Hello!
For my latest 3D animation assignment, we had to animate a pendulum, specifically showing motion follow-through. I really enjoyed working on this assignment as I really started to understand Autodesk Maya more and how the animation graph works in the software.
When animating a pendulum, you have to think about the weight of each segment. You can’t have the tail of the pendulum go forward first, or it looks like the tail is guiding the movement and not the top of the pendulum. The pendulum swing would start after the object comes to an abrupt stop, shown by its collision with the wall.
I love animating loose things, so this was very, very fun for me. The beginning of this assignment was a bit rough for me as I decided “Watch the tutorial video? Who needs that?” Admittedly not my smartest move, but I was able to figure it out in the end!!
The animation of the object for awhile started out with the tail being too high too soon, and it definitely took me a bit of adjusting to get it to a more natural rising motion. I definitely could have polished up some areas, the main one being the swinging of the tail motion. The bottom weight should lag behind just a bit more so it can have a bit more follow through.
Our next assignment is to make a very short video using a provided character rig named Squiddy and I am very excited for it. We need to create an opening sequence and then have Squiddy get ready to jump and then jump. I have very funs planned for that project.
Thanks for reading!!