Description

In this exercise, you will practice animation techniques by recreating creatures from Evolved Virtual Creatures by Karl Sims.

Instructions

  1. Watch the animation tutorials.
  2. Create a creature animation using only primitives inspired by Evolved Virtual Creatures. It must include the following:
    • Armature rig
    • At least 2 creatures with at least 3 moving pieces appendages
    • Camera movement
    • Easing applied to keyframes of moving objects (non-linear tangents in graph editor)
    • At least 10 seconds of animation at 24 frames per second (240 frames)
  3. To create a “playblast” animation, you can capture the animation directly from the viewport. To create a video of the viewport’s animation, save the .blend file and set the render settings output folder to the project folder. Under File Format, choose FFMpeg Video, change the encoding format to MPEG-4.
  4. No need to render using EEVEE, a viewport render is fine.
  5. Choose View ⟶ Viewport Render Animation to create the animation file. Check that the animation file was created.
  6. Compress the project folder once you’ve completed the tutorial and rename it LASTNAME-creatures.zip.
  7. Upload the .zip file to the assignment dropbox.
  8. Double check that you’ve included all files and that your .zip file can be downloaded and opened.
Learning Objectives

  1. Practice applying the 12 principles of animation
  2. Practice keyframe animation of translation, rotation, and scale properties.
  3. Practice applying camera effects.

Inspiration

Evolved Virtual Creatures

Karl Sims - Virtual creatures

Virtual Creature Bloopers (1994)

Blender Tutorials

To get a deeper understanding of how Blender's rendering system works, have a look these tutorials

    12 Principles of Animation

    Blender Foundation 2.8 Videos (28-41)

    Parenting in Blender

    Adding a tracking constraint

    Rubric

    Criteria Description Assessment Weight
    Attention to Detail This criteria looks at if the assignment was submitted on time, if each step was completed to a high degree of accuracy, and if file naming conventions were followed. 5 pts
    Learning by doing (Completed all steps) This criteria assess whether you completed the assignment's given set of instructions. This indirectly infers how well you acquired foundational skills and theory. 5 pts