Week 8 animation exercises

This week we learnt some of the animation techniques we can use in our final project.

We learnt techniques such as connecting model to a curve and moving the curve, manipulating the animation to get the desired movement in the animation graph editor, attaching an object to a curve and making it follow it with the animate motion paths tool and again using the graph to aid us in this animation also.

The techniques I found hard were modifying of the graph  to get the desired movement, as you can see in the graph of the XWing, I needed to get the line extremely steep in order to get the speed I wanted from the other lines that showed a steady increase to emulate taking off.

My XWing following curve at wanted speed

Sphere following a curve

Animating objects using key frames seemed easier however I did use this with simpler objects just using it side to side. I will be using both these techniques in my final piece especially the curve movement when moving the camera.  

Cone and sphere moving due to curve hierarchy 

Manipulating graph to get desired movement.

The last exercise was to create a bouncing ball with the effect of scaling and translating and rotating all at the same time under the one animation. This was hard to get realistic and the graph editor had to be used but I was happy with the end result as it was my first time animating using the squash spring technique.

Shows the spring technique

shows the squash technique