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.

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.

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.

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...

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.