Week12_Labs 1 & 2 ( Exercise 1 and 2)

Exercise 1:

Things learnt from the tutorial videos:

- Setting up a project
- Creating the background models (simple wooden planks)
- Texturing
- Bump-mapping (which we haven't covered yet)
- Keyframing
- Using the graph editor to control animation
- Lighting/camera setup
- Rendering

Exercise 2:

1) Do you need to be able to draw well to create good 2D animation? Explain your view.

Yes, I feel that you need to draw well in order to create a good 2D animation. As 2D animation is different form that of 3D, 2D animation require drawings as it is only a one way perspective view, so you need to draw well so to make the animation move in a single way view, thus drawing is needed to make a good 2D animation.

2) Do you need to be able to draw well to create good 3D animation? Explain your view.

As for 3D, it doesn't really need to draw well to create a good 3D animation. For 3D animation, there are programs such as Maya, to help users to create what they want inside the program, thu if you have the idea and concept, you just need to use the program to create what is in your mind, thus drawing is just a wireframe to get a better view of the objects, where is not really required compared to 2D animation.

3) What do you think would separate a piece of poor animation from a piece of good animation? In other words, how would you go about deciding if a piece of animation is good or bad?

A good animation is that the animation is well plan and thoughtful, where it is very realistic and good looking. Even minor factors such as breathing will be considered, as well as factors like the 12 principles we have learnt before is well-done.
A poor animation is animation which is just dull and robotic, which does not have the factors such as the 12 principles and etc.

4) In 2D animation, you need to be very aware of timing at a frame by frame level, using timing charts and other techniques - but for 3D animation, this is handled using the graph editor, which is more concerned with manipulating rates of change over time.
Does this affect how you approach your animation work? Explain.

Yes, for 2D animation, keyframes is just a more simple way of changing the timing and is not very detailed. For 3D animation, using the graph editor is much more detailed than those in 2D animation, which helps me to make animation more realistic, thus 3D animation shows the detailed of what it is compared to 2D, and that 3D requires more in-depth research and patience in order to make a good animation.

5) Give a brief critique of Maya as an animation tool. Don't just say Maya makes animation difficult, or easy, or that you need to learn a lot of stuff to use Maya - explain what Maya does well and not so well in terms of creating animation.

Maya is one of the better tool used for 3D animation, what Maya good about is that it have very detailed functions like graph editor tool, which makes animation more realistic and also with the detail points such as x-axis, which is able to allow users to make a detailed animation move. Maya is still improving, where I feel it could add more functions to make animation easier like a shortcut tool and etc, this also means that we need to remember more functions on Maya, where everything has its good and bad.