The Final Film

 

Music: Spirit Blossom 

Musician: Roman Belov 

URL: https://pixabay.com/music/-spirit-blossom-15285

Changes From Concept To Completion

During the modelling, texturing and scene assemble stage of the project I changed or removed quite a few things that I had initially planned on doing or including in the scene all the way back as far as storyboarding. This is a short list of some of the things that were either changed or removed from the finished film - as well as a brief explanation as to why that change was made,

• Wallpaper Design - Changed from stars to clouds
• This was done because when I started creating the star design I realised how much time it was going to take and scrapped it for clouds as they could take up bigger spaces on the wall and I wouldn't need quite as many of them
• Dresser Design - Changed from open to closed
• This was purely a time saving measure as having the drawer closed meant I needed to do less animation as the scene no longer involved the ball bouncing off the edge of the drawer on the way down to the ground and instead just rolled directly down to the ground and only bounced when it got there
• Wall Art - Changed from Toy Story inspired images to my own character concept art
• Again this was done to save time that I could then dedicate to working on the animation as I wanted to give myself as much time as possible to do that as I could in case any unforeseen issues popped up along the way
• Putting fewer unique objects on the shelves
• Originally I had planned to put unique objects on each of the shelves in the scene but when I started running into issues where the scene would crash frequently or the controls would be delayed in responding to my prompts I decided to cut that idea and instead just copy and rotate what was already there to make it look like something different - even though it's the same set of books just rotated and recoloured a few different ways
• Putting less furniture in the room
• My initial concept designs included a chair at the desk, a beanbag chair in one of the corners and a cardboard box on the floor by the desk. I even started modelling a globe to go on the dresser before I decided to cut all of this stuff in order to save time and space on my computer as I had gotten to a point where the Maya file would take over 20 minutes to open any time I wanted to work on it. So, I went through everything in the room and removed anything that I could where I believed its absence would not affect the scene overall.
• Cutting a character
• One of the more difficult changes I made was to cut the very first character I had created for the film. I had to do this because for some reason, any time I tried to add it to the final scene Maya would crash either as it was importing it or shortly after it had finished importing. So, after spending about a week on it I decided the best use of my time and in the interest of not corrupting the full master file, that I would cut that character out and revisit it in my own time to try and determine the cause.
• Changing some of the animation
• A change I made from the storyboard to final film was to cut some of the animation that would have taken place between Scene 7 and 8. According to the storyboard my Pokebot character was going to circle my name after he fixed the letter placement but after realising that by including that animation I could be looking at somewhere close to 900 frames I decided to modify his animation to include one initial loop, including fixing my name, stopping to inspect his work and then zooming back under the bed. This would not only save me time during the animation process but also at the rendering stage too as it would mean I wouldn't have as much to render overall.

As mentioned before, this is not an exhaustive list changes I made but I felt it would be a good idea to show how my thoughts and creative idea making process changed as I delved further and further into the project.

Rendering and Editing The Film

 

A still from Scene Five featuring my Pokebot character

After a lot of issues along the way, it's finally time to render my final film. Over the past week or so I had attempted to do some test renders on each of the scenes in the final film to see how long it would take for my laptop to complete.

This is where I ran into an issue - after running for over 90 minutes, my laptop still hadn't completed rendering a single frame - in fact it was only on 8%. It was then that I messaged some of the people in my class to ask them if they had any suggestions for improving render times as there was no way I'd get anything dome otherwise. 

That's when someone suggested using a render farm and even recommended a few that I could try. After looking into the options I settled on Fox Render Farm and the speed that I was able to get things rendered was like night and day. I couldn't render a single frame in 90+ minutes and the render farm managed to render Scene 1 - which is 200 frames - in a little over 6 minutes.

After checking through each of the 200 images in Scene 1 and seeing that there were no issues, I pressed ahead and set up and submitted each scene to be rendered. Rendering with this render farm was really convenient in that I would point the software to where the Maya scene I wanted rendered was, and then it would analyse it and read all of the asset and texture files using the project settings related to that scene. As for defining the actual render settings - it worked the same way - I would set the render settings in Maya as I would normally do if I was rendering it on my machine and the software would read those settings and apply it to the render job,

A still from Scene Three

All in - I would estimate that the rendering process for all 8 scenes took about 2 hours using the render farm - which consisted of 748 frames, something I definitely wouldn't have been able to do using my own laptop.

