Stereo 3D Images Extra Credit

Lighting a Scene in Maya

3 Point Lighting




















2 Point Lighting




















1 Point Lighting

Building a Scene in Maya

Built scene in Maya with objects arranged to make initials R C

Science Fact or Cinematic Fiction

“Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children” is an animated film that uses computer graphics to create a stunning visual world. The animation in the film is well executed and very detailed, down to the small movements in fingers and overlapping action of drapery and hair. While the physics of this world are supposed to emulate the physics in the natural world, in many cases they break those rules. The physical nature of the actions occurring in this scene breaks the laws of physics completely, or sometimes they are inconsistent with the rules established earlier in the scene. Either way, these actions take the viewer out of the scene and out of the story. In this paper, we will be looking at one scene of the film in which 3 principles of physics are broken. The scene we will be studying is the scene where Tifa and Loz fight in the church. The first principle we will explore is Newton’s third law of motion, which states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. The next principle we will look at is Newton’s first law of motion which states that every object in motion will remain in motion until acted upon by an outside force. The last topic we will review is the principles of physics concerning the motion of secondary actions in this scene.
Actions that happen at the beginning of this scene establish to the viewer what the rules of physics are that the characters will obey. The animation and movement of the characters in the beginning of the scene seem to indicate a very realistic world where the characters are under the rules of the natural world. When Tifa and Loz begin fighting, Tifa does a full roundhouse kick and hits Loz directly across the face. Loz’s reaction to this kick is that his head flies back and his spine bends backwards to compensate. Loz stays in the same spot where he was standing, barely moving back at all in response to Tifa’s kick. This establishes that the force of a full roundhouse kick is not strong enough to make the character fly back in response. This establishes the force of every other action in the scene, and the strength of the characters.
In response to Tifa’s kick, Loz attacks Tifa with some type of electric weapon attached to his wrist. He punches Tifa, and at the time of impact, the electric weapon generates a spark of electricity. The punch itself has very little horizontal force and actually slows down significantly when it reaches Tifa. Tifa’s reaction however, has a disproportionate response of horizontal motion compared to the horizontal force of Loz’s punch. Tifa flies backwards about twenty feet away from Loz. The animation is trying to suggest that the horizontal force was generated by the electric weapon that Loz is wielding. However, an electric shock from a weapon would not generate a horizontal force upon a person. So in the natural world, the only source of horizontal force would be from the punch itself, which was not strong enough to justify Tifa flying back twenty feet away from Loz. Also, compared to the reaction of Loz to Tifa’s roundhouse kick, Loz’s electric weapon would have to generate a massive amount of horizontal force to justify Tifa’s reaction to the attack.
Later in the scene, Tifa jumps off a wall and grabs Loz in mid air. Tifa grabs Loz with one hand, pulls him off the ground, slams him against the floor, and then throws him about thirty feet up in the air. This action completely destroys the illusion of these characters being in the physical world because it would be impossible for Tifa to do this with the rules that have been established earlier in the scene. Earlier in the scene, Tifa’s full roundhouse kick to Loz barely even moved him back. Now, Tifa is able to pull Loz off the ground with one hand and throw him thirty feet up in the air. Loz appears weightless in this scene, and even the way he moves while in Tifa’s hand resembles overlapping action of cloth or paper in the wind. When Tifa throws Loz into the air, she is actually in the middle of a short jump, so she does not push off the ground. In fact, the animation of the throw indicates that she is using very little force to throw Loz into the air. If she actually were strong enough to throw Loz that high into the air, she would need to exert and strong enough force against the ground to do so. But Tifa does not appear to exert any force at all. The weightlessness in this scene is caused by the animators breaking Newton’s third law of motion.
Later in this scene, Loz kicks a pew at Tifa, and Tifa blocks the attack by smashing the oncoming pew in mid air. Again, there is an imbalance of forces in this scene. Loz kicks the pew towards Tifa, but the pew is flying towards her extremely fast in the horizontal direction. This speed is far faster than any human can kick an object of that size. If the pew weighs around ninety kilograms, and is accelerating at a rate of ten meters per second, the force would be nine hundred newtons. The force of gravity is around ten newtons, so when Tifa blocks the pew she would be feeling a force ninety times the force of gravity. In the natural world, this would definitely cause Tifa to fly backwards. Also, this conflicts with the pattern established at the beginning of the fight because if the force of the pew was not strong enough to cause Tifa to fly back, how strong was the force of Loz’s electric weapon?
Newton’s first law of motion states that in the absence of force, a body either is at rest or moves in a straight line with constant speed. Objects on the Earth are always affected by the force of gravity, pulling them down towards the center of the Earth. In this scene, the characters take actions that defy gravity.
In this scene, Loz throws Tifa against a wall and she clings against the wall for several seconds without falling down. At first this may seem very possible because carnival rides that make use of centrifugal force allow people to cling to a wall without falling down, even though they are not harnessed to it. However, this is a difference between those carnival rides and the situation happening here. In a carnival ride, an outward force created by the spinning machine is constantly acting on the riders to push them up against the wall. As long as the machine keeps spinning, the force continues to act on the riders and they stick to the wall. When the machine comes to a stop, the force lessens and eventually the riders fall back to the ground. In this situation, Tifa does not have a constant force pushing her against the wall. The initial force of her hitting the wall would be enough for her to cling to the wall, but once she has come to a complete stop against the wall, she would fall down to the ground. The wall is exerting and equal and opposite force on Tifa when she hits the wall, and those forces cancel each other out which would bring Tifa’s net horizontal force to zero. Once her net force is zero, she would fall to the ground because there is no further force causing her to stick to the wall. So she would cling to the wall for a short period of time, but then she would quickly fall to the ground. Tifa could increase the time she is against the wall by bending her knees as she hits the wall. This would increase the time of the impact, thus increasing the time it takes for the wall to cancel her horizontal force. This would be similar to the crumple zone on a car which is intended to increase the time of impact during a crash, and could give her perhaps an extra second against the wall.
There are many instances in this scene where the overlapping action on hair, clothes, and objects, don’t follow the natural laws of physics. When Tifa is thrown against the wall by Loz, she flies past a bed of flowers on the ground. When she hits the wall, the flower petals suddenly fly up into the air as if a current of air from underneath them suddenly rose up and threw the petals upward. The animators were trying to create the effect of a wind current created by Tifa when she passed by the flowers that threw the petals into the air. However, if this were the case then the petals would fly in the direction that Tifa was moving and not straight up into the air. The petals would fly towards the wall. However this would not look as good in the camera, so the animators decided to make the petals fly upward.
In the same moment that we see the petals fly up into the air, we also see the drapery on the back of Tifa’s shirt gently caress the surface of the wall. This makes no sense in the natural world because the drapery would have been traveling at the same speed as Tifa before she hit the wall. When Tifa hit the wall, the drapery would have slammed into it at the same speed that Tifa hit the wall. The drapery would not slowly hit the wall as it does in this scene.
In conclusion, this scene in “Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children” breaks many of the rules of physics that we know in the natural world. Many of the actions in this scene bend or break Newton’s laws of motion. Sometimes this can be used as an effect to make the scene more appealing, but often it can cause the audience to become distracted and take attention away from the story.

