I know I already posted a video of this, but to give you an idea of what it takes to light and render a scene like this, here are a few stills from the animation.
I still have some tweaking to do before I'm done. Looks like it's time to buckle down and get to work.
This week we focused on refining our sculptures. I got it to the point where I was satisfied with it and didn't want to overwork it anymore, so I stopped. It's a fairly good likeness to Naked Lady, if I do say so myself.
I'll never take picking up a pair of chopsticks for granted now. Having looked at just how many muscles there are in your arm whose sole purpose is to curl or extend your fingers, I am amazed!
This was my favorite one to draw this week.
This is supposed to be a satyr, I think. Just in case you are confused...
This week we focused on the lower half of the figure and on resolving the forms there. I am a little bit more pleased with this week's work than last week, mainly because the overall sculpture has more of a likeness to Naked Lady. I've never been one that likes rough sculpture, so seeing things a bit more resolved is kind of fun.
This morning while I was waiting for some stuff to get done that didn't require my computer, I let it sit and render out a low resolution video file of my animation. I have been playing with lighting for about the past week and I have discovered that lighting in Maya is not very intuitive. As you watch this, you'll see some artifacts that I hope to get rid of by the end of the semester. Essentially, after I light the darn thing and then spend some time tweaking the animation curves, all that is left is to render it out.
I always budget way more time to this than is probably really necessary. After the animation is stepped out and blocked in, the next step is to basically put in the velocity of each of the parts in the scene. Essentially, all you're doing is changing the speed of transition between the XYZ coordinates of each piece via a velocity curve. (This is the point of the animation where I said, "Hey, I recognize those things! Those are from calculus. They tell you how fast an object is going!")
There are still some tweaks that need to be made here, but for the most part, I like what I am seeing.
Also, I discovered that I will probably get rid of the palace background. The specific shader I am using on the floor that essentially uses the background image, but allows you to cast shadows on it (kind of as a way to fake a background really quick), doesn't seem to be working with the fire particles. Every other piece of geometry is casting a shadow in the scene, except for the smoke. Ugh! So my solution is to build a background set, which actually shouldn't take long. I am much further ahead on this than I thought I would be. Keep forging ahead!
Some of you may remember last semester when I was doing animation. Well, this is the blocking stage for what ALFRED is going to be doing for this class. Essentially, I am setting up the key poses first off to get a sense of timing. Next is creating smooth inbetweens of the animation until it gets all polished off.
Fun stuff. I am anxious to get this completed, but it is going to take some deep concentration.
This week in figure modeling we started work on a contrapposto pose. (Finally, Naked Lady gets her chance in the 3D spotlight!) The human body is amazing in how it knows how to keep balanced. In a contrapposto pose, one of the legs bears the majority of the weight of the body while the hips tilt to the side. The shoulders also tilt opposite of the hips in order to keep everything balanced. Go ahead, try it. Stand up from your computer and strike a pose. You'll see what I mean.
I had to cannibalize on the the Naked Men I sculpted earlier in the semester in order to have an armature. It was either that, or make another one. I took plenty of pictures of Naked Man #1 before I tore him down. It was a tender moment.
I mainly focused on getting the gesture of the upper body blocked out this time around. Next week, when I work on it, I will resolve the lower half (and probably wind up changing a lot in the process).
I was only nine years old when my brother brought the game Myst into our house. I remember vividly delving into it's surreal world and being mesmerized by the groundbreaking visuals that it held. It was at that moment that a seed of fascination had been planted inside me which continued to grow and grow and grow.
It has been many years since that day when I was introduced to the world of 3D computer animation, but I have had an increasingly strong desire to learn more and more about it. I remember the first computer animation I created as a teenager using Strata Studio Pro: a simple car driving around a corner and into a garage with the door closing behind it. The modeling was crude, there were no textures, the animation itself did not look realistic at all, the resulting movie took up a significant portion of our hard drive space, and the rendering time tied up the family computer for over a day. Despite all those things, I realized that there was something in my future involving this new developing medium.
My interest in 3D computer animation grew exponentially over the years and I have never been able to get enough of it. I am continually fascinated by the challenging visuals that are continually being achieved in the entertainment industry. I'm the type of person who will buy the special edition of the movie just so I can see all of the "Making Of" featurettes. I think I enjoy them more than the movie sometimes. Although I had this strong interest in 3D computer animation, I chose to do my undergraduate work in industrial design. I have no regrets about my decision to pursue that path, however, because I learned a great deal about proper proportions, composition, form, color theory, and how people's perception of things can be influenced by visual cues. I recognize that many of these principles translate very easily into visual entertainment.
I graduated from Brigham Young University in 2007 and was hired by Pride Mobility Products in Scranton, Pennsylvania. While there I was responsible for designing various mobility products such as powered wheelchairs, scooters, and other accessories. Oddly enough, however, I found my duties in the design team being focused more towards tasks that were closely related to what a technical director or render wrangler would do. I was often chosen to do the renderings for the products we designed because I understood how to program shaders and how to create HDR studio lighting setups. In addition, during our regular meetings, I found myself doodling little cartoon characters that I had dreamed up or dreaming up ways of how our products could transform into robots, etc. Eventually the itch returned and I realized that my ultimate goals and professional desired wouldn't be fully satisfied in my current career path.
In the spring of 2009 I decided that I wanted to pursue 3D computer modeling and animation as a profession and applied for the MFA program at Academy of Art University. I recently moved to Provo, Utah, and am currently taking classes online while I pursue some other personal goals. I am eager to collaborate on projects and am excited to get involved with the other graduate students. Feel free to check out my web site www.rfxdesign.com and give me any critiques on my work. I'm always looking for a chance to improve my knowledge and skills.
I still have some tweaking to do before I'm done. Looks like it's time to buckle down and get to work.