Now, with all the scenes rendered it was time to take all the image sequences I had gathered and turn them into a video. In class it was recommended that we use DaVinci Resolve for this as it's free and professional grade software. However, given the extremely limited space on my laptop I had to find an alternative option. After a lot of research I chose Shutter Encoder. It has an extremely basic interface but it is relatively straightforward to use. To make the video using my images sequences I did the following;

Add all the images to the queue on the left

Set function to h.264 or AVI or any output you want

Under 'Bitrates adjustment:'

• Set 'Scale' to 1920x1080 (or any other resolution you want)

• Click 'VBR' until it says 'CQ'

• Set the CQ value to 21

• Enable 'Max quality'

Under 'Image sequence:'

• Enable 'activate the image sequence to 24fps'

Under 'Advanced features:'

• Set 'Force tune' to 'stillimage'

Start function

 Once I started the rendering process on the video it took about five minutes to complete. I rendered out the video in both MP4 and AVI. I chose to do that because AVI is the format required for assignment submission and MP4 because if I ever decide to add this to my portfolio, MP4 is a more widely used format across different operating systems and video playing software.

With the render now complete I brought it into YouCut on my phone to be able to edit it on the go. As part of the editing process I cut out some of the awkward scene cuts to try and make it look a bit more cohesive and add some music in the background.

Overall, I'm very happy with how the film turned out.

Working With Blend Shapes

 

In today's class we looked at how blend shapes could be used when modelling. To do this we were given some basic shapes that resembled a smiley face and after being walked through the process of how to do it, we were tasked with creating new blend shapes that conveyed different emotions.

This techique would be especially useful when animating faces and I am planning to incorporate it into how one of the characters in my film communicates if time allows.

Finishing The Concept Sketches

 

Following on from my diary entry a few weeks ago where I posted the concept sketches for the environment I'm creating for my short film - I have finally settled on a colour pallet that I think works for what I'm trying to make.

As mentioned in the post about the sketches, my inspiration for the environment as a whole is the Pixar film 'Toy Story'. With that in mind I tried to go with a colour scheme that I felt closely resembled what the film looks like.

It is also worth noting once again that I have made some changes from concept to inception but still approached the changes the same way I approached the concept art - making sure the changes closely resembled the original scene in the film while also remaining original to me. 

Animation Using A Pendulum

 

This week we continued to look at different ways to animate things using a pendulum. We were tasked to create an animation of our choosing using any of the animation techniques we covered in the weeks previous - or a combination of the techniques.

I chose to do a classic pendulum animation. While not perfect by any means - I am happy with the results for a first attempt at this animation. For subsequent passes, I plan to refine the timing and work on adding some overlapping action and anticipation.

Doing Some Environment Test Renders

 

I'm currently in the process of modelling and texturing the environment that I plan to use in the short film for my assignment. While not everything is complete yet, I felt it was important to get some test renders done to make sure everything fit together nicely and the textures I had done so far are working properly. As you can probably notice in these renders, it looks somewhat different to the concept sketches from a few weeks ago. This is because I found that some of the models I originally planned to use either didn't work, or would take too long to texture so were swapped out in the interest of time management. Perhaps the biggest change so far is the wall texture. I had originally planned on putting in stars but when I was working on the texture in Krita, I realised it would take so much time drawing and perfecting all different size stars that I made a switch to clouds and was able to complete that much faster.

Another noticeable change from the concept art is that the middle drawer on this dresser is closed, but in the concept art, it's open. This is because I couldn't find a way that it would look when modelled that I would be completely happy with so I have put that idea on hold for now but if I have time before I need to begin rendering, then I will go back and try again. If however, I do not have time, I will still be able to follow the original storyboards with the ball falling down and knocking over the blocks as this minor change will not affect the over all narrative of the piece.

As I mentioned in previous posts, my main inspiration for the environment - and story as a whole is Toy Story and right now, there are a lot of very obvious nods to that on display including posters and even the duvet on the bed all of which I found through a Google Images search. I am hoping to change at least one of the posters on the wall to a piece of concept art I drew for one of the characters so that it ties in better as well as the duvet because in my mind having a Buzz Lightyear one when his character model isn't anywhere in the scene, doesn't make any sense to me - but they will do for now for placeholder images

Something else that I'm still trying to get right is the lighting. Right now all I have in there is some skydome lights and a spotlight under the bed to illuminate the character model that currently resides there. These lighting choices are far from final but were helpful in pointing out problem areas that I can focus on when I'm working on the final lighting let up.

