The filming conditions were slightly problematic as we were using a camera that  recorded in an unusual format that was quite a hassle to work with as it required re-encoding and adjusting before it was able to be worked with. The filming itself required us to use a gorilla cam tripod pretty much strapped to my neck and was quite uncomfortable for the duration of the work.

If I were to do this piece again, I would definitely spend time story-boarding and visualizing the project before it got the the working and editing stage as i feel it would have helped a lot in the long run and we wouldn’t have to edit on the fly. Overall I am happy with the idea for this piece, but not so much with the execution.

bloggage today

So to refresh, I have come up with the idea of a christmas themed animation. The animation will be based upon a mischievous christmas cracker that decides to go a bit awol upon the christmas table. After wrecking some havoc, two ‘good samaritan’ crackers jump in and pull the culprit apart.

I think I will enjoy this piece and will be able to gain more out of the process including short narrative writing, character development and a wider range of animation/texturing experience.

The final animation only mildly represents what I had in mind. I think there were a few factors involved that prevented me from improving the piece;  The fact that my idea came quite late in the stages of the term being was a problem because I didn’t get enough time to experiment and come with a few more methods of animating. I think even now at this stage after presenting the animation at the crit I have a lot more visual ideas that I could implement. I would really like to work over the animation again and try to create a more gritty and ‘less clean’ feel as the animations feels rather clean and polished to really get the message I was trying to portray across. It also seems a bit contradictory that there is so much light and cleanliness in the piece seeing that I was trying to show that visuals are secondary to audio in terms of the experience.

I would also like to add and audio track to the piece. With time constraints I avoided putting in a sub-par piece of audio that wouldn’t blend in seamlessly with the animation. I more recently found an online music toolbox that gives you the ability to play around with sequencers, effects and various machines in a real world fashion to create audio. With a bit of work I could generate a good quality piece of music that would add to the animation.

Hobnox Audiotool

I found that as I worked on other pieces of media in college and in my own time that I don’t like to settle for un-professional quality content. From the beginning of the piece I worked with vectors in a high-definition canvas to develop clean and unblemished content. I believe this shows in the final animation as there are little signs of jagged movement and rough edges. If I can combine this with the grittier feel I would happier about the piece.

Along with the quality of the graphics, I became very picky about the timing and movement of the animation and spent rather a long time altering the keyframes and timeline. I wanted the animation to flow in a certain way so that the viewers were not bored waiting for the animation to progress, but they had enough time to take in the visuals as the were developing and to view its current position. Along side this it was important to have something moving on each frame to keep the user engaged throughout.

Overall a lot of positives have come out of this unit and a fair few of them not directly related to the unit. I think a lot of the ways i go about working out ideas and developing them can be improved, including having group talks about work and throwing around ideas. When we have had group crits I feel that they provide invaluable help in the development of my work. In addition, I will try to develop the style of my work to have more character and depth as I feel my current work it too clean and doesn’t include much depth or fully represent the ideas that im trying to produce.

My idea for the piece revolves around the reliance on alcohol as a ‘fuel’ for a night out. The image will bounce around the idea that alcohol in one way or another will path the way for an evening, whether it be it mere events, your behaviour or who you will meet.

The image will include someone peering into a beer glass, and surprisingly enough its almost impossible to take a picture from inside a glass and then even if I could manage to do that, using that the image for the animation part would be tricky as it wouldnt contain alpha channels and would remain an image. To solve this I have popped back into Maya and created one myself.

To start off I created a nurbs curve of the basic shape of a section of the glass.

This wasnt too tricky, however I did hit one snag as the default settings for the EP curve tool make all the corners have a radius depending on the length of the edge ect. After having a look at the tool settings, I was able to adjust them so the corners were square angled. From here I used the revolve tool to make the glass object. Halfway there!

Now I needed to make the glass have the properties of glass. Advanced texturing is a bit above my skill range at the moment so I scoured a few website offering glass tutorials. Using a combination of the tutorials Here and Here, I transformed the the model into a fairly realistic glass object.

Parfait! With this I can create all kinds of custom shots and renders for use in both the still image and animation. I will need to to look into rendering stills and videos with alpha channels from maya.

(Scrapped!)

After not being able to decide about how I should go about this project I have finally captured an idea that I can relate to well and should enjoy creating and animating.

I would like to produce an image around the idea of music on a night out and how music has a presence and is a key factor in creating an atmosphere on a night out. For the still image I would like to show how sound can fill a room and engage the attention of everyone in its presence.

To keep on top of all the objects that ill be using I am making sure I name each part so they can be easily managed and identified without having to refer to the model and not make things too confusing.

For the legs I started off with a cube and simply extruded the faces in sections whilst rotating some to change the angle. Spider legs do have 8 sections but I have removed some for easier animation but retained the shape of a real leg. The joints will be added when the legs are rigged. With the leg done I used the smooth polygons tool to make it cylindrical.

Instead of creating each individual leg, I have duplicated, transformed and placed each leg in its correct position one body.

Here we have a shaded version of the complete base model.

Whilst practicing a few spider models and adding some rigging, I would run into the problem of the legs seemingly detach themselves off the body. The reason for this is because I was incorrectly combining the separate polygons. I had been selecting multiple objects and then using the combine tool. This did create a single object, but when it came to rigging, the joints could not be attached to the combined model.

After having a fiddle around I stumbled upon the set of boolean tools in Maya: Union, Difference and Intersection. Each of these will join together, spilt or manipulate selected objects in specific ways. On my spider the legs simply pass through the outer shell of the body instead of connecting to the outer edge.

By selecting both the leg and the body and then activating the Union tool, Maya will calculate where the two objects intersect, delete the overlap and then merge the edge together creating a single object.