Just like my midterm, I am really proud of what I accomplished, especially from all the blow ups.
There are somethings I though I could have done better. First, I do feel like my last scene needs something. I don't know if its more of an realistice action or what but it just doesn't seem right. Another thing I think I can improve on is the use of lighting. It seems to me that at times the scene gets a little too dark.
Hopefully, through this project, I have honed my animation skills and I will be able avoid unnecessary blow ups in the future.
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Final Project: Production Log
To be perfectly honest, I did not expect to encounter so many blow ups as I did. For that reason, this project has been rendered from three seperate save points. Besides so many blow ups, the project went well.
OBJECTS:
First of all, I enjoyed using my updated slime for this project. Having the slime be one object helped the project move smoother (also hindered it at times). The ocean shader adds a little bit more character to the slime, as the body moves in a way I would describe as "slimy."
And if you didn't notice there is now another slime, a pink one I have named Ashley (Ash for short).
If you have seen my previous blog post on my updated slime, you will notice that the eyes are different. The cat's eye looked cool but I couldn't shape it in the way I wanted. I then tried a ramp shader to give the slime a more human like eye, but for some reason I could not figure out how to move the shader around the object. Any time I would rotate the object, the shader would stay in the same spot. In the end, I just created three blinn spheres: one white for the base of the eyeball, one green (or pink for Ashley)for the iris, and one black for the pupil.
The vase also has been updated with a new design. This design has more of a lip at the top it than. This extra lip at the top allowed me to created a platform for the lovely Ashley to look down upon her hero.
The final object is the table. Just like my midterm, I wanted to get the animation a sense of place, so why not have the vase sit on a table.
TEXTURE:
Like mentioned before, both Bob and Ashley have ocean shaders on them with the transparency turned up, so you can see through the slimes.
All three parts of the eyeballs have blinn textures on them to give them a reflective look, like a real eyeball.
The vase also has a blinn texture on it to give it a reflective look. I did try placing a marble texture onto the vase but the result were not desirable to me. I decided that a yellow blinn looked the best.
The table is finished with a 3-D wood shader on it, even though I did try a marble shader (which again, I did not like the result).
LIGHTING:
The lighting was not actually put in until after my first render. The first render was very dark and you could not see much of what was going on.
So, I at first added a spotlight a little bit above the vase and opened up the angle of it so it could light everything. That didn't quite work out. The spotlight did light a lot of the scene up but at times you coudln't see the slimes.
Next, I added another spotlight and placed it on the bottom left side of the scene and angled it up. I like the outcome, so I moved the spotlight at the very top to the top left and angled the spotlight down.
By the time of the next render, I noticed that when the slime is upside down you couldn't quite see the eyeball and its animation. To illuminate the eyeball I added another spotlight pointed directly at the eyeball itself. Problem fixed.
In total, there are three spotlights.
ANIMATION:
This is the part of my project where things decided to blow up... a lot. Still, I enjoyed the animation part quite a bit.
The slime's movement is the same as my midterm. I just enlongated and contracted the bottom portion of the slime. This creates a nice movement effect for the slime.
The trembling and eyeball movement is pretty much the same from my midterm. When Bob realizes he is too high, he looks down, then at the audience, and then begins to tremble.
Differences from the midterm are noticable (I hope). First, the pupil dilates when it is looking at the audience. Second, with Bob being one object, I was not only able to make the eyeball socket shake, but I made the stem shake also.
The "oozing" of Bob also got an update. In my midterm, when Bob began to fall, his body didn't really "ooze" down. Now that Bob has the ocean shader and is one object, the "oozing" of Bob has a better look to it.
The final scene in my midterm is that of Bob scattered on the ground. In my final, we see him scattered on the ground but we also see him reform. This is probably my favorite part of the animation and it was the easiest part. Basically I key framed Bob as a whole shape and copied and pasted that action to a future frame. I then deleted the old frame and key framed him "splatted" on the ground. And presto, Bob magically transforms back into his normal shape.
The eye also played a key part in this action. The first thing audience sees after Bob gets "splatted" is the eye beginning to move, roll, and eventually go back into the eye socket. It adds to Bob reforming, I think.
And about this time we meet Ashley, the pink slime. But first we see a cartoonish eye popper from Bob. When he gets a glimpse of Ashley he just goes wild. This effect was achieved by enlongating every part of the eyeball and then contracting it back to its normal shape.