This is also the first time I've brought all of the character models I made into the same scene. Up until now, they had been worked on in isolation in their own Maya files so seeing them all brought into the same scene is a huge step towards getting the project completed. In saying that though, I still have some textures to work on and some models to finish so I better get going on that!

Covering The Basics of Animation and Playblasting

A ball rig in Maya

This week we covered the basics of animation in Maya by learning how to animate the movement of a ball in a couple different ways. We looked at how to animate using only the graph editor and by doing it in the viewport by setting keyframes on the timeline at important points in the animation cycle. I found that using the graph editor was a little more difficult to get used to that the keyframing method in the viewport but I'm sure with more practice, using the graph editor will be much more intuitive to me.

We also looked at how to Playblast in Maya. A Playblast is a quick preview of what your animation should look like when the final render is complete. It works by taking a screengrab of the animation in the viewport at each frame during playback and then 'blasting' those images back to you - typically in quicktime format, but this can be changed to something else in the settings menu. This allows you to quickly evaluate if your animation is working out as planned without having to commit time to a full render.

By default, Playblasting will generate the quicktime file using the active viewer and the time range that is indicated on the timeline below the viewer - this also determines the animation range that the playblast will render for you. The default resolution is quarter of the size of the active viewer.

As someone who experiences frequent software crashes and doesn't have the best equipment to render from - the Playblasting feature will be invaluable to me when checking if my animations are working instead of wasting potentially hours on a full render that may not be usable in the final cut.

Piecing Together The Story - And The Storyboard

 

Using the unfinished concept art sketches for the films environment, I was able to put together a very rough storyboard for the film. In doing so, this is the story that I have determined that I would like to tell;

• The small robot pushes or knocks a ball off the top of the dresser
• The ball bounces off the open dresser drawer
• The ball hits the floor, rolls and knocks down the alphabet blocks
• The Poke-Bot flies out from underneath the bed
• The Poke-Bot flies in a circle around the alphabet blocks
• The Poke-Bot fixes the alphabet blocks to spell out my name
• The Poke-Bot flies around the blocks again to inspect them
• The Poke-Bot flies back under the bed
• Camera zooms from the top of the bed towards the robot that caused the blocks to fall
• The robot looks around and waves
• The film ends

With a story now firmly in mind - I will try to create an animatic of the film once I finalise what sound effects or music I'd like to use in the finished piece. I am also continuing to work on finalising the colour scheme for the environment concept art. 

Environment Concept Art Sketches

 

Angle One

With all of the character and prop concept art done - at least until I come up with any additions or changes that would require me to make new ones - it was time to create the concept art for the scene itself. I had a clear idea of what I wanted to create when I began to come up with ideas of the story I wanted to tell, I just needed to see if I could actually draw it in a way that can convey what I wanted to build in 3D.

Angle Two

My plan is to build a bedroom similar to the one featured in the Pixar film 'Toy Story'. I also plan to incorporate anything that I make for class in the meantime if it makes sense for them to be there or perhaps find a way to repurpose the item - similar to how I plan on repurpose the Pokeball that I created during a lesson a few weeks ago into a character in my project.

Angle Three

I haven't decided on a colour scheme for the room yet but it is something that I am actively working on and trying out different combinations until I get something that I'm happy with. Given that I have put a lot of furniture in the room it is taking a little more time than I had planned to do this as I want everything to look unique but also that it belongs in the room, and that nothing there seems like it was put there just to be put there. I want everything to have a purpose and a function.

Angle Four

So, while I continue to work on finishing these pieces of concept art, I at least, can use these unfinished sketches to put together a rough storyboard for the film - which is exactly what I plan to do next.

Alphabet Block Concept Art

 

As part of the requirements for the film, we need to include our name and have the character we create interact with it in some way. My idea is to use children's alphabet blocks to spell out my name and have a character knock it over. 

With that in mind I created the concept art of what these blocks may look like when I create them. I'm not fully sold on the colour scheme that I used for some parts of them image so that may change down the line, but overall I'm pleased with how they turned out.

