This week Nick was teaching us how to model in Maya. This term we are modelling and animating an robotic arm. Today we began by modelling the fingers.
The basic mechanism for the joint was a polygon primitive cylinder and manipulated the subdivisions on the height and caps. We then added three polygon primitive cubes and scaled them to fit on the cylinder
We then added another cube and used edge loops and manipulated the vertices to create the distal part of the finger
We then duplicated that distal part and then used the mirror tool to merge the two together to create the middle and proximal part of the finger
We duplicated the joints and assembled the parts. The distal part and joint next to it were grouped together and the middle part and proximal joint were grouped. We arranged the groups so that group 1 was a child of group 2 and group 2 was a child of group 3. The pivot of the groups were moved to the mid point of each joint. When group 2 and group 1 were selected and then rotated, the finger then curled and moved like an actual finger!
From there it was a case of manipulating the vertices on the ends of each part of the finger so that they don’t intercept with each other.
This week was an introduction to the collaborative unit
Serra took us through the brief which was Amalgamation. This term we are collaborating with people from the other MA course to create a project that can build a sense of community. I am looking forward to working with other people and learning new tech from different courses.
Through this project we will have the opportunity to learn the workflow of different courses, Serra explained how this is an import aspect in collaboration.
Goals
I want to do something with VR and I was hoping to do some modelling for it. I think I would like to pursue modelling as a career option so would love to experiment with doing modelling in a group setting.
I have also never used ZBrush so would love use this opportunity to experiment with that software.
I also want to have the opportunity to work on team working skills, communication, listening and organisational skills.
In Nicks class, we continued with our face animations. Our task was to pick a monologue we liked from a film and use the audio to reference the mouth shapes to recreate it with our characters.
I chose Morpheus in the film the Matrix, the scene there we was first explaining what the Matrix was to Neo. I selected that part of the clip and imported it into AfterEffects. After trimming the clip down Nick showed us the the easiest was to import the clip into Maya is to export the footage and the audio separately from AfterEffects.
After importing it into Maya
We then had to animate the jaw to look like a “puppet mouth” and sync this when the actors mouth was opening.
I also decided to change my character to try and make it look more like morpheus using the blend shapes.
To do this i used the sculpting tools.
From there I used the blend shapes again to do a few facial expressions.
Thursday
This is the original Walk Cycle after I put it into Spline. It looked really bizarre because I animated it on the master key.
After changing the animation from linear tangent to auto tangent or Spline. When it changed, the animation was jumping and glitchy so I George showed us how to go into the graph editor and start to adjust and add key frames to make it look better.
First, I adjusted the ball itself. I turned on motion trail and adjusted the arcs to make them smoother
I then went into front view and corrected the motion trail so it looked like a figure of 8.
I used the graph editor to smooth out the curves which therefore smoothed out the movement of the ball.
After I did the ball motion I went on to correct the feet and legs. The feet were moving a bit erratically so I corrected the feet to make the feet look like they were peeling off the floor and toes the last to leave. I used the Foot Break, Foot Roll and the Toe Roll Control to do those corrections
After the feet were corrected, I adjusted the height of the ball to stop the knee popping
Lastly, I copied the first sequence of key frames and which was about half the walk cycle, and pasted them for the last half of the walk cycle.
Constrained the jaw rotate to the bottom teeth and the head rotate to the top teeth.
I had a lot of fun with Skinning and playing around with rig
We were then tasked to alter the face any way we like using the Blend Shapes tool
Thursday: Walk Cycle
Today we looked at animating a walk cycle using the Walker Rig.
I learnt about the basics of what makes a walk cycle,
The Contact Pose
The Passing Pose
The Up Pose
The Down Pose
These are the key poses that we did in Maya with the Walker Rig in Blocking to make the basic poses
I first animated the walker on the spot and then used the master controller to make it go forward
I later learned this is NOT how to animate this rig correctly and ran into issues later…
This is my redo of the walk cycle blocking
I went back into the graph editor of the master controller and deleted the key frames
From there I was able to select the feet and the body controls and move the body on the x axis, making sure that the heal/ toe of the contacting foot lined up with the last key.
