Visual Effects 1: Lesson 2

Visual Effects 1 (VEF1)

Lesson 2: Particles

Let's Make It Happen, Captain

Another fun and new concept for us to grasp in Maya;

Particles, make it rain, make fire, make smoke, there isn't

much you can't do if you try hard enough and aren't afraid

to think a little outside the box. It's isn't difficult to think about

maybe what you want to do, but figuring out how you're going

to practically make it work without causing your laptop to

explode is the fun part. 

Pre Pro:

Such a wonderful storyboard sketch, isn't it?

I decided to create my own scene

(Pardon the poor animation, I wanted to make sure 

the important factor came out nicer in the end)

So we, obviously, have an innocent goat enjoying some

grass when suddenly, CLOSE ENCOUNTER!

As the aliens are attempting to steal the goat, a storm starts

causing the unprepared alien's ship to fry out and crash;

unfortunately killing the goat as is falls.

The models were found online at: http://tf3dm.com

But I threw them all together to make this 

glorious story. What I did make however were

the particles, the rain, the sparks flying off the

ship and the dust clouds from the crashing UFO.

Sadly somewhere in rendering or compositing my dust

clouds got cut a little short in the video, so they don't fade

as they should be. Sadly I ran out of time to fix the issue, but 

the particles are present and that was the important part

of the project. Other than that it was fun to play with

the emitters, what creates the particles, and get different

effects by changes certain settings. 

Character Animation 1: Strong Poses

Character Animation (CAN1)

Strike a Pose!

This project was in it's own was simpler yet harder than

the first animation project. It was simpler in the fact

that it wasn't animating motion, just making still

poses. Yet it was a little more work on the brain.

This project needed us to create strong poses to convey

certain emotions. In this video we have (in order):

Relaxed

Scared

Anger

Happiness

Sad

Disgusted

Balanced

Was I able to catch them all well enough? Some,

personally, like sadness and disgust looked similar to me 

within silhouette, which I understand was the purpose of

the project, but it was still hard to make sure the right

message was reaching the audience.

Pre-Pro Work:

These here are my testing sketches, testing different options

of each pose to get a feel for what would world best. Some of

them were hard to think of more than one and if you did think

of a few you had to mach sure they were giving decent 

silhouettes, which is extremely important in animation.

Even if the character is never going to be in silhouette

its important to give them a shape or pose that is 

easily recognized when all the details are blacked out.

Storyboard: 

Picking the best pose out of the group above and 

throwing it into silhouette to make sure that it really did

look good and obvious to the audience of what emotion

was being conveyed.

Visual Effects 1: Lesson 1

Visual Effects 1 (VEF1)

Lesson 1: Rigid Bodies

Rube Goldberg, here I come.

This was an experience that was both fun and hair pulling difficult all

at the same time. Everything in the video was created using simulations

of gravity, hinges, springs; all things to make everything move and interact

with the next object, hence the Rube Goldberg. It's a great exercise

for rigid bodies and it helped us learn a lot. The project itself wasn't hard,

it was getting the objects to simulate the way we wanted them to, that was

the hair puller.

Pre Pro:

These Images are basically top and bottom of the same project. And this shows

the direction and flow of one item to the next.

Following the Red will take you through the course in just the simple

plane direction. The Yellow, which appears small in most areas, is where I

need to put constraints in order to control the movement of certain items.

For example Hinges act just like more door hinges, wherever you put the

hinge is where the pivot point of motion is, so like the seesaws at the bottom;

those will obviously have a hinge constraint in the center to help it move there.

The Green and Purple show what type of active bodies these items are. The Green, 

or active, shows what objects will moved when touched, where as the Purple,

passive, shows what will interact with the active without movie. Like the 

ball will be active because it moves, but the board its rolling on will

be passive, it stops the ball from falling and interacts with it, but does not

move itself.

Character Animation 1: L'Eggy

Character Animation 1 (CAN1)

L'Eggy Walk!

The first project in this particular class. I was excited for another animation

class and I let it distract me from concentrating hard enough on the first 

project. It isn't the worse thing ever, but it can use some help.

Part 1: A simple walk, sadly I failed at this, looking at it now

I can see all the mistakes I made, learned from it cleared my

head and strode on to do better in project 3 where we do another walk.

Note to Self: Don't touch Rotate X when walking,

it makes things messy

This was the turn around portion after the walk, the camera wasn't animated

so i created a video for both. It was also done in a messy way. I spent a couple hours

after this project doing turn arounds in my apartment to try and get

the feel for what you naturally do when turning around. Again

took this failing experience and setting it as a building block for 

improvement on project 3.