End of 1st Semester Results

Here's all my animation so far this semester. Grading is tomorrow, so I got it done just in time. The rest of the animation? It'll be interesting cramming it in... I also have to finish the background of the first segment (this video) so it won't look like a random clock in the middle of a barren plain. That would be optimal.

Flight Progress Video

I've started to make my bird fly (this shows all the targas I've rendered so far) and the end of this film is the beginning of the fall I'm going to have Prometheus do. Pretty soon I'll be done with all of it up to the disappearance into the clock, and that's my goal for this semester.

Flight Animation Progress

I just started animating Prometheus for flight, and here's a frame of him taking off for the first time. It's taken a while, but so far so good. :) I'll have to add more texture detail later though.

Addition of Berries/First Lighting Test

I imported the berries and set up my bird's beak to hold the stem, then arranged for them to have a separate set of joints so I can just translate the joints when I need the berries to fall and switch from one bird to the next. I set up the lighting so that most of the sky is about the same color, but the top part is extremely dark. I'll fix that later once I've finished animating everything. Right now I'm just worried about getting my bird to do something other than cock its head, look around, etc.

Preview of First Camera Movements

Here I've made my first basic camera movements from the storyline. It basically showcases the clock in all its glory and gives the observer time to analyze the atmosphere, while letting them catch a glimpse of the hole in the clock face and a little of the bird during the first rotations. It then zooms in on the bird, who is cocking his head to the side and doing nervous little bird-like actions that will hopefully convince the audience that my bird is actually a bird, and not a copy... Hopefully. I'm very tired right now, having gotten over some nasty food poisoning, so I'm trying to get back into the groove of animating... It's pretty hard, since I don't remember what all I've done.

Working on Wing Poses

Here I've found a slightly "natural" pose for Prometheus when he's not flying. I can't fully fold the feathers into the body since the rigging doesn't work that way, and I'm having issues with how the feathers go through the skin (you can see a bit of this on here) but I'll work it out and just be careful how I pose him when I'm setting keys down.

The Hole in the Clock

Here I've added the "hole" in the clock face. It's not actually a hole, but rather a cylinder with a non-reflective black texture applied to it. It would be murder to actually extract a hole from the clock face, seeing as there isn't a perfect circle I can just delete. So instead, I'll have this hole here and have the bird "disappear" into it with the camera angle such that the camera can't see that it's not actually a hole, fading into the next cut of the bird flying through the clock. It'll save me a whole lot of effort and will make the storyline still look the same.

Big Ben Detailing

I've finished the face and basic texturing of my clock, which I'm still calling Big Ben even though I'm taking liberties with its design. I stuck to the overall shape of the face and figure of Big Ben, but as far as detail goes, there's no WAY I'm making the gilding on the face details. It's too much. So I've made a sort of modern-esque Big Ben type of clock that I'll detail a bit more later.

Ocean Fluids Tutorial

I actually enjoyed this more than I thought I would. It was easier than I had originally anticipated and the nice part was that after I created the cube, all I had to do to make the ocean affect it was push a button. I'll consider using this for a clip in the group project.

Smoke Tutorial: Using nDynamics

I actually had a good time doing this tutorial. I learned some pretty important points of nParticles, and this was pretty cool, considering I've never done anything like it before. After this, I won't just look at the drop-menu at the nParticles option with confusion or skim over it like it's invisible.

Dynamics Tutorial

Using Maya Help, I finished a tutorial that introduced me to the basic dynamics in Maya 2010. I thoroughly enjoyed learning how to manipulate particles and assign them to various shapes and spaces. I think that to further my dynamics experience I will find another tutorial or experiment on my own.

Doom Octopus Test #2 (Group Project)

Here I've added eyebrows and made the eyes glow when he's angry.  I decided not to use eyelids because the rotations were messed up and I couldn't really do much with him otherwise. I think that now I'll go back and add the incandescence settings (the glow) to the eyebrow attribute, which I handled the same as the blink factors.

Doom Octopus Test (Group Project)

This is my first version of Doom's movement, and I'm not happy with how his skin "dimples" at the bases of his tentacles. I'm going to go in and try to fix that, but first I think I'll try making him eyelids so I won't have to rely on his tentacles for expressing his emotions. Deforming the eyes seems too tedious, and blend shapes aren't my favorite thing, so I'll try the eyelids first and see where that goes.