After re-doing this, I found it so much easier to adjust the the feet. When the master controller is animated, once one key frame is adjusted, the rest of the key frames afterwards have to be adjusted. This made the process long and made the walk look more and more wrong the move I made adjustments.
This week, Nick showed us how to create a basic character and rig it from scratch. I learnt about parenting, constraints, skeletons, IK handles.
We first created the block man using a Polygon Primitive Cube and duplicating and scaling the cubes to create different parts of the body.
After establishing the body parts we then had to parent them. For example the fingers and thumb were parented to the hand, the hand was then parented to the lower arm etc. This meant that the arm can move and the hand, fingers and thumb will follow. If the parenting is done correctly, the hips should be the highest in the hierarchy.
Once the parenting was complete, we were then shown how to create a control to start to move our box man. Each joint created controls using NURBS Primitives and selecting the circles. Each one was placed around a joints or the head (apart from the legs) and modified to make it easier to grab. Then we had to add Constraints.
By adding constraints between the NURBS and the body part, they were connected and controlled the body part it was connected to, therefore acting as a control.
For the leg we were taught a different approach. We created a Skeleton and created joints for the legs – parented the joints and then constrain the joints to the leg blocks. Then added IK handles for the legs, feet and toes. The IK handles were then children to the feet controls.
Pole vector was then added to the knees to give more range of movement
This is how I posed the Boxman after completing the rig
This is a video demonstrating me zeroing the translate and rotate, showing that rig works correctly
Thursday: Posing/ weight shift
This week George gave us two tasks to complete. He wanted us to chose a dynamic pose to recreate on the Bony Rig and we learnt about weight shifts.
Pose
I chose a pose to recreate on the bony rig
My feedback from George was to adjust the foot in the air so that there is a better silhouette. And potentially adjusting the arms so there is a continuation of the curve in the body.
Weight shift
This week we learnt how to animated a weight shift.
George showed us that it is important to have a balanced pose when animating a character. We want to ensure that there is the same amount of positive space either side of our characters pose. COG – Centre of Gravity
Credit: Santiago Astor
After filming myself side stepping, I drew out a rough plan of the character doing this.
In Wednesdays lesson was the start of our journey with Maya. Nick Introduced us to the software and how to navigate the interface, including how to add an object how to zoom or Dolly in and out a scene, Tumble and how to Track. We started the session by adding a cube to the scene. I learnt that the hot keys are Q, W, E and R.
Q is Selection
W is Translate
E is Rotate
R is Scale
Maya Cheat sheet
Basics of Modelling
We started with the basics and getting to grips with the modelling and sculpting tools. Maya is node based, which I learnt means that each object is made of several components, “What is the object”, “Where is it in space” and “What colour/shade is it”. Nick demonstrated that there is a difference between the Object and the Shape. The object is where it is in space, the shape is what it is made out of e.g the Vertices, Edges and Faces.
We changed the shape of a sphere by manipulating the vertices, edges and faces. Then we changed the display of the shape by pressing the hotkeys, 1, 2, and 3. 4 is wireframe mode, 5 is shaded, 6 is textured, 7 is lighting
Display smoothness 1, displaying the hard surface
Display smoothness 2, displaying the hard surface and smooth surfaceDisplay smoothness 3, just displaying the smooth surface
I then learnt how to use the subdivision surfaces to change the resolution of our primitive object
I then practiced using the sculpting tools in Maya. There are several tools under the sculpting tab. I mainly used the Grab and the Smooth tool.
We then moved on to exploring lighting and texturing our objects. We firstly used the spot light and used the settings to adjust how big and intense the light was. I learnt that if you press T I could use a target for the light and direct it at the object more precisely.
I learnt about the Attribute Editor. Once the attribute editor is open, I could use the different settings to increase or decrease the intensity of the light or the softness etc.
Then from there I used learnt how to use the renderer, Arnold
We then played around with the sun light. I used the Azimuth to rotate the scene around, and in turn, adjust the direction of the light. By adjusting the Elevation, this changed the time of day and therefore, the brightness and how high the light source or the sun was in the sky.
