Kim Fu - Physics 123

Hello, I am Kim Y. Fu! Nice to meet you. This blog is dedicated to the class Physics 123 of Fall 2015.

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Recreating Cameras and Lights in Maya

Original Photo:

Maya Renders:

Original Photo:

Maya Renders:

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Bonus Points: Lighting a Scene in Maya

Unlit

One-Point Lighting  (Key)

Two-Point Lighting  (Key + Fill)

Three-Point Lighting  (Key + Fill + Rim)

The rig is Stewart from Animation Mentor.

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Extra Credit - CTN

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Stop-Motion Character Animation

For this project, I used a plush doll and a miniature figurine, and I used a bed as the setting.  It was really fun to see this video after I was done compiling it.  However, the shooting process was the most difficult for me.  I had a lot of trouble keeping objects in place, and it was especially challenging to do so on top of a wobbly soft mattress.  In the end, I felt like I learnt a lot from doing this stop-motion.  It was a fun new way to animate that i enjoyed exploring.

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Science Fact or Cinematic Fiction?

In movies and video games, physical movements of human (or human-like) characters are often broken and unrealistic.  Newton’s first law, the law of inertia is an essential concept for developers and directors to keep in mind.  Especially when it comes to building a fictional world from imagination.  However, this concept is often broken in animated segments of movies and video games.  It is very easy to blur the lines between fiction and fact.  But it is important as an animation student myself to observe these aspects and know what does and does not happen in the real world.

In the video game ‘Bayonetta 2’ there is a segment where the main playable character, Bayonetta, is shown to be battling against centaur-like enemies on top of a jet that is flying at high speeds.  At times, the jet is clearly shown to tilt from side to side in the air at steep angles.  However, the characters standing on top of the tilting vehicle behave as if gravity originates from the jet and not the Earth!  The characters are able to keep themselves standing on it so well, it is as if they are no different from being on flat land.

This video shows part of the fighting sequence on the jet.  Keep an eye on the centaurs and the angle of when they fall down after being kicked up into the air:

The jet sometimes tilt close to 90 degrees steep to one side, and still the characters would jump up and down perpendicular to the vehicle’s surface!  This seem very unrealistic because no matter which direction the platform tilts or how steep it is, the inertia of physical objects should still obey the primary direction gravity is pulling - which is bringing things down towards the Earth, and should not be shifting to become perpendicular to a flying jet.  Even if the characters are traveling at high speeds with this vehicle, gravity should still be acting upon them.  There is one exception to this, and that is if the objects can travel fast enough to surpass Earth’s rotational speed for them to be able to escape gravity’s pull.  But the speed of the jet shown in this sequence is nowhere near fast enough for that theory to be plausible.  The path of action of when the characters get thrown up and fall down should shift and gravitate towards Earth as they land.  It will likely not be a perfect up and down line on top of the jet, as it is currently shown in this video.  As it is now, the force of gravity feels like it is missing in this game.  In the end, this deviation from the laws of physics is forgiven by the fictional lore of this series - where the characters can basically wield magic, and Bayonetta has this ability called Witch Walk that allows her to walk on walls and ceilings, disregarding gravity.

Raiden is the main playable character from the video game ‘Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance’.  He is a cyborg, and one of his special abilities is being able to run up walls for long periods of time.  Like many action games and movies, this superhero’s actions are highly exaggerated and breaks the boundaries of realism.

Let’s take a look at this clip where Raiden first runs sideways on a wall, and then in the next scene he runs upward on a skyscraper building:

Even if Raiden is able to get enough forward momentum to keep his feet in contact on a wall and run up against it, eventually that force will wear off soon after.  The force of Gravity would soon overpower his body’s weight and pull him back to the ground, making him fall.  However, in the game, this character is able to wall-run for very long periods of time, or possibly indefinitely.  Gravity would act on him much faster than is interpreted in these scenes.  Even if theoretically he did gather enough force keep his body against a wall for such a long time, the force will instead probably be too strong and will bury his body into the building from the pressure.  No matter how fast he charges, there is not enough traction to keep a person running against a vertical wall.  On top of that, every step he takes as he run will contribute to yanking his body away from the wall, and he should fall very quickly after a few steps.  Right now, it is as if he altered gravity to shift into the wall from the ground, and there is a phantom force pulling him towards the wall to keep him running on it.

Unfortunately, this is an example of a poorly simulated action in CGI animation.  In fact, many fans remember this specific shot solely because of how out-of-place and broken the movement feels.  The character, Legolas from the movie ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers’, flings himself onto a horse in one scene.  But the choreographing and animation of this action does not appear believable to many viewers.