Watersnake Test (Group Project)

Here I've finished the programming for Watersnake's eyes and rigging him to "swim" through the water. I also put in the movement of his accessories. It didn't take too long once I got the hang of it.

Triopus Skinning (Group Project)

I finally finished programming Triopus' blink attribute and then I worked for far too long on re-doing the legs (glitches in the original sculpting). So now he's a little more adorable.

Rigging Check

I checked the leg IK rigs by posing Prometheus as he would look when flying. This also gave me a chance to work on curving the wings slightly to give him a gliding appearance and to adjust the head position in relation the the body. I think I'll have a hard time when animating the keys in just keeping the head looking relatively forward even thought the body is doing all kinds of other stuff.

Import and Scale

Just to give you an impression of how big everything is, I imported Prometheus into the scene with the clock and had him pose so that I could also test the IK handles I've installed as well. I've had to scale Prometheus down from his original size, which has caused some issues with joints not being aligned inside of the bird, but it hasn't affected any of his mechanics. At this point in the clock, I have a view of the large gear that Prometheus first flies under, and if you look closely, you'll see the hole in the side of the clock underneath it. Prometheus fits through there in the beginning of the short.

IK Handle Video

In this video, I used playblast to demonstrate exactly how I'll be using the IK handles for my birds. Obviously, when birds land they need to grab onto their perch, and I also figure that I should have them able to grab objects as well. So, I made sure that the soft skinning worked and then used the IK handles to make the birds come alive.

Gears Rotation

This is the overall setup of the gears in the clock with the rotation. It wasn't too hard to do; I just made all the Y-rotations the same and made sure the gears were properly aligned. It looks pretty nice for that amount of work.

Pendulum and Gears

This is what I have set up and animated so far in my clock tower. I'm going to be making two scenes: one inside the tower and one outside so that I can maintain the light files. I think I already said that in another post, but I'm repeating it so you can see that this is why I'm not working on anything outside of the building.

IK Handle Demo

Here, I'm showing how I used IK Handles for my birds' legs. I wanted to use IK for the wings as well, but it just went crazy when I did that, so I'll be manipulating the wings the hard way. This setup didn't take long at all, as far as installing the IK Handles went, but I had to smooth skin the legs beforehand, which took a little while.

Gears and Platforms Setup2

Here's the basic setup for my platforms. I figure that for the ones on the walls close to each other they should have ramps. This will make it look more like a human-built structure. I'm thinking about putting "steps" into the sides as well to connect vertically-aligned platforms and add more detail to the walls.

Gears and Platforms Setup

I haven't textured anything yet, but here's my basic platform setup with "floating" gears. I'll add other stuff later. But I'm hoping to have tons of these platforms, yet intersperse free-standing gears on poles to add a little fantasy feel to everything. By the way, if you know of a good way to do wood textures, let me know. I'm dying to have one.

Nest, Eggs, and Berries Placement

So I decided to start placing everything. Yesterday I made the nest and eggs, and today I put in the feathers (I couldn't resist adding glow), so I figured I should start setting up some of the scenes. This one is for the end (see storyboard) but it's the one that requires more in-set sculpting and placement than the others. I don't really want to start all the gear placements just yet. But the visor feathers don't take up too much memory and slow down my computer, so I think rendering this scene won't be too bad. My strategy for now is to have files that will contain each "cut" that's in my storyboard so that the items won't overload the computer and extend my render time overmuch.

Nest Preparation Modeling

I sculpted the platform that will contain their nest using basic polygon extruding and bridging. It wasn't too hard, just took a while to sit down and make.

Group Project Modeling

I've modeled the above characters: doom octopus, Triopus, and watersnake. These were all made using polygon/subdiv modeling. I think that the hardest one (or the longest one) would be watersnake, since he has those glasses (I had issues with that) and then there's the clipboard and the pen. Next hardest was Triopus: I had to figure out how to divide his base up so there would be three approximately equal legs. Doom octopus wasn't bad. I'm just trying to start thinking about rigging them now.

Pendulum Modeling

I finished modeling the pendulum today. I tried to keep with the same design as the gears, both the indentions and overall shading. But I'll probably combine shaders when I import everything into one scene. Anyways, it wasn't too hard and I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out. The shadows look funny because Maya's slightly demented.

