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.