WAG Gymnastics Fan Animations

[Damon Anderson]

This is one of the animations created out of my love of gymnastics My competitive days are long over, but you're never completely out of the sport. I like to show the animations to anyone willing to watch. There are others if people are interested. I hope it's posted in the right place.

 

[Sari]

That's so cool! Thank you for sharing!

 

[roll123]

Super cool!

 

[Faolmor]

Finally - a bar routine I can watch without worrying about the gymnast breaking her neck lol

That was awesome

 

[AgingHippie]

I enjoyed it a lot.

 

[Damon Anderson]

Here are the other animations. You may have to cut and paste. Thank you everyone for taking a look, and all comments and critiques are welcome.

Balance beam:

Floor Ex.:

Rhythmic Ball :

Tumbling/Triple:

 

[twinmomma]

That's really cool!!!

 

[sewgood]

Very cool! I can't wait to show that to my daughter. She loves gymnastics, computers and science, so this is right up her alley.

You are very talented - keep up the good work!

 

[fuzi]

I'm curious. How do you create these animations?

Mind you: I'm not a "tech" person, but I would love to hear a little about your process in lay-terminology.

 

[MomIdidit!]

wow....those videos are so entertaining. thanks for sharing!!!

 

[Damon Anderson]

I'm curious. How do you create these animations?

Mind you: I'm not a "tech" person, but I would love to hear a little about your process in lay-terminology.

They were created using the program Autodesk 3DS Max. You could think of the character as a virtual puppet. In this case, the puppet has a skeleton with controls for each limb. The controls are used to pose and re-pose the puppet over a sequence of frames (called keyframes). It's somewhat similar to stop-animation used in Coraline, or The Fantastic Mr. Fox, but done on the computer. When the frames are played in sequence, the puppet's body and limbs transition from one pose to the next. This transition creates the motion. This method is known as keyframe animation.

Another popular animation method (not used here) is motion capture where the same control skeleton is driven by sensors placed on the body of a person, and the data from the movement is captured by the computer. Motion capture is used in most of the gymnastics video games.

 

[Deleted member 18037]

Ok so how long does it take to create one routine??

 

[Damon Anderson]

Ok so how long does it take to create one routine??

The tumbling pass (triple somersault) and vaults each took about a week. The longest and toughest was the rhythmic routine which took around six months (compared to four with the floor ex). I've always loved rhythmic, but I've gained a strong appreciation for the amazing things these young ladies can do. A rhythmic gymnast's flexibility also made things difficult for the program because most character animation never comes close to such extremes. In addition to being longer, the floor animations had movement in multiple directions (sometimes all at once) over a large area. The beam routine took around three months. It (like the tumbling, and vault) mainly moved back and forth. The bars animation took two months.

All the animations were done over a period of over three years.

 

[Deleted member 18037]

You are clearly very patient