ARTS 308 - Final Sculpture Documentation Video

ARTS 308 - Kinetic Sculpture Post-Mortem

Last Thursday I gave my presentation for Topple, my kinetic sculpture and final project for ARTS 308. I feel that the presentation was a success and that general audience reaction was positive.


Finished Construction

The final touches to the sculpture were completed on-schedule; some adjustments were necessary to make the wind-up/release mechanism smoother and I also added spacers to the base of the sculpture.

Above is a close-up of the winding mechanism. While I had the option of creating a metal pulley system, I chose to make it wood to stay on-theme with the rest of the sculpture.

The locking for the mechanism is rudimentary yet effective; you simply stop the wind-up hook with the block and remove the block to release the mechanism. Again, this component is on-theme with the rest of the sculpture and I was satisfied with that despite its crudeness.

Presentation

Topple is a kinetic sculpture that experiments with the natural force of gravity and the possibility of both constructive and destructive movement. It was inspired by childhood play activities which are inclusive of both creation and destruction. I started with the desire to portray de-constructive motion and built off of the idea of children being just as excited to destroy structures made from toy blocks as they were to create them.

The motion of Topple is achieved by using a winding mechanism to "build" a tower of toy blocks, and releasing the mechanism to make the tower fall down. Due to the connected structure of the blocks, the process of building and destroying the tower can be repeated again and again.

The experimental kinetic element is derived from the falling motion of the "tower"; the blocks never topple over each other in the same way twice.

Nostalgia for childhood play experience is a major theme of Topple. As a small child, I played with wooden toys. The main structure of the sculpture is wooden, as well as the winding mechanism. I wanted every detail of the sculpture to support this overall theme of nostalgia. The blocks themselves were hand-cut, sanded, and hand-painted by me. The color scheme of the blocks incorporates the three Primary Colors - a direct reference to early childhood. The process of building Topple was a singular experience for me because I had never built anything like the old wooden toys of my childhood as an adult. I feel like the experience of playing with wooden toys is going extinct; indeed, I see more small children playing with electronic hand-held media more than anything else.

Hopefully Topple will evoke the memories of innocent childhood play in viewers and will prove an edifying and interesting interactive experience.

As Topple is interactive and hand-powered, the best place to exhibit it could be any public space (hopefully sheltered from weathering).


Reaction

Reaction to Topple seemed positive; the mechanism for winding/letting fall the "tower" of blocks was easy enough for viewers to manipulate themselves.

Many viewers commented on its resemblance to early childhood toys. They also commented on the nostalgic design.


Final Thoughts

If I could redo this project I would have spent more time perfecting the structure of the block "tower". I would have experimented with more interesting structures for the "tower" and engineered structures that held up better.

The twine used to make the "tower" is appealing but it won't last forever. Eventually it will wear out and snap. There was also an issue of the twine stretching after winding the "tower" up. The winding mechanism itself is very simple and I might have spent a little more time perfecting its design, although in its current state it certainly gets the job done.

Topple was the first time I've built something resembling the wooden toys of my childhood; I enjoyed working with my hands to achieve a sturdy structure that could house the main action of the sculpture. I was very pleased with my work painting the toy blocks. In some ways I felt like an old-time toy maker.

ARTS 308 - Kinetic Sculpture Progress #3

As of yesterday the "tower" of blocks is complete. The blocks seem to fall with good spacing and yet they still resemble a "tower" structure.

Cylindrical wooden dowels didn't provide the structural support I needed so I switched to furniture balusters which are much thicker. In the above photo you can see the beginnings of the pulley system that winds up the blocks into their "tower" form.

The above photos show that the wind-up pulley works and, once let go, it allows the blocks to fall in a smooth manner.

After getting instructor feedback, I'll be putting the final touches on the sculpture in preparation for Thursday's presentation.

ARTS 308 - Kinetic Sculpture Progress #2

As of Saturday the wooden toy blocks have had holes drilled in them and are connected by twine to form a "tower" network. The tower will probably be about two feet high. The remaining steps are forming a wooden structure to house the blocks and a winding spool mechanism to raise and drop the "tower".