Berries Modeling

This is my stem and berries for the plotline of my personal project. It didn't take too long once I had thought through how I was going to model each part. However, I will have to convert the stem to a polygon, since I modeled it in subdivs.

Gears First Draft

So here's my concept gears for the clock. I might add some bolts to the bronze parts if I can manage it, and I'm definitely going to try some grunge effects once I have all the gears in place in the clock. Anyways, these are basic polygon sculpting: extrude, extrude, extrude. I'm very pleased with how they turned out. :)

Blend Shapes Tutorial

For this tutorial, I actually didn't follow the instructions exactly. The tutorial outlined how to manipulate an eyelid and an eye through blend shapes, then set driven keys, but I wanted to work on facial manipulations, since I will be needing that more in my personal project. I think my birds would do best with blend shapes in terms of facial manipulations, since I want their eyelids to just open and shut. They aren't supposed to be straight-up cartoons.

Eye Deformation Tutorial

For this tutorial, I sculpted a basic cartoon eye and created driven keys according to the desired eye behavior in order to make a video and set keys that demonstrated smooth animation and control over deformation. Try to decode that if you can. I only did one eye.

Eye Modeling Tutorial

As part of the grades this six weeks, I did an eye tutorial, but when it came to texturing, I had to do it on my own. I wanted the eye to be more clean and less veiny, but I still wanted a basic iris form. I also had to take out the various parts of the eye in order to get them textured accurately. I created a cornea by extracting it from the overall eyeball, which I then deleted in order to have the inner eyeball be white etc etc. Anyways, I had fun with this. :) I'll continue with the animating part and the eyelid part next.

Rigged at Last!

I FINALLY finished rigging them both, and while I did so, I discovered that the feathers work better with the joints when they are separately "rigid binded" to the arm joints in groups based on  location while the main "arm" parts are smooth-binded and then edited with skin weight painting to work perfectly. Texturing is taken care of with this strategy as well.

Prometheus Textured1

As you can see, with my new setup of the feathers separated from the body, it allows me to further texture with accuracy--opposed to Sonora, who was kind of fail. Also, I made the talons a separate texture, as well as the claws. So now the birdy looks more sophisticated and moves adequately. :) YAY!

Skin Weighting

As you can see, I've been working on the bird a bit more. This is a screen shot of my skin painting efforts after re-compositing Prometheus to work with the rigs.I'm going through and painting the feathers individually (rows, that is) so that the joints can apply to those feathers separately from the arm "flesh" and the other feather rows. This will allow me to have a more precise control over the wings when I animate them while also allowing me to texture the rows of feathers separately. It might be a bit more of a pain, but I think it's worth it, considering the quality that will result.

Texturing Brick Wall

I started texturing Sonora today to see if I needed to do anything before I continued, and I found that I need the primary feathers in the wings to be separate from the others before I can texture her correctly. Unfortunately, I've already combined the feathers with the main structure, so that is impossible with her model. However, Prometheus' beak is corrected and all of his feathers are still separate, so I'll use the same rigging for him as with Sonora, tweak it and make it larger, then set him up to be textured properly and duplicate him then to re-make Sonora. WHEW! Long process. Here I go.

Prometheus Storyboard

Flight Test After Rigging

So I'm not finished rigging everything yet, but I've started painting on skin weights for the wings (which were DEFINITELY needed) and this is one of the poses I checked with the skin weights because it's one of the main ones I'll be using throughout the animation. It's not too bad, but the wings look a little bonier than I'd like, so I'll be working with skin weights again.

Beak Editing

In this picture, I've shown the new setup of Sonora's beak. Why? I had to bind the skin to the skeleton I created and it wasn't pretty the way it was. Smooth skinning with skin weight painting didn't work, simply extracting the beak and attaching it to the beak joints with rigid bind wasn't much better, and the last option I had was to rescale the beak and edit the sculpture of it. Now, I'm going to have to duplicate this beak later when I'm working on rigging Prometheus, but for now I'm just making sure Sonora works in her smaller setup.

