3D Environment

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dg3rlZFlDrs

Making of environment process

To begin with, rather than creating a primitive object and extending; I was too occupied on creating a shape through separate polygons

To begin with, the concept for my new idea was 'animal crossing' inspired, I chose to create an environment built around the house, though the plan was to initially was to use Maya's in-software paint effects, I decided to create a house from scratch using polygon tools

Creating the correct base for the house began with the polygon square tool, This was extended into a rectangle; followed by extruding the mesh for the roof. Once extended once more, I pinched the top using a scale tool. for a more 'bloated' and cartoonist aesthetic, I inserted edge loop tools and stretched areas outwards. To keep the shape accurate in smooth and shaded mode (6), I inserted edge loops tool close to each side. The door frame was created using the ring tool, by deleting half of the faces and extruding the bottom half outwards a more arched look was created, pulling the newly extruded sides to an inwards angle. Adding the insert edge loop tool was used once more in order to keep an accurate shape for when it's smoothed.

Creating the details of the house was the next step, recycling the door frame - I used CRTL+D to duplicate the shape and minimized it in scale, I then inserted an edge loop tool to create the 'cross' in the middle for the window frame, extruding the strip in the centre vertically and merging the vertex to the top of the frame, and thusly repeating the step horizontally. A shelf was also added afterwards to the frame, extruding outwards.

Creating a chimney was accomplished by selecting faces under the face sub menu for selection, holding shift to select more than one face. Once I was satisfied with the placement, I extruded outwards tot he side, and extended once more and dragged it out upwards; scaling the shape in. Once the primitive shape for the roof was created, I continued to extrude and scale it outwards; to create the dip in the chimney I extruded and scaled inwards, went on face selection mode and deleted the remaining square.

One more window was added in to help add the detail on the rooftop, the windows frame on the roof was then extruded into the roof. The next detail was the house trimming/frame, using a polygon square tool, I created a flat rectangular shape. This was then extruded multiple times in order to create a shape which frames the house base. insert edge loop tool was the created to hold up the shape in smooth. These were replicated on the side and the back. Creating a door handle was a rectangle primitive, one end scaled down and pinched to give a visually cartoonistic effect. a door handle was then placed over; creating a sphere primitive. Finally, creating the small details for the house had been replicated and placed in order or sporadically. The marshmallows were created using the polygon cylinder, insert edge loop tools were then added in the center and scaled down - as well as inflating both the edges. Once smoothed, a soft marshmallow shape was created. After copying over and entire row onto the roof, the row itself was duplicated and shifted over above the row. Some marshmallows had been  repositioned in order to prevent a look of repetition.

The jelly tots were created using the sphere primitive, manipulating the shape to be flat and smaller. This was then duplicated and placed individually on the frames of the house; only on the front. Biscuits for the top of the house, and later used as stepping stones in the scene were created using the cube primitive tool, I created a flat small chunky surface; and duplicated the Jelly tots to create a pattern/ boarder around the biscuit. This to begin with was duplicated over four times, only used for the top of the house.

The Next step was creating foliage around the house, the terrain for the house and a river running through the terrain. To begin I created a polygon primitive plane, extruding upwards after selecting faces; scaling down each extrusion to create a hill. doing the opposing move with the river; I extruded down and only scaled in once. Once smoothed ad satisfied with the shape I had created; I began experimenting with the foliage in Paint effects.

Grass began to be added, this process was long winded but worth the visually appeasing outcome. Using paint effects, each gras pattern changed in seed number and size. This carried on until I fully covered all the visible ground in the scene, to begin attempts of a river; I simply selected the faces of the dip and assigned the ocean material to the surface. Rather than creating a flat plane for the river, I had only coloured the river bed thus far. though this was later corrected and assigned the correct material/ 

First section of grass, mushroom has been added from paint effects to increase detail and break up plain setting.

Second area of grass added, another tree was included; as well as flowers on both sides and bushels. Bushes were created by using the tree tool, and running over the same area to create many smaller trees. More trees were added int he background to help create depth

Entire scene with grass, trees have been positioned better to aid the scenes aesthetic and more vibrant colours are embedded with the grass, with the paints effect tool pre made flowers.