Now it's time to do the most detailed concept art that I'm going to have to do - the one for the scene environment.

An Introduction To Texturing

Now that we have a good grasp of lighting, we moved on to look at how to texture a model. To begin with this we were asked to take a picture of a flattened cereal box that would later be applied to our models to make them look less like a model and more like a real world object.

Over the duration of the class, we learned where to put the image files on our computers, how to open the texturing window, how to reference the images we wanted to use, how to apply them to the correct plane and resize and manipulate them as needed to get the desired end result. At the end of the first lesson we were able to create and texture a cereal box from the picture we took.

In the lesson that followed, we were provided with textures and asked to follow the steps that enabled us to create the cereal box, to create a dice. Following some trial and error, I was able to successfully texture the dice.

With that area of texturing covered, we moved on to look at how you can paint your own textures. To do this we were asked to create a model, export an image of the UV map of the model, bring it into a painting app of your choice - I chose Krita - paint your design onto it, export it as the same size image that it came out of Maya as and then if it was done correctly, the texture you painted would be applied to your model.

The ability to paint my own textures will be very useful when I begin texturing the models I create for my film as I'll be able to make them look exactly as I envision them and not rely on ones that others have made and put online.

An Introduction To Lighting

 Taking a break from drawing concept art, this week we looked at lighting for the first time and its importance when it comes time to render whatever it is you're working for. We had learnt that when you're modelling, texturing or pretty much doing anything in maya you don't need to add a light to a scene to see what it is that you're doing. That changes however, when you have to render out your finished model or animated scene.

If you choose to render something with no light in the scene, the camera will render a black screen. If you want to see what you've done, you have to add some Arnold lighting into the scene. In order to demonstrate this we were given a model of a head bust and asked to light it in a way that conveys an emotion from a provided list. After trying a few different combinations - I finally settled on the image above as my overall submission for this task.

The practical application of the theory really helped to convey the importance of having proper lighting in your scene in order to get a successful render.

Poke-Bot Concept Art

 

The next piece of concept art I created was the final character I would be including in my film - a character I'm calling a Poke-Bot.

A couple of weeks ago during one of our initial modelling lessons I created a Pokeball. It had occurred to me when I was starting to piece together what the story of my film would be - that I could use this model in some way in the film. I determined that I could use the Pokeball as a base for creating a flying robot character that could in some way advance the narrative.

This was the quickest, and most straightforward pieces of concept art I had done because I already knew the basic shape - I just had to focus on the details. For that, all I did was embellish the mechanisms of the original pokeball design and the way it works in the show/game the pokeball comes from.

I decided to keep the colour scheme as close as possible to the original inspiration as I believe that colour combination works really well together.

With that drawing complete, I began to think about how I would  incorporate my name into the film. I had a few ideas - I just had to settle on one of them...

K-VRC Concept Art

 Once I had finished with Cozmo-E's concept art I took a short break and then began working on the concept art for the second robot I had modelled - K-VRC from the Netflix show 'Love, Death, & Robots'.

This was a fun one to create because I felt like I had more freedom compared to the art I created for Cozmo-E because this time I felt I did not need to draw the character in a specific pose that would be depicted in the film because I would be rigging this character and at this point - I had not fully decided on what he would be doing in the film.

To me, this meant I had complete and total creative freedom to do what I wanted. In my mind I wanted the image to convey a sense of joy and happiness - that he was having fun. To do this I drew K-VRC playing in the dirt with a happy expression on his face. I also drew in the logo for the show because I could colour it in a way that would really make K-VRC stand out and draw the eye.

With this piece now done, I moved onto the concept art for the third and (so far) final character that would appear in the film - a flying orb robot.

Cozmo-E's Concept Art

It's been a long couple of weeks since I last updated my animation diary but in that time I have been busy working on the concept art for my end of term project. The first piece of concept art I completed was for Cozmo-E - the very first character that I had begun modeling a few weeks back.

In this concept art, I have depicted Cozmo-E in the exact pose that I intend to display him in once I put together the film. As for the final look tha

t I will attempt to go for is a mostly silver body with a slight blue hue with some additional blue, black and possibly white accent pieces. It is important to state though, that my intended colour scheme may change during the texturing process or when he's placed in the scene to ensure it fits in appropriately.