Path Animation Video

Path Animation

I did a tutorial today with a path animation, which I found I preferred to the normal animation. It allowed for smoother transitions and even turns, but I'm afraid that with some of my animations I won't be able to use this feature. However, I think this will work with my birds, since they have to go around and over and through things in the clock.

Male vs Female Models

On the left, the male (Prometheus), and on the right, the female (Sonora). I duplicated Prometheus and scaled him down to make Sonora, then to further distinguish her from him, I made her slimmer and shortened her tail feathers. She'll be yellow and a light brownish color, while he'll be a two-tone blue. I'm thinking of having their primaries be the secondary color as well as two feathers in their tail, and then making the body and other feathers be the primary color. The beaks will (hopefully) be orangey (orangy?) and I'll keep both eyes black. I'll have to make eyelids... Bah. I'll work on that next.

Epic Modeling Win

Bam. Bird. Done. Now I'll be moving on to rigging and texturing, possibly lighting and making a duplicate of it for the female version I'll also be using in the storyline. I'll only tweak a few things in the female version (I might start calling it the beta version or Sonora, since that's the bird's name, so bear with me) because I want it to resemble the male enough to be the same species but not the exact replica. Oh, and in case you were wondering, the short will be called "Prometheus," named after the male. I'll post the storyboard up here soon.

Coverts Setup

I finished the coverts for the left wing and I am now trying to figure out how to mirror them across to the other wing with the proper angles and all. I'll start on that tomorrow.

Tail Setup

I decided to go with the five-feather fan, which is, in my opinion, more appealing to the eye and allows me to still have a relatively even cover without going insane over rigging in the future.

Primaries Setup

Songbird Primaries Setup

From now on, I'll be calling my canary a "songbird" since the storyline's been changed so that the main bird is actually blue. While it is true that I have a yellow bird in the storyline still, canaries aren't blue, so I'll just be calling them songbirds.
Anyways, I've set up the primaries for the wings (24 total, which will be murder to rig) and now I'll be starting on the secondaries. I slimmed the base wings down, since I don't want the wings to be too huge, and before I move on in the wings, I'm going to re-align the wing fan, which should be interesting, since I might have to delete a feather in favor of a five-feather tail setup.

Canary Tail Re-Do Image

Canary Tail Re-Do

I started work again on my canary, having done a sufficient amount of work on my model of Big Ben. Since I wasn't satisfied with the tail on my canary, I went into polygon proxy mode and deleted that portion of the model, leaving me with a hole. I then modeled basic feather shapes in Maya and imported them into the canary file, making tail feathers which can also be re-sized for my wing flight feathers later. With the tail being individual feathers, I can have them fan out later in animation and shrink together with individual skeletons attatched to the main spine. This will allow for more realistic imaging and easier texturing later on.

Big Ben Progress Photo

Big Ben Progress

I've switched over now to working on my lovely London clock. Why? I got fed up with the canary. Instead of deleting the canary or messing it up in my fury, I decided to go with a nice geometrical modeling of Big Ben, which has been quite relaxing--other than the occasional Maya glitch which suddenly deletes my file... Anyways, I have the basic shape sculpted, and now I will be working on seeing if textures will help me with the finer details.

Personal Project Canary Talons

Personal Project Advances

Right now, I'm working on my personal project for this class, in which I will be modeling Big Ben (the clock) and a canary. So, recently I've started on the canary which is progressing at a relatively fast rate, considering that I only just learned to model in subdivision surfaces. So far I've modeled the basic shape of the canary (wings, legs, head, body, tail) and have started on details for the feet and beak. The feet turned out well since I had sculpted a similar foot earlier (see below post) and the beak was surprisingly easy once I found the knack for it.

Rigging the Claw

Subdivision Followup Result

Subdivision Project Followup

Since I wasn't satisfied with the result of my previous subdivision modeling practice, I decided to go off of the hand tutorial with Maya help and make something that would relate to my personal project that involves a bird--a canary, to be more specific. Let's just say that I am EXTREMELY pleased with this round. See for yourself.

Dynamics Tutorial Result

Dynamics Tutorial

Using Maya Help, I finished a tutorial that introduced me to the basic dynamics in Maya 2010. I thoroughly enjoyed learning how to manipulate particles and assign them to various shapes and spaces. I think that to further my dynamics experience I will find another tutorial or experiment on my own.

Subdivision Surfaces Product