Blog Progress Update Week 10

In this weeks blog progress update i follow a tutorial for animating a logo forming from particles. The address for this tutorial is http://cg.tutsplus.com/tutorials/autodesk-maya/animate-a-logo-forming-from-particles-in-maya/ . I had to redo this tutorial a handful of times as i felt the directions weren't exactly clear for what they asked me to do.  The basic tutorial asked me to create a handful of particles and fade them out and traditional letters in to create a logo. Now it may have been that i was just following an tutorial built for an old version of maya but I felt like some of the instructions weren't clear or made no sense. It asked me to open the preferences several times but i only used them once and to hit a certain key combination then press delete but it had no result on my version of maya.

I ultimately wasn't able to get it working but i understood the general idea it was putting forth. I feel that this tutorial could due with being rewrote for a newer version of maya or just in general as i found it very difficult to follow.

Blog Progress Update Week 9

In this weeks blog progress update I go over the very basics of Maya Blendshape animation and my results with it. As i talked about in my previous blog post I completed a very basic head for the sake of learning blendshapes previously. I decided to do some research online to figure out the process of making blendshapes and i've found that they're rather simple so to speak. It's simply a process of taking two identical objects and the blending of them by moving around vertices. To start with I took my default head and duplicated it three times over and naming them what expressions i wanted to use.

From there I tweaked and played around with the vertices until I had the three expressions i was hoping for. After that you select all your expressions and the base head last and select Blendshape. After this you can get rid of the default heads if you want to and open up the base objects inputs and under Blendshape should be the names of the shapes you blended. Playing around with the numbers allows you to blend the shapes together. And that basically in the simplest of terms covers blendshapes. I wish i had more time to cover them but for now this is all the time i can dedicate to them.

Blog Progress Update Week 8

This is my blog progress update for the week of Monday March 8th 2013. This week  I worked on the head for blendshape animation as well as doing some research on how to do blendshape animation. When I started modeling i began using the technique in which you begin from the eye and expand from there. For the most part it was okay but i found it a very slow method of building a head and my schedule was very busy that week as such I decided to instead re-use a head I had already created for another character for a different project and it worked out pretty well as the head looked relatively normal and should be okay with deforming for blendshape animation.

I did some research into how blendshape animation and what they're about. blendshape animation is the process of creating an object duplicating it several times then changing or deforming them in some way. Beyond that it wasn't a great week for working on self directed and as such hope to do better once my schedule is able to clear up a bit and I can find time to sit down and work on it.

Blog Progress Update Week 7

In this weeks blog progress update i discuss what my start of Blendshape animation and what that means. So this week is the start of my next 3 week project in Self directed of which the topic is blendshape animation a topic that wasn't covered what so ever in classes and something that seems pretty important if I'm going to be a 3D animator in the future. So basically what Blendshape animation is about is the blending of one shape to another and, back again. This is used in animation by creating the basic face structures that a person makes and blending them together to give characters expressions and such. I'm hoping to cover this at least a little bit during this 3 week time even though i realize that I'm definitely not going to be able to cover all of it in that time. As such this week i found some reference pictures for a head front and side and began modeling. If I find i don't have enough time I'm likely going to just find a completed head and use it for expressions rather than create a new one from scratch.

Beyond the start of this i've also watched a couple of YouTube videos on Blendshape animation and will be looking into getting some books from my instructor on the topic this week so I can really figure out how to do this well. My biggest concern isn't the animation but time, since we are quickly running out of time left in the semester for creating assets and side projects like this take up a lot of the time I'd be using for other things. However i realize that animation projects are very important and expect to put in a fair bit of time on this one compared to my last project.

Blog Progress Update Week 6

In this weeks blog progress update i worked with NCloth and did some cool tutorial work. In these tutorials i worked with Ncloth a way of simulating Cloth texturing and object collisions in Maya. I followed the tutorials from the site CG tuts+ (LINK) The tutorial was very simple and easy to follow and covered two separate things; a flag in the wind and a ball landing on a cloth. The first tutorial involved setting up a cloth and a flagpole and having the cloth changed into a Ncloth material, then have part of it act as a passive collider hidden in the pole. After that it's just a matter of applying some wind effects to it and than that's it.

The second tutorial involves using a piece of Ncloth again creating a sphere and applying a passive collider to the object. after seeing it work once it was just a matter of making a portion of the cloth tearable and from there it tore through it as advertised. So that was pretty much the tutorials i was pretty happy with the results and I'm looking forward to my next small project which is blend shapes which will take up the next 3 weeks of my self directed schedule.

