Creating Stereoscopic 3D Images

Here is my attempt at 3D images. It was much more fun than I expected it to be. I think the picture of myself is my favorite one. I also did an extra one of an old Maya project of mine.

Recreating Lights and Cameras in Maya

Well, this was one of the hardest assignments for this class. I had no idea lighting could be so intricate, but I gave it my best shot, which isn't the best recreation unfortunately. I did two of my assigned images.

original

original

Extra Credit: Lighting a Scene in Maya

1 point directional light

2 point ambient light

3 point rim light

Building A Scene in Maya

Special Effects in Animation and Live Action

I have chosen not to write the third term paper. My previous scores were both 92.

Outline for the Third Term Paper

Snow Special Effects

I. Intro: Snow seems to be a fairly simple concept. It's frozen rain that looks like little white dots that flow through the air. However, if one looks closely at a snowflake, one may realize they are one of the most intricately designed features of nature. Like a snowflake, the special effects it takes to create snow is also a complicated process. The two movies that will be discussed are Ridley Scott's "Legend" and the Rankin-Bass production "Rudolph the Red Nosed-Reindeer". Both of these examples predated computer special effects and they get creative with their use of effects.

II. Body:
   A. Legend: This film shows some of the greatest visual effects to come before the use of computer special effects. Naturally, their creative use of snow is noteworthy. In the beginning of the movie, winter sets in rapidly and forest is completely covered in snow in an instant. To make all of this snow, the filmmakers used a mix of paper and plastic for the snow along with several well placed fans to keep all the flakes moving. This, along with the gas used to make all of the fire scenes in the film contributed to... a catastrophic fire at the set. Luckily, no one was injured, but almost all of the sets were destroyed. Nevertheless, "Legend" creates a beautiful, believable scene with their technique.

   B. Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer: Rankin-Bass is well known around America as the series with all the holiday specials. Their cute doll designs and simple stop-motion animation capture the hearts of children. Snow is often seen in their productions, particularly in Rudolph. Their technique was coined 'animagic', in which traditional animation cel drawing were placed over the pre-recorded stop motion animation. While Rankin-Bass does not create believable snow, it does fit in with the visual design of their films. Rankin-Bass succeeds with creativity and appeal, but fails in authenticity.

III. Conclusion: Visual effects for snow have come a long way since the days of "Legend" and "Rudolph". Snow is still often created in live action through live special effects, though the formula for the perfect snow has changed often; in fact it is sometimes preferred to it this way in order to properly put the actors in the element. Computers are also used for snow effects, as seen with Frozen. Snow can light and airy or dark and dramatic; it is up to filmmakers to decide how to best create a believable, perfect snowflake.

Science Fact or Cinematic Ficton?

In the world of movies, there is a certain limit one must follow the laws of physics for the audience to believe in the world the filmmakers are creating. However, there are plenty of movies where these laws of physics must be broken. Whether filmmakers do this due to ignorance of science or for good reason to advance the story depends. In the examples below, the law of action and reaction is discussed and judged on whether or not the breaking of the law is justified. In these films, the laws of action and reaction is sometimes broken through poor knowledge, and other times it is broken through good intentions of carrying a good story. The three films I have chosen are Cloud Atlas, Hook, and Kill Bill.

The first film I chose was Cloud Atlas, one of my favorite movies. One can describe the movie as the journey of several souls throughout the history of Earth, and it journeys through many different eras and has a multitude of characters. It is often harped on for its complicated plot, so I assumed the audiences would not pay too much attention to the laws of physics. I was somewhat correct in this assumption. While this film takes place throughout many fantastical worlds, the laws of physics are actually followed closely well for the majority of the film. Many laws are followed well, such as with the laws of balance while the future Neo-Korean characters, Hae-Joo and Sonmi, are running across a small beam over a harrowing sky-rise. However, they disregarded the law of action and reaction in a later scene, and it is debatable if this was done for the story or out of ignorance.

