What is animation

What is Animation? The word Animation is generated from word 'anime' which
means life. Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-
D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement The
bouncing ball animation (below) consists of these 6 frames.

A collection of static images joined together and shown consecutively so that

they appear to move. Animation is about storytelling by bringing things to life
(making them move).
t
For starting out, the below diagram illustrates the Maco animation flow chart. 
The arrows represent which way the animation can flow.  Sometimes certain
animations can only be accessed if coming from a particular previous animation
(such as a stop animation can only occur if it comes after a run), while other
animations have a high priority and can be called at any time such as the Death
or Slide animation.

Introduction to animation
What kind of stories to tell? Scientific, Visualization, Entertainment, Fiction,
Non-fiction. What is unique about animation? Unprecedented control! Anything
can happen Total control over how things look Total control over how things
move Animation process of creating images one at a time to be displayed
rapidly in sequence giving the illusion of movement . Persistence of vision
blending together by the eye and brain of rapidly displayed sequential images,
giving the illusion of movement. What is Animation? Computer Animation
deals with continuous sequence and display of set of images to create an effect
of visual motion. * Sequence of computer generated images. * Object light and
camera change over time.
:
Early Examples Of Animation :
Early Examples Of Animation The Persian bowl showing phases of a goat
leaping up to nip at a tree The Egyptian Mural, approximately 4000 years old,
shows wrestlers in action.

Many of the early inventions designed to animate images were meant as

novelties for private amusement of children or small parties. Animation
devices which fall into this category include the zoetrope, magic lantern,
praxinoscope, thaumatrope, phenakistoscope, and flip book :
Many of the early inventions designed to animate images were meant as
novelties for private amusement of children or small parties. Animation devices
which fall into this category include the zoetrope, magic lantern, praxinoscope,
thaumatrope, phenakistoscope, and flip book zoetrope Flip Book

Traditional Cel Animation / Hand Drawn Animation (20th

Century) :

Traditional Cel Animation / Hand Drawn Animation (20th Century) Photos of

the drawings were first drawn on paper. Each drawing differs slightly from the
other to create an illusion of movement. The drawings are traced or photocopied
onto transparent acetate sheets called cels. The cels were then filled in with
paints in assigned colors or tones on the side opposite the line drawings. The
completed character cels are photographed one-by-one onto motion picture film
against a painted background by a rostrum camera.
Beginning of 21st Century :
Beginning of 21st Century The animators' drawings and the backgrounds are
either scanned into or drawn directly into a computer system. Various software
programs are used to color the drawings and simulate camera movement and
effects The final animated piece is output to one of several delivery media,
including traditional 35mm film and newer media such as digital video

Computer Animation :- :
Computer Animation :- 2-D Animation :- e.g:- power point animation. 3-D
Animation :- e.g:-visual effect of movies.

Design Of Sequence:- The standard approaches for designing any animation

sequences is to have the following four steps :- Storyboard layout. Defining the
object of animation. Specifying the key-frame. In-between of the key-frames.
While this document is not purposed with teaching animation, here are some of
the basics and things to think about when animating your model:
Save each animation as a separate Maya file – Remember to Reference!
It is important that once you are finished your final character model, any
animations you create should be saved in separate Maya files.  For example, for
a character that has 4 animations (idle, run, walk, jump), my Maya files would

It is important to use references.  If you are unfamiliar with a reference in Maya,

a reference is basically an import of your original model into a new scene.  It
contains all of the same data in the exact same form as the original file.  The
advantage to using a reference over an import, is that if you make a change in
your original maco_player.mb file, this change will become updated in all of the
animation files referencing that particular Maya file.  If you imported your
model instead of referencing, this automatic updating would not occur.  This
technique is used all the time in the film and game industry.  It allows a modeler
to create a low poly proxy model for the person rigging the model.  Once the rig
is complete the rigger can hand the rig off to the various animators.  The great
thing is that the modeler can be making tweaks to the model or updating
textures and these changes will all become updated in all of the other files.
Animation Start/End frames
It is important to always be aware of which animations can lead into or will be
leading out of an animation.  For example, we know that if Maco is jumping
forward in the air, he can either transition into a wall grab, ledge grab, a fall, or
a land animation.  Keeping this in mind we have to make sure the last frame of
the jump animation and the first frames of those other animations will be able to
transition smoothly into each other.  Torque does a relatively good job of
blending between animations but you have to make sure that the body parts are
in relatively the correct spots or you are going to get some bad looking blends
between your animations.

