Jennifer van den Brand

Graduation

CMGT

Saxion 

During the course of four months, I will be working on my Graduation project for the study CMGT "Creative Media and Gaming Technologies". A preliminary problem was formed with the client, which will be my focus during this Graduation project.

Problem

The client would like a tool that allows him to animate the whole animatronic at once to decrease the time it takes to animate an animatronic. The client mentioned that currently, he could only animate small parts of the animatronic one by one because the control panel is limited to a certain amount of axis. For every axis, there is a slider. The sliders have to be reassigned to a different axis to animate the animatronic further.

The client also mentioned that it is troublesome to make animations interesting. Mainly because it is difficult to align multiple parts with each other since they can’t be animated at once. Having the option to animate the animatronic at once would help the client make his animations more interesting. Finding a way to animate animatronics faster could result in extra time that the client could spend on secondary animations to also create more realistic and interesting movements.

Questions

In order to find a solution to the problem, the main question and multiple questions are formulated.

Main Question

How to transfer animation data from the 3D modeling software, Autodesk Maya, to an animatronic so that the animatronic can be animated faster, easier, and more intuitive?

Sub-Questions

1. Which components are commonly used to create animatronics?

2. Which animation methods are currently used to animate animatronics?

3. How to send animation data from the program Autodesk Maya to the animatronic?

4. How to match the movement constraints of an animatronic to a 3D virtual replica?

5. What are the most time-consuming steps while creating animatronics?

6. How can 3D models, who are used for animating the animatronic, be used for other steps in the creation process of animatronics?

7. How to make animating the animatronic more intuitive?