ARTS 308 - Kinetic Sculpture Progress

Fifteen wooden blocks have been cut, sanded, and are being painted for the kinetic sculpture. After they dry I will drill holes through them so that the twine can run through and create a "tower" network of children's blocks.

ARTS 308 - Project 3 Re-Proposal

As of last week I've finally settled on my final kinetic sculpture idea.

Concept

This kinetic sculpture explores childhood memories of building blocks - and how it was just as fun to destroy my creations as it was to build them.

VIST 405 - VIDARR Rigging & Animation Milestone 3

I created rigs for Vidarr, the draugr, the snake, and the wolf. In the end our project leader decided to just focus on Vidarr and the draugr during this final phase in development.


Draugr

The draugr was the first character that I animated for the game. He has a much more simple set of animations than Vidarr's: a few idle poses, walk, attack, and death.

The rig is your standard IK setup for limbs, a few basic FK spine controls, and pole vector constraints for orienting the position of the draugr's elbows and knees. I also optimized the rig controls for animating by locking, hiding, and making unkeyable all unwanted attributes.

I did include a few special controls to enhance the movement of the draugr; there is a control attached to a one-joint IK which manipulates the draugr's gaping mouth, and another for the shield on the draugr's back.

Vidarr

Vidarr's rig was re-done to match the utility of the draugr's.

For a little extra freedom with animating I added controls to raise and lower Vidarr's shoulders and controls to bend his toes a bit. The model itself was not well-crafted which made skin weights exceptionally wonky for the toe controls.

The hip control's y-rotation is connected to an IK spline along Vidarr's spine up to his neck.

I also created some driven keys that control Vidarr's hand language. When the control is pushed outward the palms extend and when it is pushed inward towards his wrist Vidarr's fists close.

Parenting the sword, a separate Maya object, to Vidarr's wrist node hasn't given me problems yet.

Pipeline Notes

Since no real asset management pipeline is being used for this project I have done my best to manage my animations as cleanly as possible. A few notes:

• So far, all the animations of a given character are located in the same file. I simply animated one action, then I start the next animation a few frames afterwards.
• The graph editor and dope sheet make it simple enough for me to offset animations frames if an animation needs to be longer or shorter.
• Since surfacing is being done in Mari, I simply created automatic mapping UVs while the rigs are in their bind pose (our surface artist does the same) so that the texture file can be re-referenced without UV problems.
• Any corrections to skin weights will automatically apply to the rest of the animations.
• This method saves me time and sanity; I only need to keep track of one animation file per character.

Custom Tools

To improve my workflow I have created three custom tools:

1) FBX prep - Runs a script that preps the animation for export as an FBX to Unreal with just one click. Specific steps are as follows:

• Delete non-deformer history for all visible geometry
• Select the skeleton's joint hierarchy and bake the IK animation for however long the animation playback range is set
• Delete all IKs and controls, leaving just the geometry and skeleton.

Note: The script searches for certain names of groups rather than types of objects. Thus I have to follow a few personal "best practices" for the scene - the geometry mesh for the character must be named "Geo", any reference geometry must be named "GeoRef", the skeleton root joint must be named either "Hip" or "Root", and all IKs and controls must contain the prefix "IK_" or "CTRL_" in their names.

2) Export All... - More of a shortcut that exports the scene as an FBX set to my preset for exporting to Unreal.

3) Goto Pose Tool - Doesn't have anything to do with the "goto" command in programming. Goto Pose brings up a window displaying all current animations for the character as well as the start and end frames for that animation in the scene's time slider. Clicking a given pose's name snaps the animation playback range to that animation's. This saves me a lot of time trying to find the playback range for a given animation.

Note: In its current state, the Goto Pose Tool can't interactively manage poses in the tool window; any new animations and values for a particular pose/animation have to be written into the script itself. The tool currently only works for Vidarr.