Outline for the Second Term Paper

Physics in “Final Fantasy VII Advent Children”

I. Introduction – Incorrect Physics in the fight scene between Loz and Tifa in the church
• a. Action/Reaction Principle broken
• b. Newton’s first Law of Motion broken
• c. Physics principles concerning overlap broken

II. Action/Reaction Principle broken

• a. Tifa’s roundhouse kicks to Loz
o first main attack of scene and sets stage for physics of scene
o Loz barely reacts to the kick, bending back but not flying away
o Balanced forces here, sets standard for scene
• b. Loz’s first attack with his electric weapon
o Loz’s attack has very little horizontal force
o Tifa’s reaction is flying back several yards away
o Imbalance of forces
• c. Loz’s pew kick at Tifa
o Loz kicks the pew with strong force, but not enough to justify the distance and speed it flies
o Tifa blocks pew and hardly reacts at all to the horizontal force of the pew
o Imbalance of forces
• After Tifa jumps off the wall, she grabs Loz and throws him up into the air
o Tifa grabs Loz with 1 hand and pulls him off his feet, dragging him against ground
o Tifa throws Loz into the air without pushing off from the ground at all
o Imbalance of forces

III. Newton’s first Law of Motion broken

• a. Tifa is thrown against the wall and stays there for long period of time
o Shot is simulating centrifugal effect that can be seen in spinning carnival rides
o However in those rides the centrifugal force is constantly acting on the people to keep them against the wall
o Tifa comes to a complete stop against the wall, meaning that the wall exerted an equal and opposite force on her which canceled out her horizontal force
o The moment Tifa’s horizontal force is canceled, she should fall to the ground, but doesn’t
o Had Tifa increased the time of impact by bending her legs as she hit the wall, she would stay there a little longer in real life
o Crumple zone effect in cars
• b. Loz thrown into air by Tifa
o Loz’s horizontal speed slows down in midair
o Breaks Newton’s first law of motion b/c no force is lowing Loz down
o Tifa must use a great amount of frictional force to stop her horizontal speed before she jumps up into the air

IV. Physics principles concerning overlap broken

• a. When Tifa is thrown against the wall
o Flowers fly up as an overlap to Tifa flying by them
 The flowers fly up vertically with no horizontal motion to them
 In real life, the flowers would fly in the direction Tifa was moving, because of the wind current created by Tifa flying by them
o How Tifa’s drapery reacts
 Tifa’s drapery slowly hits the wall
 In real life it would slam into the wall at the same speed Tifa was going
 Newton’s first law, the drapery would keep going at the same speed until it hits the wall
• When Tifa is being spun around and knocked into the pews by Loz
o One pew reacts by being struck by Tifa
 The pew flies up into the air with very little horizontal force, despite the fact that Tifa hit the pew horizontally
 The pew flies high up into the air and stays there for quite a long time, despite the small vertical force on it

V. Conclusion

• a. Summarize points
• b. Restate thesis

Stop-Motion Animation

This is a walk cycle using stop motion animation.

Analysis of Walking

Clip A




Clip B




Clip C




Clip D




Clip E