Blog Progress Update Week 5

 This is my blog post for the week of Monday February 11th 2013. In this weeks progress update i created a run cycle animation using the Creative crash Dog rig mentioned last week. Starting out i went online and searched for a dog run cycle reference. I found the reference picture i ended up using on the site http://3dpalmieri.wordpress.com/ . I found a couple problems with the rig after using it for a while as well. The foot was missing a rotation point at the ankle and as such made it difficult to line up with the animation that was on the reference picture.

I also had some problems copying animation keys, but i feel like that was more like a problem on my end rather than the rig, as it kept copying the whole rig rather than the keys really messing up the rig, when i went to paste. I feel like I could have cleaned the animation up a bit better if i had the time but i got the end goal i was hoping for and when i come back to it later it won't take long to make it nice enough for my portfolio. Sort of unsure what to do about crediting the creator of the Rig and model so I'll have to look into it a bit before considering using it. All and all I'm pretty happy with the animation i had created and look forward to my next mini project a high definition human hand and animation for it.

Blog Progress Update Week 4

This is my blog progress update for the week of February 4th 2013. This week I worked on the 3D model that i started last week with concept art. The model itself isn't particularly difficult but i realized pretty quickly that if i wanted my model to be presentable that I'd have to put in more time than i have available on this side project. Especially since I'm more concerned with working on the animations with this rig and I felt like this model wouldn't be good enough to work with to put into a portfolio. As such i decided to go looking for a new Rig that I can use for animation.

The rig i found was on Creative Crash (Link) listed as a free rig. I played around with it a bit and it seemed to be a very in-depth model. As such next week I plan to work on a walk cycle or something along that line and playing around a bit with the dog rig. I realize that i could have probably had a half decent dog model had i put more time into this model but my other projects have kept me more busy than i expected and it really cut down the time i was expecting to have to work on this model. I may have to rethink the next side portion of my self directed if time will continue to be this much of a constraint.

Blog Progress update Week 3

This is the blog progress update for the week of January 28th 2013. This week I began an estimated three week project to model, and animate a quadruped model. I chose to model a dog since it seems like a relatively simple thing to create and animate that would have quite a bit of materials to reference back to for animating and modeling.

Link to photo source.

Drawing a dog was a tad bit more of a challenge than i was expecting mainly do to the fact that i'm really only used to drawing people. We haven't had much experience drawing animals in anyway shape or form. As such it took me much longer than i hoped to finish this drawing and even more time to get it scanned due to lacking a scanner anywhere near by meaning i had to walk back to the classroom and use that scanner. Anyway this week for the most part was more about setting up the model, since i don't expect it to take too long and it's not going to be textured in anyway. So in conclusion expect to see more progress next week as i begin the modeling and rigging process.

Blog Progress Update Week 2

This is the blog progress update for the week of January 21st 2013. This week i covered another tutorial on digital tutors which covered the basics of Maya Rigging (Link). The tutorials this week were in my opinion more interesting and useful than the ones last week mainly due to the fact i have less overall experience with Maya rigging. This tutorial opened by discussing what is rigging and the different forms of rigging from parenting, joints, IK handles up to control objects. I am currently more familiar with joints and parenting right now, and i'm hoping to learn a bit more about IK handles and especially control objects as that seems to be the industry standard as far as rigging goes.

 I myself hadn't really considered parenting to be a type of rigging more like a simple way to deal with keeping an object together, but after looking back at it I suppose it could technically be considered a form of rigging. I also found much like the last tutorial that these videos are of really great quality i just wish there was some more free ones for use or a better student deal for paying for a subscription.

Overall i found these tutorials good for the basics i was just hoping it covered Control objects a bit more but i suppose that it is a bit more of a advanced topic so it doesn't particularly suprise me that it wasn't in this introductory level video.

Blog Progress Update Week 1

This is a blog progress update for the week of January 14th, 2013. In the first week of my exploration into Maya animation i decided to a tutorial provided by Digital Tutors with their tutorial Beginners Guide to Maya Animation. This tutorial wasn't particularly difficult in anyway as it really just went over the basics of Maya animation including what is animation, what are key-frames and how do they work as well as deformers which i must admit is something I can't really recall studying before so it looks like they may be worth looking into more.

After the tutorials went over the basics it began to go into setting key-frames and working with the graph editor and going in depth over deformers in order to animate a lawnmower. The tutorials themselves were of great quality and I would highly recommend them to someone just getting started but i personally can't afford the vast majority of their lessons as normally the site requires a paid subscription.

Overall it wasn't a bad lesson but perhaps a tad below my level, as i already have a fairly solid handle on how animation works within Maya. I may rethink next weeks lesson which is supposed to be the beginners guide to Rigging by them, but I do need some rather extensive practice with that so i will likely stick with it.