Creating Stereoscopic 3D Images

This was a really cool assignment. I didn't know it was so easy to make a 3-d image. I just wish I had not tried to take the outdoor shots in the afternoon of a school day. There were so many students walking into my shot!

I made an extra one for fun.

I wanted to make a 3-d image of my flare gun, but the materials were all gone and I had no idea to bring them back. So, instead I tried to add some depth to a previous assignment for this class.

Recreating Cameras and Lights in Maya

 Maya and I don't get along well. I find it hard to work with the lights, so I tried giving it two shots in hopes I'd learn from the experience.

 Photo:

Maya Renders:

Photo 2:

Maya Renders:

Extra Credit: Lighting a Scene in Maya

One-point lighting

Two-point lighting

Three-point lighting

Building a Scene in Maya

Science Fact or Cinematic Fiction

No term paper is being submitted.

Outline for Second Term Paper

1. Introduction
1. Action/Reaction principle - for every force there's a simultaneous actionary and reactionary force of equal magnitude and opposite direction
2. Movies in the superhero genre break this law to demonstrate the superhuman abilities of their heroes
2. Superman Returns (2006)
1. Superman takes several bullets from an automatic weapon to the chest. Instead of suffering mortal wounds, they simply ricochet off of him.
2. More impressively, next Superman takes a bullet to the eye.  Superman's eye is able to not only stop the bullet, but crush it, rather than ricochet like the previous bullets
3. Superman's body should correctly be penetrated by bullets. Instead, his body exerts enough force to send bullets flying away and/or crush them.
3. Iron Man (2008)
1. Iron Man arrives to fight terrorist in Gulmira in a dramatic fashion, falling onto the ground at an incredible speed.  The ground should generate enough force to destroy Iron Man's body, but his body remains intact.
2. Iron Man flies away at a rapid speed when he's hit by a missile, sending him careening into the earth.  This time, he hits the earth with so much force that he creates a crater, yet Iron Man miraculously survives unharmed
3. Iron Man's suit can't protect him against the huge force the earth generates when he hits it at high speed, yet he survives.
4. The Avengers (2012)
1. Iron Man and Thor have a confrontation that escalates to a full blown fight. During this confrontation, they are able to exert powerful amounts of force with minimal effort
2. Iron Man and Thor both launch themselves very high off the ground, eventually flying, after barely exerting any force on the ground
3. Thor headbutts Iron Man, barely drawing his head back. Despite the lack of anticipation, Thor generates enough force to send Iron Man tumbling a great distance.
5. Conclusion
1. Superhero movies are notorious for breaking the laws of physics, especially the action/reaction principle
2. Reason: It's more fun, less violent, and establishes the magical/superhuman nature of the superheroes

Character Animation

I made my film in conjunction with Samantha Lo and Jonathan Apilado.  I started with planning the sequence in a storyboard, although in the actual production there was a lot of improvisation and experimentation in the animation.  I crafted the exterior of the club as well as the interior. In the actual production we used the storyboard as a guide for the camera angle and compositions as well as the overall story. We used a tripod and shot straight ahead, trying to move the fruit as slowly and incrementally as we could. Keeping track of all the fruit in the more busy scenes was very challenging. Getting the fruit (or pieces of the fruit) airborne was tricky, so we had to use thread to varying levels of success as well as trying to create platforms from cardboard. It turned out the fruit would swing wildly when lifted into the air, but that added motion blur so it actually smoothed the fast action. In a couple of frames it was necessary to use our hands to get their desired effect, so we had to photoshop those out. 

I animated the tangerine, Jonathan animated the banana, and Samantha animated the onion. Samantha animated the tomato entering the club, and I animated the tomato approaching the stage and jumping up and down. The fruit club patrons were largely a group effort. In the first shot and the scene with the banana peel I animated the blackberries, Jonathan the mango and the apple, and Samantha the strawberries. In the last shot with the tomato's entrance, we switched and Jonathan animated the blackberries, I animated the strawberries, apples, and mango. We edited the film in after effects together. 

I tried fixing some frames in another file.

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