With this piece completed, my next task was to do the concept art for the second robot I created after realising that rigging Cozmo-E was not going to be possible. 

Laying The Groundwork

 

Today was all about nailing down the specifics of what we needed to do for our end of semester Pixar parody film. We discussed the different steps involved in the over all creation process including things like coming up with a workable concept, turning that concept into a rough storyboard, making an animatic, sound design, the different things needed for the character design process, producing the actual film and the deliverables required at the end.

To allow us to get some practice in, we were given 30 minutes to do one of three things from a list of provided tasks. I chose to do a storyboard based on the premise of a dirty cup that was left sitting on the counter that could not fit in the dishwasher and it was afraid it was missing out on a party. An unusual concept but a very fun one to come up with a storyboard for. My storyboard, pictured above covered the main sequences and pivotal emotional moments that I think would be portrayed should this piece ever actually be produced.

Over all, I found the exercise to be really beneficial in  terms of reminding myself how to storyboard and challenging in that for a change, I wasn't drawing my own ideas, but rather based on a provided prompt - something I hadn't done in a long time. It also helped remind me that this is what being a professional storyboarder is - taking someone else's dialogue and bringing it to life for them as one of the first ways of determining if the story works, if it makes sense - which is a very valuable insight to remember, at least in my opinion.

The challenge for myself now is to finalise the story that I want to tell in my film and then start creating a rough storyboard to see if it's achievable.

Love, Death and a Character Sheet

 

So last week I came across the issue of not being able to easily rig and animate my original character Cozmo-E as I had modelled him into a specific pose rather than an 'A' or 'T' pose. I determined that instead of spending potentially hours fixing it and perhaps needing to change the model, I would create a second character and use Cozmo-E in a different way than originally intended.

I then set about creating a new robot, with no new original sketches or character sheet prepared. Instead using the Netflix show 'Love, Death & Robots and the character sheet I had done for Cozmo-E as my inspiration for the new model.

I was able to build something I liked and even managed to rig and animate him but I wanted to go back and create a character sheet for him as I want everything I use in my project to have as much documentation as possible should I need to refer back to it later for clarity or serve as inspiration for something else. With that in mind I spent a couple of hours doing, and redoing the character sheet until I finally got something that I was happy with that I thought accurately represented the character I had created the week before.

Now I just need to start brainstorming ideas of how my two characters will co-exist in whatever scene I create and what else I'm going to want to create to make that happen. It's going to be a long, but fun process of trial, error and elimination until I get to where I want to be in terms of fitting everything into one, cohesive story.

Bringing My New Character to Life!

 

It wasn't easy but I was able to model, rig and aminate a brand new, as yet unnamed, character. As with everything I've done so far, it wasn't without it's problems along the way but new problems just mean finding new solutions!

The problem this time wasn't the modelling part, the unexpected software crashes (that I've become very accustomed to) or even putting in the skeleton - it was actually painting in the skin weights. I encountered an issue where every time I would finish painting a skin weight and move onto the next, the one I had just finished would reset itself and disappear. Now, I didn't notice this issue straight away - I didn't actually notice it until after I was almost finished painting the model - or at least thought I was almost finished. Confused, I went to see if maybe I had hit undo by accident - because sometimes the fastest path to a solution is the path of least resistance. What I should have known is that noting is ever that simple in Maya, at least not in my experience with using the software up to this point.

I spent all hours trying to figure out the issue - painting and repainting the skin weights only to watch them reset themselves over and over and over again. If I wasn't so stubborn I would've given up for the night but I just couldn't stop until I knew what the problem was. This was the last major hurdle between doing the animation and starting a render to see if it worked. It took much longer than I would have liked but I eventually found my issue. I discovered that the max influence when binding the skin was set too high and as a result, was causing the reset issue I was experiencing. My max was initially set to five so I lowered it bit by bit until I got a number that didn't cause a reset - that number, was two.

Where did I have to go to make this change? It was as straightforward as you'd expect. I had to do the following;

Select the object > go to the Attribute Editor > switch to the "skinCluster" tab > set "Max Influences" to a number that worked for this model.

With that problem now solved and the headache now behind me - it was time to do the fun part - an animation! Now, given the issues I had up to this point I didn't want to go too crazy on the animation just in case something else went wrong. With that in mind I did a simple enough animation set out over 100 frames and started the render process.

