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.