And now we see Ashley, who gives a friendly wave to Bob. This action was simply done by taking a single point on Ashley's body and moving it out and then moving back and forth.
Finally, our hero dashes towards the vase using the same motion pattern as mentioned before.
As Bob moves up the vase, so does the camera where it lands on Ashley as she look around for Bob. This movement was a simple rotation of the eyeball, nothing too special.
At last, the two slimes see each other and race towards each other, only to smash into each other and smoosh their bodies together and spin around. This final animation was simple enlongation of their bodies upwards and then rotating the object around each other.
CAMERA:
All these actions would not have been able to be captured if I had not used a camera. I did at first think about using two cameras to make capturing scenes easier, until I realized I can gain some really nice effects from one.
OBJECTS:
First of all, I enjoyed using my updated slime for this project. Having the slime be one object helped the project move smoother (also hindered it at times). The ocean shader adds a little bit more character to the slime, as the body moves in a way I would describe as "slimy."
And if you didn't notice there is now another slime, a pink one I have named Ashley (Ash for short).
If you have seen my previous blog post on my updated slime, you will notice that the eyes are different. The cat's eye looked cool but I couldn't shape it in the way I wanted. I then tried a ramp shader to give the slime a more human like eye, but for some reason I could not figure out how to move the shader around the object. Any time I would rotate the object, the shader would stay in the same spot. In the end, I just created three blinn spheres: one white for the base of the eyeball, one green (or pink for Ashley)for the iris, and one black for the pupil.
The vase also has been updated with a new design. This design has more of a lip at the top it than. This extra lip at the top allowed me to created a platform for the lovely Ashley to look down upon her hero.
The final object is the table. Just like my midterm, I wanted to get the animation a sense of place, so why not have the vase sit on a table.
TEXTURE:
Like mentioned before, both Bob and Ashley have ocean shaders on them with the transparency turned up, so you can see through the slimes.
All three parts of the eyeballs have blinn textures on them to give them a reflective look, like a real eyeball.
The vase also has a blinn texture on it to give it a reflective look. I did try placing a marble texture onto the vase but the result were not desirable to me. I decided that a yellow blinn looked the best.
The table is finished with a 3-D wood shader on it, even though I did try a marble shader (which again, I did not like the result).
LIGHTING:
The lighting was not actually put in until after my first render. The first render was very dark and you could not see much of what was going on.
So, I at first added a spotlight a little bit above the vase and opened up the angle of it so it could light everything. That didn't quite work out. The spotlight did light a lot of the scene up but at times you coudln't see the slimes.
Next, I added another spotlight and placed it on the bottom left side of the scene and angled it up. I like the outcome, so I moved the spotlight at the very top to the top left and angled the spotlight down.
By the time of the next render, I noticed that when the slime is upside down you couldn't quite see the eyeball and its animation. To illuminate the eyeball I added another spotlight pointed directly at the eyeball itself. Problem fixed.
In total, there are three spotlights.
ANIMATION:
This is the part of my project where things decided to blow up... a lot. Still, I enjoyed the animation part quite a bit.
The slime's movement is the same as my midterm. I just enlongated and contracted the bottom portion of the slime. This creates a nice movement effect for the slime.
The trembling and eyeball movement is pretty much the same from my midterm. When Bob realizes he is too high, he looks down, then at the audience, and then begins to tremble.
Differences from the midterm are noticable (I hope). First, the pupil dilates when it is looking at the audience. Second, with Bob being one object, I was not only able to make the eyeball socket shake, but I made the stem shake also.
The "oozing" of Bob also got an update. In my midterm, when Bob began to fall, his body didn't really "ooze" down. Now that Bob has the ocean shader and is one object, the "oozing" of Bob has a better look to it.
The final scene in my midterm is that of Bob scattered on the ground. In my final, we see him scattered on the ground but we also see him reform. This is probably my favorite part of the animation and it was the easiest part. Basically I key framed Bob as a whole shape and copied and pasted that action to a future frame. I then deleted the old frame and key framed him "splatted" on the ground. And presto, Bob magically transforms back into his normal shape.
The eye also played a key part in this action. The first thing audience sees after Bob gets "splatted" is the eye beginning to move, roll, and eventually go back into the eye socket. It adds to Bob reforming, I think.