Observe the movement of Legolas (the archer with blond hair) when he tries to swing his body onto the horse:

The basic inertia and overlapping action of objects is when something trails after the main source of movement leads, the softer parts will drag behind.  However, in this sequence, Legolas’s clothes and cape overlaps the wrong direction!  The cloth leads ahead of his jump first, and then his body follows through afterwards.  If this were to be fixed and made more believable, the animators flip these the other way around.  They would make source of the swing’s energy to lead first (Legolas’s torso), and then the fabric would trail behind that.  As it is now, it appears as if Legolas’s clothes has a mind of its own and is dragging the poor elf’s body around wherever it goes.

Many Laws of physics are often twisted in movies and video games.  Inertia is hard to maintain right, especially in fantasy worlds where everything is built from imagination.  But these choices may have been deliberately made to help enhance the action and excitement during a sequence.  I do not think this is necessarily a bad thing to do, as long as the creators understand what they are altering to help enhance storytelling or gameplay.

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Outline for the Second Term Paper

Introduction

Thesis: In movies and video games, physical movements of human (or human-like) characters are often broken and unrealistic.

Body Paragraphs

1. Bayonetta 2 Around the beginning of this game the main character, Bayonetta the witch, is shown to be battling against centaur-like enemies on top of a flying jet.  At times, the jet is clearly shown to tilt from side to side in the air.  However, the characters standing on top of it behave as if gravity originate from the jet and not the world!  For example when the jet tilts almost 90 degrees steep to one side, the characters can still jump up and down perpendicular to the surface of the jet.

2. Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance The main playable character, Raiden the cyborg, is able to run up walls.  Even if this character is able to get enough forward momentum to keep his feet in contact on a wall and run up against it, eventually that force will wear off and gravity should pull Raiden back to the ground.  However, in the game, this character is able to wall-walk for unrealistically long periods of time, or even indefinitely.  It is as if he altered gravity to shift to the wall from the ground.

3. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers Unfortunately, this is an example of a poorly simulated action.  The character, Legolas, flings himself onto a horse.  But the choreographing and animation of this action does not appear believable.  For example, Legolas’s clothes overlaps the wrong direction when he flings his body.  It is as if the clothes are leading his jump, and the body follows afterwards - which should be the other way around.  Also his center of gravity seems to shift up and around unpredictably during his swing.

Conclusion

Many laws of physics are often broken in movies and video games.  But they may have been deliberate choices to help enhance the action and excitement during the sequence.  I do not think this is necessarily a bad thing to do, as long as the creators understand what they are altering to help enhance storytelling or gameplay.

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Reverse Video Reference

Clip A

Clip B

Clip C

Clip D

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Stop Motion Animation of Falling

This is my first time doing stop motion animation!  It was really fun exploring a new form of animation.  I took multiple pictures of a pistachio on a paper background, using a camera secured on a tripod pointing downwards.  Masking tape was used to indicate ground plane.  I didn’t use any suspension for this animation, since everything was placed on table top.  I did some post-process animation in After Effects after shooting the stop motion.  e.g. I had to take out some frames and hold others longer.

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The Laws of Physics in an Animation Universe - Splatoon

‘Splatoon’ is a first-person shooter game developed by Nintendo EAD, in which the audience mainly play as squid-people and shoot colored ink at obstacles with water gun-like weapons.  Like many other video games, ‘Splatoon’ exists in a fantastic fictional universe where the rules of nature are often disregarded or exaggerated.  The creators of ‘Splatoon’ frequently breaks the rules of physics in order to enhance the gameplay experience and make it more entertaining to the players.

Let’s first touch upon the subject of the game’s shooting mechanic, the core of the gameplay.  The enemies, called the Octotroopers, will come and attack the main player with purple ink.  The bullets that they shoot at the player is a big blob of liquid paint about the size of a large grapefruit.  However, the thick ball of liquid paint travels through air at an extremely slow speed and steadily hovers like a soap bubble.  Here is a video showing the slow-moving orbs of liquid paint in air: Please keep an eye on the big PURPLE ink bullets!

This contradicts with the laws of gravity since the bullets consist of thick opaque paint all the way through the orb.  Somehow the heavy ball of liquid paint obtains massive amounts of buoyancy out of nowhere, and keeps itself afloat in air and travels through far distances without dropping on the ground.  It is impossible for large bodies of water or heavy ink to keep afloat in air for such a long time at such a slow speed in still air.  The bullets should instead splatter on the ground much sooner if referring to realistic terms.  Strangely enough, not all paint attacks will defy gravity the same way.  Some of them appears to behave pretty naturally compared with the example that is described before.  For example, the green paint of the main playable character behaves more realistically than compare with the purple bullets.  However, these kinds of bullets are only most prominent during the beginning levels of ‘Splatoon’.  It is probably deliberately designed this way to ease beginner players into getting more familiar with the game, making the starter enemies easier to defeat.

