Creating Stereoscopic 3D Images

I loved how the initial fish picture turned out so I tried using more of those.

Recreating Cameras and Lights in Maya

Photo:

Maya:

Extra Credit: Lighting a Scene in Maya

1 Point

2 Point

3 Point

TERM PAPER: Special Effects in Animation and Live-Action

In this day and age, we see special effects in almost every film we watch, even ones that don’t seem to require it. With this capability of improving everything we see on the big screen, there are many different techniques that are developed to fit certain styles or moods of each film. A very distinct style of film is stop motion animation and 3D animation. The two require not actors, but animators, who create the scene through their hands and knowledge of form and action. Now one of the key components of creating a style or mood is the film’s lighting. While stop motion animation have total control over their lighting, there are limits in certain situations and while 3D animation can create any lighting situation, there has to be a certain push to make it believable.

Paranorman, a stop motion animation, is about a boy who can see ghosts and is an outcast because of his special abilities. He is ridiculed by students at school and viewed as a problem child by his parents. The town is in danger when zombies are brought to life through a curse that was brought on by a witch they killed who in actuality was an innocent, little girl who didn’t want to do any harm with her powers. The film has a dark theme with the aspect of horror, very Tim Burton-esque. The lighting created in the film makes it feel gloomy much like a horror film and everything feels low key. Now to create this type of lighting, the crew had to assemble all sorts of different lights and arrange them in a way to create these moods that they wanted. They have total control, but limitations. In the film, there are scenes when lighting is being emitted from the body of the young witch and for lighting effects like that, the crew turned to using special effects via CG lighting. The ability to be able to control the lighting through actual lighting tools and having it on a set is beneficial and helps create the exact mood wanted in the film. It compares very much with live action films and helps create that believability despite knowing you are basically watching a puppet. However, when you are watching the film, you don’t question any of it. But when that extra punch is wanted and when the limits want to be pushed, that’s when the benefits of CG lighting come in.

The film, Wreck It Ralph, is a 3D animated film. It is completely done digitally. It displays flawless animation and lighting, everything you could ask for in a 3D animated film. However, how much of that lighting is true. While the believability is there, there is no actual lighting set up, much like a scene in a live action movie or even a stop motion animation, where you have the lighting set up for you to create the mood of the movie. In 3D animation, the light sources are adjusted and processed in a more technical way. Like in an outdoor scene, they don’t create an actual sun but an ambiance light that brightens the whole scene they are capturing. If there is a lamp in the scene, they try to recreate that light as much as possible. It might have worse lighting or better lighting than an actual lamp but it’s all in the hands of the ones controlling it and how they envision how the lighting should be. So while having total control over fictitious lights creates amazing results and unimaginable scenery, the thought process behind it is much more complex than having an actual light to work with. Not only that, but it is much easier to get away with certain lighting situations which explains why so many movies nowadays just use CG lighting to improve their films.

So while stop motion and live action lighting may hold limitations as to how certain things can be lit, that is when CG lighting can step in. And while CG lighting can’t create the exact replica of actual lighting, actual lighting can be used to create the CG lighting as an example. Both types of lightings are successful and unsuccessful but cover the negativities that they exhibit.

Outline of the Third Term Paper

THESIS: Comparing the visual effects of lighting in stop motion and 3D animation.

Stop Motion Example: Paranorman
3D Animation Example: Wreck It Ralph

1. Paranorman used actual lights to create the lighting
1. They could control the lights how they wanted physically
2. However, there are limitations to lighting a scene in stop motion
3. To solve limitations, they used CG which makes lighting in stop motion flawed
2. Wreck It Ralph used CG lighting
1. All possible lighting situations are possible
2. However, most of the lighting is make believe in these films so it's hard to determine what is correct or not
3. Although CG lighting is easier to solve than stop motion lighting, it is easier to make up/trick your audience into thinking it is real meaning you don't follow the actual physics of it

Stop-Motion Character Animation

TERM PAPER: Science Fact or Cinematic Fiction?

Anything in media can have a high impact on us, especially the things we see on movies, TV, and even video games. With the latest technology and rendering software, anything can be believable, especially special effects which give its aid to represent things that defy the laws of physics. However, with how convincing it looks, we don’t even bother looking at the fact that it could possibly wrong when there are many things that are wrong with the scene we are watching when watching one of those said movies. One of most broken rules is Newton’s third law of motion, also known as the action/reaction principle, is the physics principle in which to every action, there will be an equal and opposite reaction.

One movie that has seemed to earn it’s place in film history is Dark Knight of the Batman Trilogy. In one of the scenes, Rachel is confronting the Joker who has just crashed a party for Harvey Dent. Things escalate and when Batman comes to her rescue, Joker drops her after Batman tells him to let her go while she is being held over the ledge. As she is dropping, Batman lunges off the ledge and dives to save her. While falling, he is able to get a hold of her and turn their position so that he takes the brunt of the fall when they land on a car. According to the laws of physics, that shouldn’t have happened and the force of that fall should have killed him due to the change of acceleration. Another example that defies the laws of physics is double jumping. It is not at all possible in any sort of circumstance in which you can defy gravity while already defying gravity. In the video game, Super Smash Bros. all characters have an ability to jump twice in the air. The only circumstance in which that can happen is if there was a second propulsion that provides them that second jump however, in the game, that second propulsion is air. The action pushing off the ground which reacts into jumping and without something other type of propulsion, the reaction of the second jump to the action of pushing off the air is not possible. The final example is from Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. There is a scene when Todd Ingram punches the highlights out of Knives Chau's hair. That is not physically possible in any way. The action of the punch should be that she gets hit by it and reaction is that she is thrown back by the punch, not have her highlights punched off her hair.