Tireman's Puck Shuffle

[John Bigboote]

I had chance this last week to do a scoreboard 'halftime' animation for my client Belle Tire... one of those things 'for the kids' where the stadium DJ will assign a random seating section to the outcome... and if chosen that section will get a prize... like a pack of M&M's or a free soda. This one was for the Grand Rapids Griffins, a Michigan Junior SemiPro hockey team- and they wanted a 'shell game' with 3 outcomes starring Tireman in an ice-hockey environment... Belle Tire's cartoon mascot that originated in 1922 and whom I have been animating in A:M for the past few years.

 

I started animating the pucks sliding around and quickly realized I was in 'keyframe hell'... not only was it a lot of tedious work, but the results weren't that good either. So I considered using A:M's various dynamics simulators, ie: Simcloth or Newton Dymnamics. I had done a cool test recently utilizing SimCloth(JelloBlocks), but had difficulty getting it to respond to forces. After almost a full day of dinking with Newton and forces, I came to a pretty cool result that looks more fluid, natural and dynamic than the hand-animated stuff, plus by compressing or expanding the simulated keyframes I could adjust the speed to something that would not/maybe lose a kids eye-focus.

 

Take a look! (This is still a rough render...sound will be announced live by the stadium announcer)

BT_PUCKSHUFFLE_Awins_small.mov

[John Bigboote]

A view of the Forces setup:

[robcat2075]

I like that Matt. The story of how you got this away from the Maya guys would be a cool segment for that Hash Fellow Project.

[Kamikaze]

Damn that's clever.....and enjoyable to follow ............

[johnl3d]

Nice one Matt

[NancyGormezano]

cute! Works well.

 

Not quite understanding how you got the forces to work.

 

Is each force "blowing" on each puck, and you vary the angle and amount of the force, and then eventually hand key the pucks into their final position? Very clever whatever you did.

 

One crit: would like to see more acceleration and de-acceleration of the pucks as they bounce off the walls. As it is, it feels like they are being pushed around, rather than being energized and de-energized by the collisions.

 

I repeat: cute & clever!

[Rodney]

Very nice Matt!

[John Bigboote]

I updated the movie with today's version...

 

Nancy- once the simulation is run you have complete control over the keframes... so I can copy/paste where they were at the start onto the end so they return to where they were... you can also delete entire parts if you don't like they way the sim looked and add your own keyframed action instead. Yes, each force is blowing the pucks around. I found some limitations with the forces, seemed I could not move or rotate them ( I COULD, but the simulation ran as though I hadn't...) Like I said, it was at least 4 hours of experiments and terrible simulations before I got anything useful.

 

ALSO- I forgot to mention, when editing the generated keyframes... I deleted all the simulated 'rotation' information, so the pucks always face forward... little trick!

[Fuchur]

I really love that

Well done!

 

See you

*Fuchur*

[John Bigboote]

A follow-up: Since I live 'cross-state' from the venue where this animation will play (AmWay Arena in Grand Rapids, MI) a brother of a colleague who happens to work at the arena shot a short phone-video of the animation in action during a GR Griffons intermission, it is on my Facebook page, mid-way down:

 

http://www.facebook.com/matt.campbell.5203

[Gerry]

Nice one, Matt!

[RS3D]

I really liked the facial expressions and timing on the tire man character.