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:

1st term paper

Glen Vilppu, a famous artist and teacher used to say: “There is no rule, just tools.” In the art world, many things depend on the imagination of artists. Sometimes, an object can fly by itself. At the other time, people become invisible, and a lot of other unrealistic things that we see in many sci-fi movies. Yet, all of them were based on real phenomena. To be able to create a believable, but unrealistic movement, artists have spent their time to study the real cases. This is where physics comes into the play. With the aid of physics, artists know exactly why and how an action, such as a fall or a swing, can happen. From there, they exaggerate and make it into the big screen. Yes, “there is no rule”, artists only use physics as a tool to help them create a believable world out of their mind. To explore more about how many talented animators translate the law of physics into the world where people can fly and things can freeze in mid-air, we will look at one of the recent 3D computer graphic (CG) animated movies: Tekken-Blood Vengeance (2010).

The movie is a Japanese animated movie, which was based on the famous fighting game Tekken. The movie starts with Anna Williams and her sister Nina Williams encountered and fougt each other. Anna was working for Kazuya Mishima and his G Corporation; on the other hand, Nina was working for Jin Kazama-Kazuya’s son and his opposite organization. Both parties were looking for information of a young man called Shin Kamiya. To do that, Anna then sent Xiaoyu, disguised as a student, to look for Shin at a particular school while Jin’s organization sent a humanoid robot, named Alisa. Both Xiaoyu and Alisa encountered each other and fought, but became friends after Anna interfere their battle. Together, they looked for information about Shin. It turned out that Shin was a test subject for something called M gene-a method for immortality, and Shin was the only survivor. It was even more surprised when the M gene project was created by Heihachi Mishima-Kazuya’s father. Shin then tried to fight Heihachi, but died in vain. The story went to its peak when the 3-way battle between 3 generations: Heihachi, Kazuya, and Jin happened. Ultimately, Jin was the victor after the fierce battle. Jin then left Xiaoyu and Alisa only to let them know that the future would change.

While the story was a bit hard to follow if you don’t play Tekken, I think the animation in the movie was expertly done, even lots of time when the artists over-exaggerated the effects. The effects in the movie sometimes don’t obey the law of physics. To make it easier to see how physics differs in the movie, I will break down into three categories: Speed and inertia, gravity and freezing, and force/impact.

1/ Speed and inertia:

In the first 15 minutes of the movie, there was a scene in which Xiaoyu was riding a panda with speed of a racing car. However, the panda stopped abruptly at the parking lot without any effort or hard deceleration. Plus, Xiaoyu didn’t fall off at all while she was moving with such high speed. If the law of physics had applied here, she would have been thrown over thanks to inertia, and the panda also should have an incredible force to stop suddenly. However, it wouldn’t be exciting to see a girl falling off and rolling toward the school’s gate in the action movie like this one.

 The panda also used its speed to even run on the water later on in the movie. It won’t work in reality, but it works in the movie since artists think that it is awesome and also a proof to show that the panda has an incredible speed. In fact, in reality, some people (a show called MythBuster) have tried to run water before without any special gear, and failed. 

In another scene toward the end of the movie, Jin and Kazuya were fighting. Jin was able to move fast enough with the speed of light. With this, he disappeared from his first position and ended up in front of his enemy in a split of second. Once again, the action neglected the law of inertia. With inertia, if he had moved in light speed, it would have impossible for him to stop suddenly. Instead he probably would have pierced through his enemy with that speed. So the animators took advantage of the law of inertia and speed to push the excitement of viewers more when they showed some incredible moves like that in the movie. 

2/ Gravity/freezing:

If speed works in a different way, gravity is another element that contributes the awesomeness of the movie. In the beginning, when Anna met Xiaoyu the first time, she threw a dagger toward Xiaoyu. Luckily, the girl avoided the dagger only the moment when the dagger almost hit her forehead. What happened was that the dagger suddenly froze in mid-air; this gave Xiaoyu a gap of time where she could flip her body backward to dodge the attack. Freezing is another trick or special effect that animators exploited to show that the girl was fast and flexible enough to do the flip. Without the effect, she would have died, and that’s not what the movie makers wanted!!! 

The freezing trick was used once more when Shin committed suicide by jumping off from a school building. Again, he froze and that let Xiaoyu see him, run upward on a tree and bounce off to catch him in mid-air. It would have been so boring to see a man dropping dead from a tall building because the gravity had pulled him down so quickly. In fact, Shin should have been slowing out instead of slowing in when he had been falling. It’s just like ball bounce. But viewers wanted something cool, and awesome, and the artists gave them what they want because they are the one who control the world of the movie. 