The following step was the lighting, after creating the scenes layout; I felt it was necessary that I added a sky. The sky was created using Mentalray, under the render settings I clicked "Create" on 'physical sun and sky' Once created, I had dragged the horizon down to cover the entire scene; as it began too high up in the scene. The directional light was then adjusted to create a 'dusk' lighting. Though I wanted night, the night sky with no sun just created a pitch black background and excluded lighting. Once the correct time and lighting was positioned, I added more red to the sky under the sun and skies settings in the slider menu 'red and blue'

How the scene was captured before converting foliage to polygon. Attempts to continue changing the river were also made, by just adding an actual water container in Mayas pre made Liquids menu. These were duplicated and layered over one another; and looked flat and choppy; holding no resemblance to water in shape or texture.

Adding more depth to the shadow created more grain, therefor more details has to be added for the render to create a softer shadow.

The sky when red was implemented, creating an evening setting.

Maya scene before physical sun and sky was created, the house was also coloured and a bridge was created, The bridge was made using the pipe primitive, cut in half and resized wider and flatter - insert edge loop tool was then created on either side. selecting faces tool allowed me to then select the centre, and the shape was extruded to create a dip into the bridge. Insert edge loop was also added on all sides to hold the shape better after smoothing.

The house was coloured, this was accomplished by selecting each shape; holding right click and hovering over the menu to "assign favourite material/Lambert" The attribute editor then allowed me to change the colour of the surface. Each new surface colour was named what area of the house; so then in future when I selected and area that needed to be the same colour, I was able to go to the "Assign existing material/(named material)" After selecting each area and colouring successfully, the house was complete and fully coloured. Though not textured It went well and was an improvement to the flat grey surface; detail could not be picked up as well in the scene - as the scene was filled with vibrancy and colour, and the grey was keeping everything blended and flat.

The river was finally up to a better standard, by creating a new flat plane and extruding until it fit the shape above the river bed, I held down the right click; and assigned the ocean shader material. Not only did it colour the river, it also added shape and animation of water.

The 'biscuit' that laid atop of the roof was duplicated to create stepping stones and further increase detail on the pathway. 

The river shape with faces, method of extrusion and repositioning shown.

Though highly boosting the quality and lighting within my work, adding a sun ans sky under the "Mentalray" render software made the render last far too long, only 100 frames were successfully rendered using Mentalray. After making the foliage renderable in Mentalray by going under "convert paint effects to polygons" Maya was also far too laggy and I could no longer add the extra effects I wished to. By this stage I had coloured the house entirely, but I needed the scene to be rendered out using Mayas software again. Using an older scene, I selected just the coloured house and deleted the mentalray scene; saving it as a different file and importing it into the previous scene where the foliage was kept as just paint effects,

The scene with Maya's own Lights used. One directional light, two area lights and a spotlight. Render wasn't over bleached and ready to be shown in scene using a camera.

though I wanted to add snow to the scene, and even a particle animation was successfully created; mayas rendering software had not supported the 'point' particle, though I tried using 'cloud' and 'bobbly' particles that were supported by mayas software, the particles became too large and no longer appeared as snow. snow out of the scene was unfortunately excluded int he end, though environmental sounds and a night time sky brings out the same ambience and calm feeling that I wished for the snow to create.

Ball animation - class tutorial with Ram

Weeks before finishing the rigs, Ram showed us the basics of animation using both keyframes and the graph editor. 

Bibliography

Bibliography 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6f6P5Ceuc4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMtlLpYcCAQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihEpzjIxd3g

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeErz1pI_mc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrTwZTXwvlQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rZHNkC6Lr4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqBcBsmMQVA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rc9sQYIZhAQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mXzH7nATps

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrqOAwCPowg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=af8TbPE5lg4

Evaluation - Student 50106356

The final outcome of my character animation is in the highest quality it could be given the time frame. If I were to improve my animation over all, I would like to have had more time to add a simple landscape and flooring, as well as lighting which suggests sunny weather. Sound effects would have also been created for my animation, such as Baby crying out, Baby running and the rat squeaking when bitten. I feel I could have experimented more during the first stages of my animation, rather than creating an altogether final decision of how each model I have created will look on the first try. Considering this module has been accomplishable since the beginning of the year, I feel my time management skills has proven to be poor for Character animation thus far. Only taking the first steps of the animation process a couple of months prior to hand in, where time from earlier could have been used learning the software and creating the above desirable improvements to the outcome.

