Stereoscopic images

Here are 3 images I created for Red/Cyan 3D glass. These are 3 different location on campus, one of them includes me as a part of the picture:

Recreate camera and lights in Maya

Here is the photograph I chose to replicate:

Here is my rendering in Maya:

Building a scene in Maya

Here is my scene in Maya:

Render with default light:

Render with key light:

Render with key & fill light:

Render with 3 lights:

2nd term paper

If you watch movies that have a lot of fantasy elements, you will probably see flying man, dragon breathes fire, magic, monsters…etc. Those things are done by many talented artists, who try to create the most believable and enjoyable elements for the movies. In order to do that, artists have studied and researched about physics, chemistry and natural phenomena to achieve the most realistic work as much as they can. In a nutshell, they need to have reference to work with. Without the knowledge about what they want to do, it’s almost impossible for them to produce a valuable work. However, sometimes they still make some mistake. Also, it is sometimes their intention to do that to push the creative level. These mistakes can be either funny to watch or distract the viewers, especially in some physical actions. Moreover, some of the actions can only work in the movie, but not in real life. To explore more, we will take a look at three recent action movies: Ironman (2008), Predator (2010), and Captain America-the 1^st avenger (2011). In these three action movies, we will analyze the law of physic about action and reaction, and what is different, in the movies, from the real life.

1/ Iron man (2008):

If you are a fan of comic books, you probably know about Ironman- one the heroes from Marvel. In the debut live action movie, Ironman appeared as a normal person who got into an accident where he needed a device attached in his chest and kept him alive. From there, he built his own set of armor, which can help him fly, and shoot laser. Thus, he became Ironman because of his special armor.

 In one of the later scene, Ironman entered the battlefield in Afghanistan from the sky. He was flying on the sky and jumping down with his heavy weight armor. According to Newton, every action always has an equal reaction. So to balance the force naturally, everything always has action and reaction. If I hit the wall using my bare hand with a certain amount of force, an equal force will come back from the wall and hurt my hand badly. The same thing would have happened when Ironman jump from the sky. With his heavy weight set of armor, judging from the height he jumped, his total mass should be huge. Thus, he should have been smashed inside his armor the moment he landed on the ground. However, in the movie, Ironman jumped down and landed perfectly on ground without any injure from the fall. It is practically unrealistic because no one can survive after falling from the sky like that. But in the movie, Ironman could do that without any problem. The intention here was that he looked cool, and heroic that way. If Ironman had got injured from falling, it wouldn’t have been fun to watch! This is one the examples where the Newton’s law didn’t work here. We had the action of jumping down from the sky, but we didn’t have the reaction from the fall. As an artist, I think we should keep in mind that it only looked real on the screen just because artists and directors wanted us to believe that. 

2/Predator (2010):

Perhaps, a lot of people have watched movies about Predators-a certain type of species who will hunt human as trophies. In the past few decades, many different movies about Predators came out. The new and most recent one was released in 2010. In this movie, a certain group of people had been captured and released on a strange planet, where Predators used as a hunting ground practice. This people needed to survive from some different other creatures that also appeared on the planet. 

As you expect from many action movies, gun fights are something that cannot avoidable. The same thing also plays a big role in this movie. In one of sequences at the beginning of the movie, the group had to face an attack from a pack of weird creature. These creatures had a thick skin enough to endure many gun shots without being injured significantly. Thus, a lot of gun fire happened in this sequence. But with a keen eye, viewers could notice what was unreal in this fierce battle: there was no recoil when firing gun in this sequence. Every time you saw the characters firing their gun, everything they did was they fired crazily to the monsters. Of course, it was enjoyable since we were lost in the storyline so much. However, it looked a bit unrealistic without recoil. Normally, when firing a gun, to push the bullet out of the barrel with high speed, the gun needs a massive force to do that. But, that massive force will come back to the gun holder and result in a backward (or sometimes upward) movement of his/her body. That is the law of action and reaction. With less experience, a person can lose control of the gun after firing. In Predator, the artists minimized the recoil effect as much as they could. As the matter of fact, the characters just stood still and open fire like they were shooting water gun. Even when someone took out his big machine gun, he just kept firing without moving an inch. If there had been recoil, their body would have shaken when firing. 

