Creating Stereoscopic 3D Images

Recreating Cameras and Lights in Maya

Extra Credit: Lighting a Scene in Maya

Special Effects in Animation and Live-Action

My first two term paper scores were 90 and 87; I will not be writing a third term paper.

Outline for the Third Term Paper

• Introduce special effects their purpose, examples, and forced perspective
• Define forced perspective
• Explain why I chose forced perspective
• Introduce the two movies I am comparing
• Harry Potter
• Lord of the Rings
• Lord of the rings introduction
• Why forced perspective was used
• How forced perspective was done in lord of the rings
• Effectiveness of the effect
• Harry Potter introduction
• Why and where forced perspective was use in harry potter
• How it was done and if the technique was different than LOTR
• How effective the effect was
• Comparison of the two movies' attempt at forced perspective
• my favorite/most effective in my opinion
• Conclude as to why its better to use forced perspective than some effect
• explain the differences in each movies techniques
• recap what movie did it better

Stop-Motion Character Animation

I made this stop-motion animation the same way I made my last one. I had my character on a popsicle stick from a tasty corndog then used photoshop to remove the stick and my sexy arm from the pictures. The shadows once again play a difficult role of a uniform background after removing my arm and the stick.  I feel however the animation is more life like than my last.

I also used tape to mark jump heights so that at the apex of the jump I could remember where to rotate the character in the air and make him hang for effect.

Science Fact or Cinematic Fiction

The law of conservation of energy states that the total energy cannot change instead it is conserved. Energy can be neither created nor destroyed, but can change form such as chemical to kinetic or potential to kinetic.  In video games this is a common phenomenon calculated by the physics engine in regards to collisions and the damage of an explosion.  In some cases however the laws are broken to bring the illusion of magic or perhaps cut corners on the engine itself to save money.  In the games Watch Dogs and Archeage Online their fantasy worlds bend the law conservation of energy for the sake of magic or immersion.

In the real world conservation of energy is seen in everyday life.  An object falling from the sky has maximum potential energy when released, as it falls it converts that potential energy into kinetic as it falls. In explosions there is also a change from potential chemical energy into kinetic energy of shrapnel and then of course heat is an expression of the chemical energy as well.  These laws of course would be somehow illustrated in video games but bended depending on the level of fiction the game depicts.  The particular phenomenon I focused on was conservation of energy in the x direction of a 2D plane (something moving from right to left). In Archeage the game revolves around magic in a mideval sort of steam-punk setting and for magic to work physics must not, and in Watch Dogs you are depicted as a hero but still human and as such most laws of physics should be accepted.

Looking at Archeage in regards to the conservation of energy the mounted animals used for transportation, they do not function like how the conservation of energy says they should.  When you are riding your mount and then desummon it, it disappears but all energy is not conserved.  Since the mount is moving the rider it should both of them should have the same kinetic energy.  When the mount is removed though the rider does not continue and instead hops off right on the spot where it was desummoned as if they were not moving in the first place. This breaks the law of conservation of energy and energy is not conserved strictly because the developers decided to cut corners about just why the rider does not continue to move in the same direction.

Within the game Watch Dogs a similar phenomenon is witnessed.  In a crash with a citizen the cars don't transfer the proper amount of kinetic energy to the car they are colliding with.  This is for ease of gameplay and to make the game more fun and less of paying your health insurance deductible and more playing the game. If they actually calculated the energy transfer it would be obvious since a collision at a high rate of speed would render a car immobile.  It can be seen that this is not the case.  In a normal collision the kinetic energy of both cars is transferred to each other, however the one with more kinetic energy will hit the other harder and further.  In Watch Dogs the structural integrity and the amount of energy transferred to the player's car is minimal and not at all realistic.  It is as if a sedan has the structural integrity of  semi when hitting a car visibly bigger than it.

Also in Watch Dogs the same can be seen with motorcycles.  When driving at lethal speed on a motorcycle there is a good chance that upon a collision even with a brick wall the player will remain on the bike.  I have no idea why the developers did not polish the physics better it doesn't feel immersive, just an obvious bug in the game and in fact it ruined their reviews.  In a real world situation the amount of energy transferred from the player and rider should be all of it since the bike stops dead. A human is not strong enough to transfer his energy gained from riding the motorcycle to the motorcycle, so he should continue his movement which in turn brings up the concept of momentum.  Watch Dogs does not seem to care about these basic laws and the player has his kinetic energy trumped in the process.

There are many games that violate the laws of energy.  These are just a couple examples of some very obvious and unexplained phenomenons that sometimes even saying "it's magic" doesn't cut it.  Watch Dogs is set in future Chicago, there shouldn't be any magic.  In all cases in the real world energy is conserved, it must how be given off such as heat, or transferred to another object. In these three cases this is not witnessed. In some cases it is for effect but these examples also did not depict that. They were all limitations of the physics engine that is running the game's physics.  Computers and especially in games there are limitations as to what you can do with your physics engine. In Archeage there are a few hundred people playing at once.  If your computer decided to flawlessly render all physics for a small percentage of that population let alone the whole server population it would break. In video games this is the most common case of violating a law of physics.

Outline for the Second Term Paper

• Introduction
• Introduce the principle of conservation of energy
• Introduce by explaining energy in video games and in the games Watch Dogs and Archeage
• Conservation of energy and its use in common real life applications
• How is this violated in Watch dogs reason 1
• Step by step of what is happening to kinetic and potential energy
• Scene:
• Car's not losing energy
• How this is violated in Archeage reason 2
• Step by step of what is happening to kinetic and potential energy
• Scene: 
• Ability to reopen a glider mid flight
• Additional violation in Archeage or Watch Dogs reason 3
• Step by step of what is happening to kinetic and potential energy
• Scene:
• Cant fly off bike in Watch Dogs, no transfer of energy to rider
• Conclusion
• Reintroduce conservation of energy and the reason it is violated. 
• Explain why the video games violate the laws of energy
• Physical limitations of computer games

Reverse Video Reference

Stop Motion Animation of Falling

My stop motion animation was made with Photoshop. I had the soda bottle on a stick then rendered myself out of the image and left it with just the bottle.  Unfortunately I did not have a tripod for my camera so i improvised so near the end there was some jitter.

As you can see I went frame by frame holding the soda bottle from a ruler. In Photoshop I tried to render out just myself and include the background of the previous image. It was layers on layers of each frame and the back frame was a static image with nothing it it. It was challenging however because I created shadows. Using the dodge too I could lighten shadows and with a very soft eraser blend the rough edges where the images meet together.

Term Paper - Archeage Physics

In the world of video games physics can be easily bended.  Sometimes it is intentional for the immersion of the video game like moves that disable your gravity, or a roundhouse kick that sends you across a massive room. Other times you can confuse the physics engine’s force detection and calculation which end up adding forces to a particular object that should not exist in the first place.  I have solid evidence that such exploits or perhaps immersion techniques are used in the video game Archeage Online.

                One of the transportation methods in Archeage is the ability to deploy a glider and use it to ride the wind for great distances and sometimes when it feels there is no wind at all.  However if you ride the glider for too long or decide to put the glider away while midflight the obvious happens, you fall to the ground.  I hypothesize due to the laws of gravity that during a freefall upon reaching the ground my character will die or be critically injured in the process.

                As you can see during the freefall I activated an ability that allows my character to do a backwards dodge.  This removed my entire downwards momentum and instead somehow generated a force in the reverse direction out of the air.  In the real world for someone to experience what just happened there must be a force given back by an object strong enough to propel one that far, something to exert a force back on my character.  In Archeage this is not the case. When the ability is activated the physics engine grants the character a force in said direction.  Also as you may notice a bit of damage was incurred by character but not enough for it to be lethal and far from life-like.  This was the momentum my character gained from the end of my ability and as you can see the downward acceleration from gravity was nullified. In a real world situation if one somehow managed to experience such a force to propel them backwards they would feel the same amount of pain, or death, regardless of the forces acting in the orthogonal directions. 