In the same timeline mentioned before, there is a fight scene that takes place between one of the male leads, Hae-Joo Chang, and the Neo-Seoul police. In this fight scene, there are several instances when the law of action and reaction is broken. These several instances noted are the inaccuracy of recoil of a gun. This is seen in the scene where Hae-Joo saves Sonmi from the police. He is disguised as a simple truck driver, but then pulls out his trusty futuristic energy type of gun. Hae-Joo fires this gun and the police officers go flying in the air, hitting the walls. This scene is also somewhat odd for several reasons. Firstly, in that the police officers fly away at a relatively slow speed. Secondly, Hae-Joo aims the gun at one officer, but the second one standing behind Hae-Joo also goes flying away. Not only is there a flaw with the speed at which the police officer is shot away and how the second one is also blown away, but Hae-Joo shows no effects of a recoil as well. If the gun Hae-Joo was firing was strong enough to blow away a human being, the speed would have to be incredibly strong. Secondly, if the gun was that powerful, Hae-Joo would have to suffer significant recoil as well. Maybe the future designed guns that have no recoil and can make people fly away without firing at them… however, it is still distracting from the audience. This scene was a instance where I believe the filmmakers disobeyed the law of action and reaction, but I do not believe it helped further the story in a significant enough of way for them to do so.

The next movie I will evaluate is Hook, Steven Spielberg’s children fantasy movie about a grown up Peter Pan. It is a children's fantasy movie, so it is understandable the filmmakers would break the laws in order to fulfill a child's dream. They break numerous laws, the most obvious being the law of gravity with Peter Pan and a number of other character’s ability to fly. Disregarding those laws, the filmmakers also decided to break the law of action and reaction. The instance in particular where the law of action/reaction is broken is when Jack is playing baseball in Neverland, where Captain Hook is hosting the game. Jack hits an unbelievably far home run. For a ten year old boy with little muscle mass, he would not be able to put such energy into hitting a baseball so far that it goes hundreds of feet into the air.

However, this is one of the instances where the breaking of the law of action and reaction is justified. It is the moment when Jack finally feels validated by a father figure, and the story would not have been able to progress without this feat of incredible strength. The filmmakers clearly knew they were doing the impossible, but they had to do it in order to fulfill the needs of the story.

The final movie I chose to analyze was Kill Bill by Quentin Tarantino. Honestly, I could have chosen any of Tarantino’s recent films, in most of his films, the blood spray is wildly inaccurate and this is a rather good example of breaking the law of action and reaction. However, Kill Bill had a slightly more intricate way in which they broke the law of action and reaction than the typical gun spraying blood all over the place. There is still blood involved in this example, as expected.

In the one of the many climaxing battle scenes in the movie, the Bride has to fight O-Ren's 88 army. There are countless instances where the law of action and reaction is broken. However, this example in particular is a twist from the norm. In this instance, the Bride is fighting the schoolgirl assassin Gogo. Gogo wields a large metal spiked ball. The Bride is finally able to defeat her when she kicks the spiked ball, has it bounce against a wooden beam, and then bounces back to hit Gogo's head. Firstly, there would not be enough energy to propel this metal ball enough times that it is able to make a significant damage to Gogo. Secondly, this energy would also not be significant enough that force makes Gogo break the table she is standing on in recoil. While the Bride is strong, she  does not have enough energy to propel a large metal ball, have it bounce back at a high speed, and have the table get destroyed in the recoil. However, I believe the filmmakers were well aware of the inaccuracy of this stunt. It made for an exciting action scene and had all the speed and blood that the story and feel of the movie needed.

In conclusion, in all of these movies, the law of action and reaction is broken and bent in unbelievable ways. However, the audience does not mind it so much. It is all to the benefit of the story and creating an immersive world the law is broken. That is good reason enough in a fantastical world of cinema.

Listed below are the Youtube links for the two of the scenes mentioned:

Cloud Atlas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1r3i4SSbMA (begins at 0:07)

Kill Bill: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9iIKn1Bl6c (begins at 2:00)