Spring Final

So I basically died of stress during this final. Thanks Mrs. Klein. Especially those last 20 minutes when none of the rendering was working. For example, the window was supposed to have black around the moon, because it is night time. You can see the black in the reflection on the floor, but not straight through the window. I added a moon to the scene, thanks to my knowledge learned from the Alleyway scene.

I added a flame to the candle, done by fluid and emitter manipulation. Also added a wine bottle next to the goblet, originally to pour wine into it until I spent too long trying to get wine to work out and had to switch animation ideas. You can see the plate flying off the table in the background. And that darn white outside the window, still don't know where it came from.

Yaaaaaaay for moons. And eerie light reflections on the marble floor, which I textured.

I also textured the stones and wall behind them. The plate can be seen on the floor, after it falls.

I also textured the stones and wall behind them. The plate can be seen on the floor, after it falls.

Playblast of the plate flying off the table by.... MAGIC. 

Have a great summer!

Personal Project Compiled

It was pretty stressful to do everything in just two weeks - it may not look like much, but it does take a large amount of time for most aspects of it. Glad it's completed, and glad to have had such a fun year in animation. Best regards, Salty my old pal.

2 Week Animation - Models

Salty's lonely house, which happens to look like Domo.

Salty's got glass doors on his house, because he's fancy.

In the middle of the doors opening.

His disguise glasses make sure people don't know his secret identity.

Salty Final Video

After months... Salty is complete. You were a good seal. If only you were better at your circus career, maybe we could have spent more time together. But you dropped your ball, so I can spend no longer with you. Goodbye Salty.

Salty - All Textures

Whole scene

Salty throwing the ball up

Awwwh, he dropped it. Poor Salty.

Salty's pretty emotional.

Salty - Environment (No Textures)

Stage sans texture. Initial lighting. There will be water in front of the platform Salty is on.

I enjoyed making the overlapping colored lights and spot lights in the background, I thought they really contributed to the scene!

View from the front to see the screen background flat. Excited to get it all textured!

Salty dropped his ball, and now he's sad.

Salty - Initial Animation

The tutorial had us playblast the animation, as it would not look as good rendered out due to no lighting yet. This ball was pretty frustrating, and the the ball would not cooperate with having two different point constraints for a few days. Then I fixed it on accident! Timing is slow, will be fixed. On to the environment! Very end of the ball bounce won't be seen in the final scene, so that is why it doesn't continue bouncing less and less high.

Salty Facial Features

Salty just saw something he shouldn't have. Salty is surprised.

Salty is skeptical, perhaps his seal friends are lying to him.

Salty Pose

Side view

Front

Persp

Top

After binding the joints to the skin, putting Salty in a pose was just a simple act of rotating specific joints. Salty is a friendly seal.

Salty Joints

Front of Salty

His side

Perspective

From the top

Figuring out how to render the joints was even harder than making the joints themselves. I ended up using print screen with the project open in maya and cropped the pictures. The most complicated part of using the joints was setting up the hierarchy correctly, so that certain joints only affect the desired other joints.

Salty Model

Side view

Perspective

Front view

Top view

Salty is the first project that's been actually difficult to model. It's different working with NURBS surfaces instead of polygons, but it's not completely dreadful. Getting the body to look semi-normal was pretty dreadful though, as I don't encounter seals very often in my day-to-day life to understand the body structure.

Inverse Kinetics

Whoooo for Inverse Kinetics! Simple to follow instructions, hard to understand why it all works. Excited to continue learning this and move towards character animations!

Rain

I did not enjoy rain. Apart from being a particle that must be rendered out with mental ray, it doesn't even look nice. And you can barely see it. Don't think I'll be "making it rain" again any time soon.

The Alleyway: Series 8 - Return of the Alley

Oh alleyway, how I despise you. You make everything more complicated. I feel our relationship must end soon, as I cannot keep doing this. I'm sorry, dear alley way that I once spent so long on.

Shatter

This shatter effect was fun! Probably because it was so simple to create - simply comprised of creating two DMM objects, making the floor passive so that it would stay still, and slightly tweaking the attribute settings.

Explosion

Explosions are fun. This tutorial was pretty simple to follow, and thank goodness for that, because there were so many different settings and variables to be changed that all made their own difference in the overall picture. Definitely wouldn't remember how to make one exactly like this on my own, but I would remember how to use volume fields, containers, and a fluid similar to this one.

Dust Impact

What's with all these tutorials being about balls alone in the desert? Dust was much simpler than the other effects, and only required modifying an emitter and its particles. Oh, and creating another gravity field for the dust, but that was really just a few clicks.

Mud Roll

This was not very fun to work on, because it gave everyone in the class problems with the top plane flipping over and randomly flying off screen, or exploding when the ball rolled over the center. However, most figured out how to make it presentable, mainly by increasing the magnitude of the damp field by up to 3000 (which is crazy).

Rigid and Soft Bodies

Oh rigid bodies, how I wish I knew about you before keyframing all the ball drops by hand. This was really simple to do by turing the boards into active rigid bodies, which will respond when hit, and the last one a passive rigid body so that it doesn't move.

I do not enjoy soft bodies nearly as much. I believe you will be able to see why. Definitely a hundred times harder to make them look decent. BUT, if I ever need to know how to make jello fall from the sky into desert dunes (which happen to be rock hard and don't respond to the impact), I'll know what to do.

Ball Bounce

This exercise was to make us think about how different weighted and sized balls would bounce differently. On the left I made a yoga ball, which has the largest deform (squash and stretch) because it is the most elastic. This yoga ball tends to hang in the air a little bit more due to its large size and light weight (air resistance). The bowling ball in the middle drops quickly and does not bounce high, as it is very heavy. On the right, the tennis ball bounces more than the rest and takes a little while to lose its height, due to its light weightedness and small size.

Pendulum Swing

I hath created a pendulum. And it swings. Let it be known to physics teachers everywhere that I understand basic concepts of gravity!