To raise the heat of the movie more, they used this technique in many fighting scenes. Particularly, in a 3-way battle of Heihachi, Kayuza, and Jin, Kayuza was falling from being taken the upper cut from Heihachi. Surprisingly enough, he fell so slowly that Heihachi could give him multiple hits in mid-air. No professional fighter can do such thing, according to what I know. Similarly, the purpose was to emphasize the super human strength of Heihachi when fighting. Plus, I think animators also tried to imitate the effect as in the video game where the player can execute a multiple combo like that.

3/ Force and impact:

According to Newton, every action always has an equal reaction. If we hit something with a really hard force, a similar force will be sent back to us. Yet, is it true in a fighting movie? I guess not. In Tekken: Blood Vengeance, action force is always larger than reaction. During the first battle, Kayuza used his bare foot to crush through many floors without any hard effort. The floors just got broken as if they are a bunch of plastic sticks, despite the fact that the floors were made by thick and giant blocks of wood. The reaction force of the floors here was so minimal that it didn’t affect Kayuza at all. In fact, he didn’t get any bone fracture at all when doing that. 

In several scenes later, Heihachi also utilized his superhuman power to kick Jin and send him fly away. This resulted in many giant broken pillars. The kick implied that the force of Heihachi’s kick was so great that it could break the pillars easily. If a normal human kicked a giant pillar hard enough, he would only break his leg instead (or hopefully the pillar would get chipped a little bit). However, Heihachi wouldn’t look strong if he got his bone cracked by only kicking the pillar. What’s more, according to the video game, he is a human with a monstrous power. If everything had been intact, it wouldn’t have been Heihachi’s fight. 

Jin was also similar to his grandfather and father, he possessed an incomparable power. With the intent to kill Heihachi, Jin was able to use his fist to hit Heihachi at his ribcage. The force was large enough (yet didn’t give Heihachi any internal fracture) to break through the wall behind him. From outside, viewers could view the impact as an explosion from inside. If we could measure Jin’s force, it could equal to the force of a grenade or tank’s canon. Again, this kind of impact can only work in the world of animation such as Tekken: Blood Vengeance. None can knock down the thick stonewall as Jin did.

Overall, in Tekken: Blood Vengeance, many of the actions/movement did not obey the law physics. However, artists and animators took advantage of the animation medium and pushed it beyond the boundary of reality. Moreover, viewers usually demand to see as many cool/fantasy actions as they want to from a single movie. Knowing that, artists exaggerated the law of physics in the movie so that they could give their characters many specialties, which will surprise the viewers. Many of the effects also help the viewers become involve in the story more and more when watching it. In the end, “there is no rule, just tools.”

Term paper #1-Outline

Tekken Blood Vengeance (2010)-Animated movie

The movie is an animated movie, which based on the video game Tekken. Many things were exaggerated in this one. Many of them don’t obey the law of physics.

1/Speed, inertia:

• ·         In the beginning of the movie, there was a scene in which a girl, Xiaoyu, riding a panda with the speed of racing car. However, when the panda stopped abruptly, the girl didn’t fall off even though she was moving at high speed only a second before that.
• ·         Similarly, the panda proved his unrealistic speed when he could run on water easily.
• ·         Another scene is where 2 characters (Jin and Kazuya) were fighting each other. Jin became fast enough to move at high speed. The speed is so great that he almost disappeared when moving, and suddenly stopped completely in front of the other one.

2/Gravity:

• ·         In one of fighting scenes, a dagger stopped in mid-air when it almost hit the eyes of Xiaoyu. It was slowed enough she could flipped back and dodge it.
• ·         Another scene is when a man (Shin) fell off from a building. He stopped in mid-air. Similarly, it gave Xiaoyu a big gap of time so that she could jump on the nearby tree and bounce off to catch him in the air.
• ·         In a 3-way battle, Heihachi was able to hit his son, Kayuza, multiple hits because Kayuza didn’t fall to the ground , and got stuck in the stream of hit.

3/Force, impact:

• ·         During the first battle, Kayuza could use his bare foot to crush through multiple floors. This implies that the force of his foot was greater than the impact from the floors.
• ·         In several scenes after that, Heihachi utilized his inhuman power to kick Jin and send him fly off. This resulted in many knocked down giant pillars.
• ·         With the intent to kill Heihachi, Jin also used his fist to knock through stone wall and threw Heihachi down to the river. The force from his fist could equal to a tank.

Many of these proofs are unrealistic. Since it’s a fantasy animated movie, things were pushed to its extreme to show give the audience lots of drama.