Here’s an explanation of the different sequence node attributes we used when

creating Maco.  Anything that I have not explained in the list we never used and
left as default.
Start Frame – This is the 1st frame of the animation.
End Frame – This is the last frame of the animation.
Cyclic – Does the animation loop over and over?
Override Duration – This controls the speed that the animation plays in game. 
-1 means it’s off, .1 would mean the animation plays extremely fast, 2 means
the animation plays slow.  There’s no min or max value on this so you’ll have to
play with it yourself to better understand it.  We found that if we needed to
speed up the animation slightly in game that we would just turn this to
something like 0.8 and that would do the trick.
Ignore Ground – this one is kind of tricky.  If this is turned off, it means that the
animation will not take into consideration that your character is moving
forward, back, left, or right in the Maya scene.  We have this turned off most of
the time (except for the jump animation).  Note that if this attribute is turned on,
you will NOT be able to export triggers.
Force Transform – by default this is turned off.  Sometimes if you’re having
problems exporting and your animation isn’t looking right, turning this ON
might help solve the problem.
Num Triggers – this is how many triggers you have in the scene.  It’s best not to
touch this because as you add or delete triggers from your scene this will change
automatically to reflect those changes
Trigger Frame0 – The frame number that you put in this attribute represents the
frame that you would like to have something happen in your animation.  We use
these triggers for footstep decals and player sound effects.
Trigger State0 – Each Trigger Frame comes with a matching trigger state.  The
trigger state is what the code is looking for.  You may have up to 32 different
Trigger State’s coded into Torque.  We have the following states programmed
into the engine already:
1 – Left footstep sound, and left footprint decal
2 – Right footstep sound, and right footprint decal
3 – Play a rustling sound of Maco’s clothing
6, 7, 8, 9, 10 – These are all used for the ledge up animation to play separate
sounds during the animation
Note: The number 0 directly after the words Frame and State only means that it
is the first trigger created in the sequence (remember programmers start
counting from 0, not 1).  I think perhaps to avoid confusion you should think of
it as being labeled “A” instead, because really that number doesn’t mean
anything and it’s only internal to Maya’s Channel box.  The next trigger you
create will be labeled TriggerFrame1 and TriggerState1, the next
TriggerFrame2 and TriggerState2, etc.  Also do not think of the state values as 0
meaning off, and 1 being on.  As you can see from above, all the state does is
provide the code with a flag telling it to do something.
Exporting
Great!  So you have your model and you have your animations let’s get them
ready for the game.  A quick review on the different file types we will be
exporting to:
DTS
A .dts model contains the actual 3D mesh of the model, UV texture information,
the bones/skeleton (if one is present), detail levels, collision information, and
bounding box.  One exception if you are exporting a model for the sake of using
it as a player character is that the dimensions of the bounding box do not matter
because the code generates its own bounding box based on code.  However you
still need to use a bounding box in the scene and it is still used to decide where
the player is positioned inside of the in-game code generated bounding box
using the Maya bounding box pivot (yes a little confusing but there will be more
explanation below).
Dsq
A .dsq file plays the supporting role for the .dts file.  The .dts model as
discussed above is the physical mesh and skeleton while the .dsq file is the
animation information.  All that the .dsq contains is a list of the joints (also
called nodes) and where the joints are moving in 3D space.

Now instead of re-explaining how to export characters in this document, I

would like to point to a great resource on the Torque Developer Network
authored by Amr Bekhit.  The file exporting specifics are located near the
bottom of the page:  http://tdn.garagegames.com/wiki/DTS/Maya/Creating_a_Simple_Character

Rules of Animation :- :
Rules of Animation :- The three basic rules to give a realistic appearance to the
animation sequence. 1. Squash and stretch. 2. Slow-in and slow-out. 3.
Maintaining 3d affects. These are the basic thumb rules to be followed for
generating a good animation sequence.

Problems in Animation :- :
Problems in Animation :- 1.Temporal aliasing:- It occurs when the view of a
moving object is represented by a series of short samples as distinct from a
continuous view. 2.Rendering:-The animation should have smooth rendering
process between the images. 3.Ray tracing :- Ray tracing is atechnique for
generating an image by tracing the path of light through pixels in an image
plane.
Confusion between video & animation ?? :
Confusion between video & animation ?? An animation is an animated drawing,
cartoon, etc.A video is a live recorded motion picture. Although "video" is often
used to refer to any kind of audio/visual recording, An animation is never
referred to a live recording. 3. In animation we are giving some effects to
particular object, but in video we can’t. 4. A video is recorded from actual
footage where as an animation is made digitally.

Usage of Animation :
Usage of Animation Artistic purposes Storytelling Displaying data (scientific
visualization) Instructional purposes

Basic Principles of Animation :

Basic Principles of Animation TIMING The basics are: more drawings between
poses slow and smooth the action. Fewer drawings make the action faster and
crisper. A variety of slow and fast timing within a scene adds texture and
interest to the movement. SECONDARY ACTION This action adds to and
enriches the main action and adds more dimension to the character animation,
supplementing and/or re-enforcing the main action.

Basic Principles of Animation :

Basic Principles of Animation Straight Ahead Action and Pose-To-Pose Action
Straight ahead animation starts at the first drawing and works drawing to
drawing to the end of a scene. You can lose size, volume, and proportions with
this method, but it does have spontaneity and freshness. Fast, wild action scenes
are done this way. Pose to Pose is more planned out and charted with key
drawings done at intervals throughout the scene. Size,volumes, and proportions
are controlled in this way.

Basic Principles of Animation :

Basic Principles of Animation Staging A pose or action should clearly
communicate to the audience the attitude, mood, reaction or idea of the
character as it relates to the story and continuity of the story line. The effective
use of long, medium, or close up shots, as well as camera angles also helps in
telling the story. ARCS All actions, with few exceptions (such as the animation
of a mechanical device), follow an arc or slightly circular path. This is
especially true of the human figure and the action of animals. Arcs give
animation a more natural action and better flow.
Basic Principles of Animation :
Basic Principles of Animation Solid Drawing The basic principles of drawing
form, weight, volume solidity and the illusion of three dimension apply to
animation as it does to academic drawing. Transform these into color and
movement giving the characters the illusion of three-and four-dimensional life.
Three dimensional is movement in space.

Basic Principles of Animation :

Basic Principles of Animation Exaggeration Exaggeration is not extreme
distortion of a drawing or extremely broad, violent action all the time. It’s like a
caricature of facial features, expressions, poses, attitudes and actions.
Exaggeration in a walk or an eye movement or even a head turn will give your
animation more appeal.

Types of animation :
 Cut animation
 Stop maotion clay animation
 Object animation
 Puppet animation
 2-D animation
 3-D animation

Stop motion: 1. Frame-by-frame 2. Physically manipulating real- world objects

3. Photographing one frame of film at a time 4. Clay figures Clay animation: 1.
Clay or malleable material 2.An armature or wire frame

Cutout animation: 1. Unique technique 2. Flat characters, props, backgrounds 3.

Cut out from: paper, card, stiff fabric, photographs Object animation: 1. Non-
drawn objects: toys, blocks, dolls 2. Not fully malleable 3. Not designed 4.
Human or animal character 5. Combined with other forms

PUPPET ANIMATION The moving of the puppets Armature inside of them

Ongoing process In 1898 Albert. E. Smith and J. Stuart Black "The Humpty
Dumpty Circus"

2D animation: 1. 2D bitmap graphics 2. 2D vector graphics 3. Automated

computerized versions: tweening, morphing, onion skinning, interpolated
rotoscoping 3D animation: 1. Digital models manipulated by animator 2.
Rigging 3. Various other techniques: mathematical functions, particle
simulations, simulation with fur or hair, effects fire and water, motion capture

Creating Animation :
Creating Animation 2 step process for creating animations Step 1: Planning
Step 2: Implementation Step 1: Planning Decide on the problem to be solved
Design a solution – storyboard Determine the characters and objects to appear
on

Story Board Example :

Story Board Example

Creating Animation :
Creating Animation Step 2: Implementation Start production Post-production
Test playback and review Amendments Delivery or packaging

Slide 18:
VOCABULARY Animation has it’s own special “language” The software
Animation:Master also has it’s own computer shortcuts to make animation
simpler and easier We will be spending a lot of time on vocabulary and
computer shortcuts so you can become an animation expert!