And about this time we meet Ashley, the pink slime. But first we see a cartoonish eye popper from Bob. When he gets a glimpse of Ashley he just goes wild. This effect was achieved by enlongating every part of the eyeball and then contracting it back to its normal shape.
And now we see Ashley, who gives a friendly wave to Bob. This action was simply done by taking a single point on Ashley's body and moving it out and then moving back and forth.
Finally, our hero dashes towards the vase using the same motion pattern as mentioned before.
As Bob moves up the vase, so does the camera where it lands on Ashley as she look around for Bob. This movement was a simple rotation of the eyeball, nothing too special.
At last, the two slimes see each other and race towards each other, only to smash into each other and smoosh their bodies together and spin around. This final animation was simple enlongation of their bodies upwards and then rotating the object around each other.
CAMERA:
All these actions would not have been able to be captured if I had not used a camera. I did at first think about using two cameras to make capturing scenes easier, until I realized I can gain some really nice effects from one.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Final Project: Storyboard
This is my storyboard for my final project. Hope its not too much of a mess.
Monday, April 12, 2010
Final Project: Proposal
I will be expanding on my midterm project. I will be updating my midterm project with Bob v3 and new animations. But the biggest change is the expansion of the story.
If you remember from my midterm, we left Bob splatted all over the ground after falling off the cup/vase. Will Bob recover? Will we find out why he was climbing the cup/vase in the first place?
All these answers and more will be answered in my final project.
If you remember from my midterm, we left Bob splatted all over the ground after falling off the cup/vase. Will Bob recover? Will we find out why he was climbing the cup/vase in the first place?
All these answers and more will be answered in my final project.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Lowman
First, lowman isn't my creation. It is a template to help users understand character skeletons. So, once again, this is not my creation, I just animated it.
This first one was very simple to make, I just bent lowman down with the move tool and then move lowman up off the screen with the move tool again.
The second one was a little bit annoying because lowman is actually moving. The problem is you have to move lowman in such a way that he doesn't seem to slide. If you look hard enough my lowman slides a little as he walks.
This lowman I had fun with. I just thought of a happy cartoon walking and shaped lowman into that. Lowman is just bent at the hip a lot.
This final lowman is what I worked on the most. First I bent lowman at the knees and bent them inside a little bit. Then I moved them back and forth to create a trembling motion.
Next, I placed the right hand into the mouth by rotating and moving the forearms and hand. I then had lowman move his mouth and make it seem like it is biting its nails. This was achieved by simply rotating the mouth.
Finally, I covered lowman's eyes with the left hand with the rotation and move tools. Near the end of the animation, the fingers on the left hand open for the lowman to see. Once again this is achieved by rotating the index and middle finger.
The only problem I had with this one was that I could not dilate the eyes to add an extra effect to the lowman being scared.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Bob Gets an Upgrade: v2 & v3
Bob (yes he will be forever known as Bob) v2 was made during the end production of my midterm. I wanted to make Bob more simple, so I developed a new body for him out of one sphere, instead of three seperate parts.
Bob v3 was developed during midterm presentations. As I was watching Emile's bathtub and the water effect in it, I got to wondering if I could apply it to Bob v2. And behold, Bob looks a lot more like a slime.
Bob v3 was developed during midterm presentations. As I was watching Emile's bathtub and the water effect in it, I got to wondering if I could apply it to Bob v2. And behold, Bob looks a lot more like a slime.
Monday, March 22, 2010
Animation MidTerm: Self-Eval
I'm really proud of my project. I am proudest at the fact that I was able to make my slime creature come to life. Ever since I knew I was taking the animation class and I saw that wood print, I wanted to make a slime creature. With the help of Maya, I think I have achieved that goal. I truly believe that my Maya slime is how a slime looks and moves.
The one problem I had and that I am still dissatisfied with is showing my slime's fear. It was hard for me to express its fear through movement rather than sound. That part of the animation still looks funky to me.
Over all, I am proud of the objects and animation I have created. I do hope to continue work on my slime: improving its body and animations.
The one problem I had and that I am still dissatisfied with is showing my slime's fear. It was hard for me to express its fear through movement rather than sound. That part of the animation still looks funky to me.
Over all, I am proud of the objects and animation I have created. I do hope to continue work on my slime: improving its body and animations.
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