This took another few hours to complete because I'm not using the best of computers to run Maya but when it finally finished I was able to take all the PNG files I had rendered, compile and convert them into a gif and see the end result. A result, I couldn't have been happier with given all the hurdles I had to deal with on the way. I managed to bring my new character to life!

 

Working Through Some Problems

Picture of Netflix's Love, Death & Robots

 

Ok so, I made Cozmo-E and now I need to rig him. The problem? I didn't model him in a T or A Pose so rigging him is turning out to be pretty difficult.

I have discovered that because I modelled him in a specific pose, adding a rig and controls to him has been next to impossible so far because it just doesn't look right. So, after many hours spent on just as many attempts to make a rig work, I have decided it's not going to happen for me and I need to come up with a plan B because I do not want miss the opportunity to use Cozmo-E.

So what's the new plan? I'm going to make a different, even smaller robot to use in the same scenes as Cozmo-E, sort of idolizing him - similar to how the little green aliens look up to Buzz in Toy Story.

This is obviously unplanned so I didn't do any drawings in advance of making something in Maya - I used the character sketch I made for Cozmo-E as the inspiration for this - as well as the animated series Love, Death & Robots, which I have been watching recently.

So, with no plan, I hopped into Maya and got to work. The building process went okay, there were a few crashes which at this point, I have come to expect on a fairly regular basis. What I didn't expect was for my save file to corrupt itself to a point where it was lagging making it almost unusable. To counteract this, I exported the model from maya and imported it into a new scene as one complete mesh and I can continue to work on it in the limited way doing this will allow. As it turns out, it was a good thing I did this as the original Maya file now crashes the software anytime I try to open it, so while I lost the original file, at least I didn't lose everything.

Now, time to go see if I can rig this model without any issues...

Bringing Cozmo-E to Life

Drawing done, character sheet created, brought into Maya and orthographic view set up - it was time to bring Cozmo-E to life!

This was a challenge. The toughest one so far. There were a lot of times where I was ready to give up on the character and do something that might have been easier to make - especially since I still consider myself to be very much a beginner in terms of 3D modelling.

I started of okay, but still finding it challenging enough - doing all the work in orthographic view didn't help either because this too was different to how I would normally model - using perspective view and rotating the camera as needed. I think I got caught up in the different camera views too much and I was flustered by it to a point where I was splitting my focus between that, and making what turned out to be a pretty difficult model.

When I finally let myself forget about the different viewing angles I was using - I still wasn't really getting anywhere with my model, I just couldn't get it to look how I wanted it to. Frustrated with my lack of progress I stepped away from it for a while and thought about how to 'fix' it so it at least looked something like my drawing. After running through a few different options in my head I came to the conclusion that I was making the process so much more difficult than it needed to be. I kept looking at my drawing and looking at it as 'one' thing - but it's not one thing, it's lots of smaller things that combine to make a bigger thing.

With that in mind I did what I was trying to avoid doing the entire time. I deleted what I had done already, which admittedly wasn't a lot, and started again. This time though, I went into it thinking about the process a whole lot differently. I broke down my character in a way that allowed me to build a very basic version of him just by laying out the primitive poly modelling shapes in a way that would look like him, Now I was getting somewhere,

Did the model look terrible at this point? Yeah. Did it look like I didn't have a clue what I was doing? Pretty much. Did it also lack any kind of detail that might allow you to figure out what I was actually doing? Absolutely. But, the details would come later when I was ready to add them. I had to remind myself that there's nowhere for details to go if you don't have a solid base to work with.

So, little by little I worked on my character. I selected each shape I had placed down and worked on them bit by bit until each piece was modelled into something that more closely resembled my drawing. This was an extremely slow process and I did get confused a lot while I was doing it - I would mix up which tool performed which function and would need to resort to some quick searches to help me out, but this is a learning process and I've definitely learnt a lot up to this point.

Now as things stood, I was pretty happy with where I was at - I had half the model done and there were a few things I was able to duplicate and just reorientate to make the process faster, and as it was late at night, I did exactly that, saved it and shut it down until the next day.

This is when I hit my next issue - when I reopened the file the next day several parts of my model were appearing as black on screen. In order to get a better look at the problem I assigned a temporary material to my model to see what was fine, and what needed to be fixed. Once I did this, I was able to see exactly what parts of the model need my attention. Working my way through the list of potential issues, I was able to determine that to fix the problem with these parts, I needed to go into the Mesh options and hit reverse to flip the 'normals' back around. Doing this one by one to all of the affected areas of the model, I rectified the issue and was able to get back to where I was before the issue began.