Another aspect of this game, according to the lore, is that the main characters are not humans.  Instead, they are squids who can morph their muscles into a human-like appearance, and they can change back and forth from squid to human body type very quickly.  According to the anatomy of a real-life squid, these characters should also have no solid bones in their bodies.  This can allow their muscles to freely morph into different shape and form easily. This is a video of the morphing as seen in-game, in slow-motion:

If characters are squids with an all-muscle body structure, their bodies would not appear and move around so rigidly as they would, compared with human beings.  Unfortunately, when they are on dry land, they do not have the buoyancy of water to keep their bodies in  proper structure and they cannot retain their form.  Instead, their fragile boneless bodies would squash and compress on the ground more.  As a result, they should move around much slower than they currently can in this game.  Nevermind all the jumping, sliding, running, or even being able to hold their own gun - the characters would already have a hard enough time trying to stand upright!  Then again, playing as a slow-moving squid beached on land inside of a fast-paced shooter game may not be the most fun experience in the world.

Finally, I will like to talk about the launchpads.  Launchpad is a gadget in ‘Splatoon’ that helps catapult a character across far distances in a game map.  The playable character will navigate to one such pad, and they be shot across the sky like a human cannon.  This helps the players go to a new area and progress further into the game. Here is a video of launchpads at work:

After being propelled several stories high, and landing on hard concrete ground afterwards, the character will likely not survive these impacts.  Dropping from such great heights can kill almost any living creature, and logically the player should die at the moment of landing and receive a ‘Game Over’ screen right then and there.  However, the game breaks the realism and the playable character survives such landings without a scratch at all!  This is likely a deliberate choice from the game developers to add a sense of rush and excitement into the gameplay while allowing the character to cover far distances in a short period of time.

In conclusion, the video game ‘Splatoon’ does clearly bend with many rules of physics.  A lot of movements and animations in the game does not correspond logically with reality.  However, this is acceptable because the creators of this game used artistic license to help enhance the game and make it more fun to play - whether it be slowing down bullet time to ease in beginner players, allowing squids to move on land as quickly as humans do to keep up the game’s fast pace, or giving the audience an adrenaline rush by launching them off into the air like a human cannon.  In the end, the game players are more engaged and interested in the product due to these leeways.

It is essential for us to understand the importance of realistic physics, especially if we want to be creators of a fictional world and create a new universe from imagination.  Not only should we study and understand the fundamentals of making something believable and relatable with real science, but also as artists we should know how to bend certain rules to make a world more fantastic and exciting.  In art, people are allowed to break rules and soar free with their imagination.  People like to jump into a new world when they play video games and feel like a superhero while they do so.  If every single video game or art form is 100% realistic, we would be living in a very boring world indeed.

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Term Paper Outline - Splatoon

Introduction

Video Game: Splatoon Thesis: The video game ‘Splatoon’, developed by Nintendo EAD, breaks a lot of rules of physics.

Body Paragraphs

1. Unrealistically Slow-Moving Paint Bullets The bullets of thick paint travel at an extremely slow speed and float like big soap bubbles in the air. This contradicts with the rules of gravity since the bullets appear to consist of thick opaque paint, which means they have a lot of weighty liquid inside.

2. Fragile Squid Body on Land If characters are squids, when they are on land, their bodies wouldn’t be so rigid and they would move much slower. The force of gravity too strong on land, and the squids doesn't have the buoyancy of water to keep their body in proper structure.

3. Death by Launchpad The launchpad is a gadget in the game that catapults the character across far distances in a game level map. The character probably will not survive the giant launches, considering how high they are propelled and will land on the ground afterwards.

Conclusion

The developers of this game may have researched this and known about their own mistakes in breaking rules of realistic physics. But the designers likely have deliberately chosen to do so and use artistic licenses to enhance the fun and game play.

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Video Analysis of Path of Action

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Tracker Video Analysis of Falling

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Shooting Video Reference

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Mini-Portfolio - Ani128A Final - “Thief”

Mini-Portfolio - Personal Work

Hello, my name is Kim Fu.  I was born and raised in Hong Kong, and first moved to California 6 years ago.  I am a student in the Animation/Illustration program of SJSU, and also the current Webmaster of the Shrunkenheadman Club!

As of now, I focus on studying illustration, as I want to become a creature designer in the future.  But at the same time, also taking advanced animation classes, because I love animation as well!

After I graduate, my plan is to work for the video game industry.  But I also enjoy movies and TV shows very much, and would love to be a part of them too!  Some of my favorite companies include, but are not limited to: Bethesda Softworks, DONTNOD Entertainment, Dreamworks, GAINAX Co., Trigger Inc.

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The First Post

Hello, I am Kim Fu! Nice to meet you. This blog is dedicated to the class Physics 123 of Fall 2015.