Creating Stereoscopic 3D Images

Use the Green and Magenta 3D glasses for all of the images.

SJSU MLK Library

John holding a pokéball

Group of pokémon hanging out

Maya

Recreating Cameras and Lights in Maya

IMG_5796

Maya

IMG_5862

Maya

IMG_5925

Maya

Building a Scene in Maya

 J and P

one-point lighting

two-point lighting

three-point lighting

Second Term Paper

Defying Action and Reaction Principle

Introduction

In most animations and animation in games, they often defy the action and reaction principle. The three I picked out to demonstrate this is the Clown and Out from Animaniacs, the Great Wife Hope from the Simpsons, and a MMORPG game called Vindictus. Animations such as Animaniacs and The Simpsons would be defying action and reaction for comical purposes. For games such as Vindictus would defy the principle because it for balancing game mechanics or it had too many glitches to implement it into the game play. In order to figure out what is wrong with the action and reaction, it is best to analyze a specific scene that can be examined. Afterwards, it will be possible to identify the reason for the animations and the game to break the rules of action and reaction principle.

Animaniacs - the Clown and Out

A clown was hired by Thaddeus Plotz, CEO of the Waner Brothers, to entertain Wakko. We get to see a scene about Plotz having a phobia of clowns. Plotz have Dr. Scratchansniff to help him about his phobia of clowns, Dr. Scratchansniff then reveals that Wakko also have a phobia of clowns. After a few scenes of Wakko playing hide and seek with Yakko and Dot, the clown knocks the water tower metal door and greets Wakko with “Happy Birthday Nice Puppy Boy!” Wakko replies with “Ahh! Clown!” The clown begins to walk toward the open door and Wakko slams the door on the clown.

Wakko slams the door with a quick fierce force of fear. The door slam only stops the clown stiffly and flattening his face instead of being shoved off the water tower. It is obvious that the clown is not using a lot of force to walk into the door since he is only about to take one step and he is also caught by surprise. Therefore, the clown would not have enough force to balance the slamming door’s force with his walking force. When the door slams the clown, only his face becomes flat and the clown turns his face toward us showing broken teeth and bruised face and states “That hurt my face.”

The closing of the door only took about one second to happen and Wakko closes the door in about 5 frames. The door impacts on the clown’s face when his head just about to reach inside. The clown does not recoil back from the impact. Instead, the clown only shifts back to a halt and his face splats onto the door. This would only be possible if the clown’s head did not reach beyond the entrance yet, then the clown would look like he just pushed himself against a wall. If the door was stiff like a wall and not moving, the clown would be halted from where he crashed onto the door since he is not exerting much force for his strolling step. But even then, the clown should have recoiled even a bit. What we see instead is his face being flattened by impacting the door, which is not possible from a strolling walk unless the clown is forcefully pushing his own face into the door.

The Simpsons - The Great Wife Hope

This episode of the Simpsons is about the male characters of Springfield taking a large interest with mixed martial arts sports. Marge Simpson is appalled by the violence and decides to protest against Ultimate Fighting Championship. Chuck Liddell, the host of the championship, challenges Marge to a match. If Marge can beat Chuck, then Chuck will resign the championship. Marge is not the violent type so Homer helps her by contacting with people who can train her. One of the training is jujitsu and Judo by Akira. Akira tells Marge that his style makes use of counterattacks that utilizes the opponent’s strength to strike, but he also puts a little bit of his own strength too. Akira demonstrates this by letting Marge to try and attack with great anger, in which he just simply flips Marge’s charging attack. Immediately afterwards, Akira tells Homer to commence an attack. This is when the action and reaction goes wrong.

Akira says "hajime" to Homer, Homer builds up a running force with a distance about twice his height to perform a jump kick. Homer stops in midair with his jump kick pose. We see that Akira has stopped Homer’s jump kick with an open palm grip. Akira just grabs Homer's foot which completely negates Homer's force. This defies the action and reaction principle since Akira just stands and putting out his palm to stop Homer's jump kick, which is powered by Homer's kinetic force and weight, without being pushed. Akira is using jujitsu and Judo to counter Homer's attack but to be able to hold Homer stiffly in the air means Akira is using his own strength to balance Homer in his grip.

In order for the negation to make sense, Homer becomes weightless when Homer’s jump kick was halted by Akira’s grasp. If we carefully analyze each frame of the impact of Homer’s jump kick and Akira’s halting grip, we can see that Homer’s leg bends a bit. This means Homer’s action force is reflected back from Akira’s palm. Perhaps Akira exerts enough force from the ground to prevent himself from moving against Homer’s action force since Homer is in the air and Akira has the advantage of using the ground. Or Akira must have use Homer’s action force to be converted into Akira’s fingers to grip Homer stiffly in the air.  For a regular person, it is not realistically possible to stop Homer’s jump kick force without receiving some kind of reaction especially if Homer have more mass force hitting Akira who has lesser mass.