Without recoil, the sequence still worked well since it showed that the characters were all strong, and experienced. It would have been less amused to see the characters take time to recover from recoil because the monster could have attacked them the moment they stop firing. Thus, to keep the monsters away, they continuously shot the monsters. In order to do that, they needed no recoil to speed up the process of firing. Maybe, artists took advantage of this fact and removed the recoil impact to make the sequence more brutal and amusing to the viewers.

3/ Captain America: The 1^st avenger (2011)

Another great movie about super heroes from Marvel is Captain America: The 1^st avenger. As you may know, Captain America is a super soldier, who transformed himself from a skinny weak guy to a strong and muscular hero. In this live-action movie, after gaining his super power, he, of course, want to help in the war. However, the general though he was just for stage performance. But later, he proved that he could change the situation of the war. The result was that he infiltrated bases of enemy and defeated them. With his super power, he didn’t need a gun. Bare hand combat with a shield was what happened when he was on the battlefield. So what was strange about his super power?

Indeed, when viewers watched the sequence, in which he was hitting many other soldiers, he sent them fly away with just a single hit. If we think about this sequence under the law of physics, particularly about action and reaction, the fight seemed not real enough. First of all, to send a single soldier flying, whose weight was probably about 180-200 lbs., Captain America needed a huge force. Now assuming that he could generate a big enough force, when he hit the soldier, there should be a same opposite force impacting his hand/foot. Even though, that force didn’t make his bone shatter or crack, it should push him back a little bit. However, in the movie, the huge mass body of the soldiers didn’t send back any reaction force at all. It looked like the moment Captain America kicked or punched them; their body automatically flied back themselves (it was probably true when they filmed the fight scene). However, it worked well in this movie. Similarly, the goal here was to emphasize his super strength. So without reaction force, it looked like he was so strong that he didn’t have to sweat with those soldiers. Again, it may be the artists’ intention; it could also be that they overlooked the effect of reaction. Nevertheless, a real fight would have never occurred in that way.

After all, we all watch movie to enjoy ourselves. The differences between the movies’ world and real life are what we are most amused about. We go to see an action movie to enjoy someone do some impossible moves or some dragon fly around. To make those things, artists sometimes need to ignore the law of physics to make fantasy become real. However, studying real physics should be essential since it helps the artists know how things work in certain ways. With the knowledge about physics, they then can apply the rule and “bend the rule” to make imaginative things come to life. Of course, sometimes, their new inventive ways only work inside the movies’ world since it’s not real. However, with some great movies, artists are clever enough to make the incredibility believable along with an amazing storyline, or a beautiful background. Thank to those elements, we can enjoy a sci-fi movie or a fantasy movie without being disrupted by any choppy or fake action. The three movies I discussed above are the three examples which demonstrate how artists took advantage of physics and adjust it according to their imagination. Again, rules can be flexible because they are just tools or guidelines, not restriction that we have to follow all the time.

2nd term paper outline

1/ Introduction:

Introduce 3 movies: “Iron man (208)”, “Predator (2010)”, “Captain America: The 1^st avenger (2011).

Explore about the law of action and reaction.

2/ Body:

Iron man:

Falling all the way from the sky with the iron armor.

The character still survive after the fall. If there had been a reaction, he would have died from the fall even he was in his armor.

Predator:

Gun fighting with different guns.

No recoil on guns. Even with the big machine gun, there were no reaction on the character.

Captain America:

Fighting scene where the main character hit other soldiers.

The character could hit the soldiers and gave them a kick or punch that sent them fly back.

With reaction, the main character would suffer some reaction on his hands or feet.

3/Conclusion:

Summarize about the 3 examples.

Recognize the reason why artists sometimes ignore the true facts of physics.

Stop motion

Here is my stop motion animation. In this one, I have teamed up with one of my classmates, Maritza Silvas. First, we set up the scene. I was the cameraman, who took the series of images. Maritza was the one who moved and changed the set so that I could shoot pictures. After finishing shooting, each of us took half of the series, and edited in Premiere. The final step was to to put everything together and add the title.

Material: Camera, tripod, kneaded erasers, lightbox, pencils, Premiere Pro, Quicktime.

Reverse video reference

Here is the 4 videos: