Skip to content

JA6. Learning Journal 6

1. Discuss the week’s activities and your observations

I started this week by reading the material and watching the videos. The slides from MIT were particularly complex and deep into details to the point that I could not understand fully; hence, I needed to look for external resources like YouTube. I then did the quiz and the programming assignment which was not super challenging comparing to the previous one.

The topics of this week included introduction to animations, types of animations (real-time and frame-at-a-time animations), approaches to animations (procedural, keyframe, interpolation, physically-based, and traditional animations), timing and spacing of animations, squash and stretch, more animation techniques (motion graphics, motion capture, and skinning), and finally learned about some math behind 3D animations (translation, rotation, scaling, shearing, and reflection).

Did anything surprise you this week?

I was surprised by the wide range of available animation types, techniques, and approaches. I was also surprised how close all of these sections to computer science in general and computer graphics in particular. I thought that these concepts are part of graphic designing or filming majors but they were interesting.

I was also surprised by my classmates’ assignments that I have reviewed. The quality of their response was a bit low and I hade to give one person a full zero. The rest were close to the requirements but did not cover them all; however, I expected creativity in the assignments that goes far and beyond the requirements in the prompt.

Did you face any challenges this week? How did you overcome them?

In the programming assignment, I tried to make my scene closer to the actual solar system despite the assignment does not require that. I tried to make the earth lean on its axis (tilted) by 23.5 degree; however, I could not make it. I tried rotation using different methods such as Mesh.rotateY(Three.MathUtils.DegreeToRad(23.5))) or changing the position of sphere but it did not work so I gave up sense it is not required.

Moving the moon around the earth was also challenging. However, after research, I was able to use the following equations to control moon’s movements moon.position.x = 2 * Math.cos(earth.rotation.y) and moon.position.z = Math.sin(earth.rotation.y). My assignment is available here: https://ahmad-ali14.github.io/AY2025-T2-CS4406/unit6/ and the code is available here: https://github.com/ahmad-ali14/AY2025-T2-CS4406/blob/main/src/unit6/code.ts

2. Discuss how new computer animation techniques have revolutionized the movies and cinema arts

Traditional animation techniques like 2D animations and cel animations have been around for a long time. They were a revolution at a time when the capabilities of computers, communication, and display technologies were limited (Synapse Studio, 2024). These techniques rely on placing physical hand-drawn layers of cards on top of each other and moving them quickly to create the illusion of motion. Iconic characters like Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny were created using these techniques (Catherine, 2023).

The advancement of technologies brought new techniques to life like procedural, 3D, keyframe, interpolation, physically-based, and real-time animations which are all computer-aided techniques with little manual work (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2020). These techniques allowed for more complex and 3D films and allowed for more advanced special effects in films with human actors. For example, Shrek is totally computer-animated with no human actors. Films like Avatar and Lord of the Rings contain both human and computer-generated characters and scenes.

Procedural animation is used for repetitive movements of objects in the scene. Key-frame and interpolation animations are used for the smooth and continuous movements of the main character with the in-betweens generated automatically. Physically-based animation is used to respect the laws of physics when animating objects in the scene (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2020). The future of animation also seems promising with adding new cutting-edge technologies like AI and machine learning to the mix. This may cause the film making pipeline to be more complex with adding more steps before and after taking the shot, but the final result will be more realistic and more immersive.

References

‌