Vindictus MMORPG

Vindictus is a massive multiplayer online role playing game that is a fast-paced hack-and-slash. The setting of the game is set in Celtic Mythology. Players get to choose their characters that are set in specific class types. The players go through a series of quests to defeat the Fomorians so that Goddess Morrighan will appear and guide the people to Erinn. The dungeons of the game are instance type, limiting certain amount of players per dungeon. The dungeon’s maps are room by room containing monsters that will spawn. Both the player's character and the monsters defy the action and reaction principle when they are attacking each other.

When the players use normal attacks, the animation of the attacks would just hit through the bodies and make them flinch a bit. That sort of makes sense because normal attacks are light so it would not necessarily have enough force to push the monsters. The game defies action and reaction is more obvious when the player uses hard blows with smash attacks. One of the more obvious and easiest example to demonstrate this is a skill from the class character of Fiona using Shield Bash. When the monsters are still alive with health after the hit, they will take the damage without much reaction besides flinching but they will still be standing on their feet. When the monster is killed and the player uses a smash attack, the monster becomes weightless and flies very high. The weightlessness is explained from the player’s action since the character react normally without straining from the equal amount of reaction force by smashing the monster. This goes for monsters of any mass, whether they are small or large.

Environmental objects are another factor to this game to defy the action and reaction principle. When the character attempts to carry a heavy broken piece of a marble pillar, the character animation shows that the character have to put a lot effort and strain to lift it and even the animation for initializing the swing to bash the monster with it. Yet, the monster just merely flinches when they are hit unless the monster is dead. The intention of the game’s action and reaction from hitting the monsters could be to demonstrate how the monsters are fearsome and strong until they are defeated. When the monsters are defeated, the monsters become weightless and can be knocked around to make the players feel like they are now fearsome and strong.

Conclusion

For every action, there will be a reaction. Animaniacs defy the action and reaction principle, but it is intentional that their actions meant to create laughable reactions. The Simpsons decide to demonstrate the power of jujitsu and Judo against Homer’s feeble attempt of a jump kick. Vindictus makes the decision to create the action and reaction that can be realistic as possible but the players would always have to chase the monsters being knocked away, it would be really annoying to players so they can only make the monsters can only be knocked away if they are dead and also make the players feel strong. What the three does by defying the action and reaction principle is that they make the impact either seem to be more painful, powerful, or very weak.

Outline of second term paper

Defying Action/Reaction

In most animations and animation in games, they often defy the action and reaction principle. The three I picked out is the Clown and Out from Animaniacs, the Great Wife Hope from the Simpsons, and a MMORPG game called Vindictus.

Animaniacs - the Clown and Out

• Wacko slams the water tower metal door on the Clown.
• Wacko slams the metal door with a quick fierce force of fear. The door slam only stops the Clown stiffly and flattening his face instead of being shoved off the water tower.
• It is obvious that the Clown is not using a lot of force to walk into the door since he is only about to take one step and he is also caught by surprise.

The Simpsons - The Great Wife Hope

• Homer's jump kick stopped by Akira' s open palm grasp.
• Akira tells "hajime" to Homer, Homer builds up a running force with a distance about twice his height to perform a jump kick. Akira just stops Homer's jump kick with a grip of his open palm and completely negating Homer's force.
• This defies action/reaction since Akira just stands and putting out his palm to stop Homer's jump kick, which is powered by Homer's kinetic force and weight, without being pushed.
• Of course Akira is using jujitsu and Judo to counter Homer's attack but to be able to hold Homer stiffly in the air means Akira is using his own strength to balance Homer in his grip.

Vindictus MMORPG

• Both the player's character and the monsters defy action/reaction when attacking each other.
• This is more obvious when the player uses hard blows from smash attacks. A great example is a class of Fiona using Shield Bash. The monsters takes the hit without much reaction besides flinching. When the monster is killed, they become weightless and fly very high.
• Environmental objects are another factor to this game defying action/reaction. When the character attempts to carry a heavy broken piece of a marble pillar, the character animation shows that the character have to put a lot effort to lift it and even to bash the monster with it. Yet, the monster just merely flinches when they are hit.

What the three have in common by defying the action and reaction principle is that it makes the impact either seem to be more painful, powerful, or very weak.

Stop-Motion Character Animation

The Mighty Duck and LEGO Technic Show


My brother, Glenn Pham, and I picked out two toys that have many torques as possible that can pose. One is a toy of Check "Grin" Hardwing from Disney's Mighty Ducks. The other is a LEGO Technic figurine of an ice skater possibly a snow native tribe character from the Bionicle series.

I had to deal with some roto scoping for Grin's walking since it was difficult to balance him in some movements since his legs are unsymmetrical. I am not great at roto scoping so it could be obvious to figure out which frames I edited. My brother works on the ideas and snapping shots for the characters movement. I work on moving the characters to pose the gestures following my brother's ideas. Afterwards, I compiled all the images in Adobe Photoshop and compiled them into clips in Adobe Premiere to make the music video.

Reverse Video Reference of Walking

Clip A


Clip B


Clip C


Clip D


Reverse Video Reference of Walking - Fukkireta