However the strengths within this module over all include how I have handled issues and how problem solving has taken place, the script has been rewritten a total of three times due to working around technical issues and keeping up the quality of my animation. Models alone have also been fixed from each problem that has been a part of the rigging process, this including painting weights for each character, converting each character from sculptris to Maya (as well as each characters textures) and even adding more suitable eyes for the main character, rather than giving him inanimate eyes for the final outcome. Lagging issues were also fixed, lowering polygon count and even quadrangulation on other accounts.

Another strength within the animation could be the visual aesthetics and the anatomical strength within each rig. Having a thorough understanding of the canine body and skeletal system has been of great help, the rig can run smoothly and leap. The models themselves also show strength in similarities to original concepts (See sketchbook) to the 3D outcome. I feel that I found my own way of how to create models which best suited my abilities, rather than staying within Mayas realm and proving the process difficult for myself.

Lack of background within my animation is a weakness, however due to it not being a part of this modules marking, I feel I can have Baby dragon in a background that I wish to create and see for the second half of the module. some walk cycles and run cycles also show lack of fluency, one limb not hitting the ground as it should as others accomplish hitting the ground, however this is due to the IK handle issue. (see previous posts)  Some areas of Baby dragon could also not be fixed, where he stretches his neck and looks up, just one polygon moves out of place from his chest and follows, through several attempts this could not be gotten rid of - as the polygon hadn't identified itself through painting weights, though the area around it had. If I were to improve, I feel that I would quadrangulate Baby dragon within Zbrush, repaint a new texture and import it into Maya. (Due to not beginning earlier I hadn't the time for this to be done) This way out of place polygons will reveal themselves easily and the surface will be more clean to work with. if I had the time to gain the knowledge, I would also have added colour to Baby dragon eyelids. Previous attempts to doing so had not worked - as the sphere is animatable and therefore could not be exported and given a fully workable UV texture map. I'd have also fixed the broken rigs if I had given myself the time to do so, The tortoise being the most physically textured model to begin with, followed by the Forest guardian - and finally the mother dragon. I would also have liked to have given the baby rat an operable jaw, so it could move like Baby dragons does.

Conclusively, the first half of the module has taught me the basics of the animation process, as well as how to problem solve and learn timing in animation for the first time. Using my fast learning skills has also allowed me to create a standard which I have for both animating and model creating. I feel I have successfully created mood into my animation, as well as the light heartedness that I wanted to go with it. Areas which I would like improvement in are not major and are not required for fixing to the point it's an issue that needs fixing. (For example, lack of sound effects, lack of background...) The timing and frame rate is very smoother, being a total of 4444 frames - and the target time being three minutes in total.

The animation completed

By student 50106356, by clicking on the 'YouTube' icon within this embedded video player, the video can be viewed within YouTube at its full size and highest quality. The link may also be clicked below for navigation to its original source;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XELW2tLajYc

Adding lights

Creating lights for Maya helps create a mood for your scene, as well as allowing the models within your rendered scene be viewable through light source.

To begin, inserting the first light is required. This is under the 'Create' menu within the 'Rendering' menu set up.

As shown in the screenshot, there are all types of light for the animations scene. For this example I will be using 'Area light' 

Once the first light has been created, it can be adjusted via position, scale and rotation - like all other objects in Maya. 

To see how your scene appears with the lights which have been added into the scene, go to 'Lighting/Use selected lights' This will show how the animations render will look with your lights, in the above shot no lights are selected - showing that the model will be completely dark. 

This is a screenshot with all three lights I have created (using shift+D for duplication) for the scene. As you can see, a strong light casts a strong shadow on the left side of the model. If I were to desire a less dramatically lit scene, these lights would be sparsely placed throughout the entire area of the scene, the left and back as well as the top.