                Another transportation method in Archeage is the ability to traverse the open seas in a boat which come in different shapes and sizes.  The boat I am manning in the next video has a harpoon attached to the front intended to grapple on to other boats so you can board and plunder them. However something that is not intended is the ability to fire the harpoon to the sea floor, and pull oneself under.  Isolating the physics of the boat only I hypothesis that the boat will continually sink once it has been submerged by the harpoon cannon.

                Honestly the actual outcome was more entertaining that watching a boat sink.  In the real world the boat would sink because the boat is heavier than water and the buoyancy of the boat is negligible if there is water on the deck.  Once water has made it aboard the boat, once there is enough of it, it will weigh the boat down and lower its potential buoyancy until the point where it will just continually sink.  The physics in Archeage does not calculate it that way.  The engine is told that the object you are on is a boat and as such it is to float weightlessly on water. Should it be in contact with water the physics engine will repel the boat. When the whole boat becomes submerged the calculated physics when the harpoon line is cut is the repel force is massive since the boats position has already been moved so far underwater and such the boat experiences that massive force away from the water. 

                This video also brings up a lot of other physics based anomalies.  Such as the fact that the harpoon is hand cranked. Can you imagine the amount of torque a human would have to apply to a harpoon to completely submerge such a big boat? Or perhaps how my character’s stance did not change as she was tilted 90 degrees.  Did my character experience any force by the water as she was pulled under?  Many games do not implement these physics phenomenons into their engine because it would be too hard to calculate and keep track of all of them at once.

                For my next trick I shall attack a fellow enemy player by using a skill called Bubble Trap and experience its effects.  I hypothesize that my victim will feel the effects of the bubble trap and be suspended and unable to move.  This experiment, unlike the other two, bends real world physics for the idea of immersion the others were exploits of bugs in the physics engine.  

As you can see from the video my victim was in fact suspended by a water bubble for several seconds.  The interesting thing to note is it actually will lift  a character and in some cases it can lift them to a lethal height where upon breaking gravity can be used to smite your enemy.  This sadly was not high enough but the mind bending physics is noticeable.  What happens here is when someone is affected by Bubble Trap is their current forces are nullified; the victim is raised and held for a few seconds then is dropped. No explanation goes into how a fragile bubble can possibly hold a person, it is sorcery after all, so in this case the physics of Archeage is to immerse the player in how it would feel to cast magic.  Also there happen to be a lot of skills in the game that nullify the current forces of the target, some are bugs and others are for effect.

As a whole most video game engines don't take into account every little physical experience that can happen in the real world, just enough to get the job done.  But as we have seen the short-comings of the engine can be intended for immersion to make an imaginary world, or perhaps just make the game more fun even if it’s unintended like with sling-shotting boats into the sky. 

Video Analysis Path of Action

Tracker Video Analysis of Falling

Shooting video reference

Mini-Portfolio

I am not much of an artist when it comes to illustration or animation. I do however enjoy amateur photography and graphic design.  So here are a few samples of pictures I have taken and others I have designed in Photoshop.

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About me I am a senior here at SJSU. I am majoring in computer science so most of my classes revolve around computer programming. I do however as you can see have a creative eye and have some self-taught skills with Photoshop.  I have taken science classes but no more than completing for my GE or degree.  I have taken general physics which will help me with this class but also chemistry and biology.  The art classes I have taken have also not strayed far from just the requirements for my GE which are film classes since I enjoy film and the creativity and art that is put into making a motion picture.  As far as videos the closest I get these days are small clips of my current video game such as this one:

My plans for the future include an awesome job right here in the Silicon Valley programming for a leading company in innovation such as Apple, Google, Maxis just to give some examples.  I enjoy programming very much and it is definitely something I can see myself doing for a career.  I am only a year from graduating and it is closing in quickly.  While I am excited I also don't want to leave my life here at SJSU.  

First Post

Welcome to my Animation in Physics Blog (Phys-123) I was told this class was very interesting and even though my major is Computer Science I have hobbies in animation, graphic design, and enjoy physics anyways. So I figured this class can satisfy my GE and I will learn something fun in the process.  Stay tuned for my future posts! All about physics and animation and how they work together among other things I have yet to find out!