All that was left for me to do then was to fix up the positioning of some of the pieces and I would be done. After doing this for quite some time, getting everything just how I wanted it, I was done. I had created Cozmo-E!

The only thing I hadn't yet done was combine everything into one object - but as I still have to rig this character, something I'd never done before, I'm not sure if combining everything is something that needs to be done before or after the rigging is complete. This would be a job for next week when we begin to look at how to rig a character.

Working on a Character Sheet

The most important part of preparing to make something for this week's challenge was to first choose a character sheet. We were given the option of getting a character sheet from the Internet or creating one for our own original character idea.

I went back and forth on this for a little while but in the end I chose to go with an original character for a few reasons - the main one being that I could kill two birds with one stone and I could use the work I do now in the film I need to make for the end of the year. This would allow me to work on the model for the film longer than if I was to create a character from the Internet, as well as fix any issues or make changes as needed without being under too much pressure.

The assignment for later in the year is to make a Pixar parody so I decided to take my inspiration from Pixar films when working on my character. One of my favourite Pixar films is Wall-E so I knew I wanted a robot, but I didn't want it to move like Wall-E. I want it to articulate more so I have more options available to me later when I'm working on how this character will interact with whatever I else I make for the film.

With that decided I got to drawing and before long, I had a concrete vision of what I wanted him to look like. I put all the pieces I had dreamed up in my head together and created the character I hope to use in my film.

Meet Cozmo-E.

Now, all I have to do is draw him from a few different angles and then I could start working on bringing him to life!

Learning Some New Tools and The Next Challenge

Completed Pokeball Model

With the basics under our belts, we moved on to learning some new tools. Today we were going to learn about Booleans, Edge Loops and Multicuts as well as a quick recap of the basics.

Now, while I did use new tools like the Edge Loop to make my lightsaber model a few days before we covered it in class, I didn't go into any real detail on the full capabilities of that tool, or any of the unfamiliar tools I used for that matter - I just figured out what I needed to do to get my model to where I wanted it and that was that.

So, getting a proper introduction to the tool as well as seeing how it can be used depending on what you wanted to do, and then some lab time to practice was hugely beneficial from my perspective.

While I didn't find edge loops too difficult, I can't say the same for things like Booleans and Edge Cuts. It did take my quite a few practice attempts to wrap my head around the new possibilities opened to me with the introduction of these tools.

Much like the week before, the best way to learn something in Maya, is to do something with that new thing. So, the challenge in class today was to use the new tools we had just leaned to make something - make anything we wanted to and see if people could figure out what it was.

I started off simple and made a key just to get more comfortable with the new tools. There were a few times I mixed up what tool did what but I got it eventually. With that done - at least to a point where I was happy to leave it and do something with a bit more of a challenge, I created something new. I decided on a Pokeball from Pokemon. Making this would really force me to use pretty much all of the tools we'd gone over so far, not just the ones we leaned in today's class.

This was, once again, a bigger challenge than I anticipated and I did have to delete some parts of it and redo it a few times to get something I was happy with. After about 30 - 45 minutes, I created exactly what I wanted to, which I wasn't totally sure I could do considering how many times I restarted parts of it.

The timing couldn't have been better either, class was just about to end and with it, the introduction of our challenge for next week's class.

For next week, our challenge is to get comfortable with the new tools we covered today and finish the object we started in class if possible. If you get that done, the advanced challenge would be to take a character sheet - either one from the Internet or an original design, bring it into Maya and model it in orthographic view in advance of our next topic - rigging the character we make.

With that, the class ended and I set my sights on preparing for the new challenge.

A Treasure Chest, Gears and a... Lightsaber?

All the preparation was complete - the research was done and the sketches were completed - it was time to build.

I approached the build process the same way I did with the preparation - start with the chest and gear because it was an easier task to complete compared to the extra prop I was hoping to make. I started with the treasure chest and gear.

This process was pretty quick and straightforward as I was just redoing what I had done a few days before in class - the longest part was fighting with the controls that would bug out sometimes and second guessing myself on some of the choices I was making. Other than that the process of actually creating the chest and gear was going well - add a shape, manipulate, duplicate and repeat until I got to where I wanted to.

