For the Project Satisfying Animation, I created the animation of Lego cube falling in a symmetrical order and stacking back to the main object. I wanted this animation to be simple but effective. The main motive of this assignment was to create a single repeating cycle of this animation, which would depict endlessness.
For the start, I created a ‘Lego Block’. For this, I simple took a cylinder and a cube, copied the cylinder so the it would resemble the Lego Block. After doing this, I selected all the edges and beveled it as they were extremely sharp. After this step, I also extruded the bottom of the lego block to create a “hollow” feel, and added a tube as per the lego requirements. Later on as I copied the lego block 4 times, my requirements for modelling were completed.
For starting the animation I had to be vary of few things,
1. The Pivot
2. Smooth Animation
3. Camera Movement
The pivot plays an extremely important role in the field of animation. It can be called as the back bone/ center of the object. While animating, this pivot acts as the center and rotates/translates/scales the object respectively. Hence, I had to also animate the Pivot in order to get this output. Typically, as the pivot is a crucial elements the settings of pivot are not visible. For animating or viewing the setting of the pivot we have to unhide the settings of the object.
Later on we can manipulate and even key the settings of the same. By doing this, I moved and animated the pivot the pivot to the corners as I wanted them to move accordingly. And later as these key was too linear With the help of graph editor I made these keys have a smooth animation so that it eases in onto the next key.
The main task was to make this animation feel endless. But as the top lego pieces fall off, the animation was getting a huge off set in the translation. The solution that I came up for this was animating of the camera. I translated and move the camera in the -Y direction so that the red lego piece would be on the same position in the start and the end. And hence I was able to get this final output.