I then experimented with the texture of the object by going in to aiStandardSurface. After my object was textured, Nick then showed us how to download a HDR from Poly Haven. I downloaded a Hilly Terrain and placed the little piggy object in it.
We moved on to animation and experimenting with the graph editor. We created three very basic shapes that we called our “Slugs”. We then animated them moving on the X axis. By using those shapes we then experimented with the Graph editor to adjust the curve, and therefore adjust the speed of the slugs to give them the appearance of finishing at different speeds.
Thursday
On Thursday was George’s Lesson. George showed us how to use Maya to animate a bouncing ball. Firstly, we used a pre-made rig of a ball which we referenced in our scene. George taught us that by using the reference tool we could use the same rig over and over again but create different animations with it. It was also helpful to do this if the rig happened to have a fault during the animation process. It could be deleted and reuploaded without disrupting the animation.
I then used the rig to create several animations of the ball. I started off with the ball just bouncing on the Y- Axis from a height, gradually getting lower each time. It was important to use different rings around the ball to do different functions. I used the large middle ball to move the ball in the Y-axis and the ring on top of the ball to control the squash and stretch.
This is my ball rig on a plane with some pink directional lights (because why not?)
I went in to the graph editor after I set up my key frames and used it to slightly adjust the height and speed of the ball falling on the Y-Axis
This is a screen shot of the graph editor looking at the rigs that control the squash and stretch. As the ball is falling I decreased the amount of squash and stretch.
Final render of the ball bouncing on the spot
This is a screen shot of ball bouncing on the y axis whilst moving on the x axis
This week we got to animate a flour sack. Nick taught us
Inverse and forward kinematics
Parenting vs constraints
Nick showed us how to altered the flour sack from IK to FK so it was easier to move the feet
I keyed in the movement of the body on the Z Axis so it moved forward. After that I keyed in the feet shifting forward.
Then I keyed in the feet lifting up
Ball with tail rig in Maya
We continued on from last week and animated the ball with tail. Now that the blocking was done, went into spline and had to make all our adjustments. The first like it went into spline it begin float so I had to add more key frames.
We started with a Polygon primitive cube that we shaped into the palm
changing the pivot points, d then v
From there it was easy to duplicate the boxes to form each part of the fingers and thumbs and arms
From there we were able to animate our arm picking up a ball and throwing them threw a hoop
Thursday: Ball with tail
Today we added to the squash and stretch techniques we learnt from previous weeks and animated the ball and tail rig
Ball with tail rig in Maya
This week I just concentrated on blocking out the animation. I first animated the ball and tried to think about squash, stretch and anticipation.
Firstly, we watch a lot of reference video on squirrels and looked at how they moved. George pointed out how their tails always followed same motion path that their bodies did.
As I watched the squirrels, I planned out how I would make the ball with tail move
George critiqued my animation, his notes were mainly on the tail so I revised the wave principle and overlapping. I found this blog very helpful
In this lesson Nick showed us how to animate objects to follow an animation path
We picked a mesh to animate along a path. In this case I picked a whale. Nick then showed us how to use CV Curve tool to create a path and then constrain our objects to it.
Once it is constrained, I had to change the axis it moves along, otherwise it moves sideways.
After correcting the axis., I was then shown how to edit the path by selecting control vertex and using the move.
I exported the UV map from Maya and imported it into Photoshop and painted it. From there I exported back to Maya.
Then it kind of looked like a humpback whale… but it didn’t wrap properly so I had to scale it in some parts. This is the final video.
Thursday
In George’s class we looked at the 12 principles of animation.
Squash and Stretch
Timing and Motion
Anticipation
Follow-Through and Overlapping Action
Straight Ahead and Pose-to-Pose Action
Slow In and Out
Exaggeration
Secondary Action
Staging
Arcs
Appeals
Solid Drawing
This week we focused on Follow – through. This refers to an overlapping action generated by an external source.
In this case it was the action of the force of the pendulum being moved from left to right and then gravity making it swing back to its original position
Pendulum rig in Maya
Once I animated the first joint, it was a case of duplicating the key frames and pasting it on the other joints. From there I offset the graph for each joint by a few frames and then tweaked from there.