With the first 2 props complete, I set about animating it. I chose to do a simple open and close animation as I had never animated in Maya before and didn't want to aim too high only to find myself stuck. Following some more trial and error with the placement of the chest lid that I hadn't noticed before I started working on the animation itself, I eventually figured it out and set something up that plays out over 30 frames.

Once that was done, I added a sky dome light to the scene and set up the render. This is when the auto save feature had saved me from disaster. During the render process, Maya crashed - a lot. Thanks to the auto save I was able to rescue my file from another potentially corrupted original version and in the end, get the render finished. I then used all the images I rendered, compiled them into a GIF and was able to use this to show the animation I had created.

Not wanting to tempt faith with yet another Maya crash, I decided to build my additional prop in its own Maya file, save it and then import it into the scene with the chest for some screenshots of everything together. It was time to build a lightsaber.

Preparing For The First Challenge (Again)

After the problems I experienced last week when I was saving my work and realising that auto save is not enabled by default, I immediately set out to enable that feature during the project set up phase in Maya. That was the easy part - now for something slightly more tricky - actually making something, or rather two somethings.

To recap, our challenge is to make two game assets - a treasure chest and a mechanical gear. Once we have that done and we're comfortable with the controls, the chest needed to be animated to show it opening and closing and if we really wanted to challenge ourselves, we could build one additional prop of our choosing to go with it.

As I was doing this outside of class time I decided to take a different approach to how I was going to design and build what I wanted to build. I've always been someone who has to put my ideas down on paper before I commit to starting anything because it helps me sort through the chaos, gives me more time to think about what I'm doing and sometimes, see potential issues before they happen in hopes it makes the process of actually creating them smoother. With that in mind - it was time to draw.

I started by drawing the 'easier' stuff first - some treasure chests and some gears that I could use as inspiration when making my model - I also added some notes to the side for things I might like to add to the model when building it if I thought it would look good. With those done reasonably quickly it was time to think about what I wanted to make to go with these assets.

I knew I wanted something completely different to the required items, something that would really challenge me to get the basic controls down and perhaps force me to use controls we hadn't looked at in detail yet. So I did exactly that - I chose sci-fi, I chose something futuristic, yet retro at the same time - I chose, a lightsaber.

Lightsabers are not something I draw everyday - or at all really so before I even thought about sketching out an idea, I looked up a ton of reference images because I wanted it to look similar to the ones used in the movies, but I also wanted to put my own unique spin on it.

There was a lot of trial and error involved in doing these sketches but I eventually got to a point where I was happy with what I had and set my sights on actually building in Maya.

Getting Started

Autodesk Maya Logo

This week was all about getting acquainted with Maya, its interface and the basic controls of the software. As someone who has a background in visual effects and compositing, I had some basic knowledge of modelling from college a few years ago going into this so the learning curve wasn't as steep as it could've been.

After relearning the controls a few times - the camera movement took a little getting used to - it was time to try and build something. We started off with a basic block castle using just the primitive shapes and the controls to move the shapes around. Now, while my castle won't win any prizes for creativity - I managed, with lots of trial and error, to do what was asked of me and in the process,  reinforce my knowledge of the interface and the controls.

From here, we moved onto something a little more complicated and that was using extrusions to add additional faces to our shapes with the hope of making some game assets - a simple treasure chest and a mechanical gear. After being walked through the process a few times because the controls for the extrusion technique weren't quite clicking in my head, I felt comfortable enough to give it a go myself and set about making something resembling a chest and gear.

By the end of class I had managed to make the assets required and was really happy with the results, however, just after class ended as I was preparing to save my work Maya crashed and I had lost what I had been working on all morning. It was also in this moment that I discovered that Maya does not save by default like I'm used to with other programs I use so as I prepared to redo everything all over again a few days later, the first thing I did, was turn on  autosave to prevent me losing so much work, again.

With class now over and disaster, basically confirmed, our task for the following week was to complete the chest and gear to get more comfortable with the controls and if possible, add in some sort of animation on the chest and then, make one additional prop if you have the time.

I took a day away from Maya so as not to overwhelm myself but in that time I had been working on some drawings of what I wanted to try and build for the tasks we were given. It was time to get to work.