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.