Slide 19:
ELEMENTS OF ANIMATION Character design Script writing Storyboarding
Dialog recording – dialog is recorded first, so the animator can match the voice
to the lips What is the story all about? What will it look like when it’s done?
What does the character look like? What will the character act out? Will there
be interaction with other characters?

Creer Prospects

The Indian animation industry is currently at US $500 million and is expected

to reach US $1.5 billion by the year 2009. Yet, statistics reveal not even half of
the manpower requirement in the animation industry is being fulfilled in India.
NASSCOM says that India's gaming industry (computer games and mobile
games) is expected to generate $424 million by the 2010. NASSCOM has
projected a creation of an additional 300,000 jobs in this sector in next few
years.
Techniques of Animation :- :
Techniques of Animation :- Interpolation and transformation is the basic
technique used in animation which are used for in-between the key frames.
1.linear interpolation. 2.Translation. 3.Rotation. 4.Scaling.

Morphing :- :
Morphing :- The transformation of an object’s shape from one form to another
is called morphing. It can be applied to any motion or transition involving a
change in shape.

Hardware requirements :
Hardware requirements Image generation tools and devices such as scanners
,digital cameras for creating images. 2. Graphics accelerator board used for
controlling resolution and number of color of display.

Software requirement :
Software requirement Animation creation software allow user to create
animation sequences from scratch. Screen capture software used to capture
computer screen as graphic images. Animation clips is a library used for
directly importing images. Animation software import animation files like .FLI
and .FLC .

Applications :
Applications In medical - Computer Animation used for presenting result of
biomechanical analyses and simulation. In sports – Animation can be used in
sports like athletes for improving performance. In education – By using visual
effects in educations students can easy grasp and attract by the students. In
entertainment –Animation is used for creating cartoons or other visual effects
like movies ,video games for entertaining the user.

Advantages :
Advantages The animator has total control of animation. Interaction are
automatically realistic. System with complex inter-relationship are possible.
Capability of helping to keep the learned knowledge in mind. To visualize the
event that can’t be catch by the camera.

Disadvantages :
Disadvantages Difficult to specify large and dynamic images. It consume a lot
of memory space for storing data. Special software and programs are required to
obtain and process the data. The real-life performance may not be translate into
the computer model.
Examples of traditionally animated feature films :
Examples of traditionally animated feature films

Computer animation :
Computer animation Computer animation encompasses a variety of techniques,
the unifying factor being that the animation is created digitally on a computer.

2D animation :
2D animation 2D animation figures are created and/or edited on the computer
using 2D bitmap graphics or created and edited using 2D Vector graphics. This
includes automated computerized versions of traditional animation techniques
such as of tweening, morphing, onion skinning and interpolated rotoscoping.

3D animation :
Digitally modeled and manipulated by an animator. To manipulate a mesh, it is
given a digital skeletal structure that can be used to control the mesh. (rigging)
Other techniques can be applied such as mathematical functions, simulated fur
or hair, fire/water effect and the use of Motion Capture. Many 3D animations
are very believable and are commonly used as Visual Effects for recent movies.
3D animation

EXAMPLES:

Beowulf, Polar Express and Avatar are recent examples of 3D Animation

2D animation techniques tend to focus on image manipulation.3D techniques

usually build virtual worlds in which characters and objects move and interact.
3D animation can create images that seem real to the
viewer. :
2D animation techniques tend to focus on image manipulation.3D techniques
usually build virtual worlds in which characters and objects move and interact.
3D animation can create images that seem real to the viewer.
Animation Industry :
Animation Industry The rapid advancement of technology has made computer
animation available to the masses and the animation industry is one of the
fastest growing industries. The demand for animated entertainment has
expanded with the increase in broadcasting hours by cable and satellite TV
along with the growing popularity of the Internet. Animated series/films can
now be enjoyed not only by kids but the family on the whole.