stretches of reality as long as the action remains tense and the slapstick moments funny.  All of these breaks of reality is what makes animation works to this day, because why follow all the rules?  Breaking of these laws allow more creative liberties to be taken.    This movie is a criminally underrated gem in my book, since so much of this movie is well executed.  The designs of the characters are interesting and they employ classic western tropes with almost surgical precision.  The action is well paced and there never seems to be any unnecessary moments in the movie.  Thus, Rango cleverly plays with reality and fiction to keep the audience entertained without breaking the suspense of disbelief.