Week 12: Part 2

This is what I learn in the video part 2:

Continuing from video part 1, I've learn how to set the settings for camera. I don't understand this part: clipframe. My grid don't get cut off from like the video, so I was hesitating whether I should follow the person in the video and change the clipframe values.

Create a polygon plane at the 200 mark.

Create a NURBS primitive sphere.

Lift the sphere up by 100.

Week 12: Part 1

This is what I've learnt in the video for Part 1.

Reflection:

I think what the person says in the video is very true. If anyone does not set up a folder in the beginning, it will be very complicated and there may be missing files. So it is important to set up a default folder for all the files. In animation, I think it is important for beginners to set up perspective and orthographic numbers as a guideline for animation.

Week 11 Lab 2: Adding Squash & Stretch to a Ball (E-learning)

These are the screen-shots of the lab 2 exercise:

First, I need to create a polygon sphere.

After creating the polygon sphere, I need to group the ball twice like the screen-shot above.

After that, I need to go under Create Deformers > Non-linear to select Squash. This creates my squash1handle.

Moving on, I need to parent squash1handle with translate_ball_gp. To do that, I need to select sqaush1handle first and control+select translate_ball_gp. After that, press 'p' to parent it.

Lock the following for translate_ball_gp: Rotate, Scale and Visibility.

Lock the following for rotate_ball_gp: Translate, Scale and Visibility.

Lock all for ball.

Create a polygon plane. After that, use the move tool and move the ball to the upper left of the Maya screen.

Switch the panel to the side view the move the ball so that it touch the ground.

This is how it looks like in the perspective view.

Reflection:

I think this lab 2 exercise is manageable for me. However, there are some parts which took me some time to understand as the tutorial document is very wordy. I have to be very careful in each and every word it states or else it the animation will turn out weird.

Week 11 Lab 1: Key framing (E-learning)

These are the two videos for the e-learning week 11:





Reflection:
This exercise is not difficult at all and I have no problems with doing it. The tutorial was easy to follow and this exercise shows you the basics of animation in Maya.

PROJECT 2: PART ONE.

For this project 2, I will be animating the robot based on Scenario 3.

1. CHARACTER

Give a name to your robot. 

Imagine that while it is doing its mechanical work, the robot is actually thinking to itself. Write a brief paragraph of what the robot might be thinking - write the thoughts from the robot's point of view, ie. imagine it is speaking the thoughts out loud, if it could. 

The thoughts must be relevant to the scenario that you choose. 

Note: these should be the robot's thoughts before the inciting incident - not while it is reacting to the incident.

The name of my robot is Issac.

Issac the robot works in Santa's factory where all the boxes of gifts are being prepared to sent out to the children's houses on Christmas Day. His job scope is to lift up a box of gifts at the head of the queue of a conveyor belt at the factory and pile it at one side. He also needs to stack the boxes of gifts neatly at one side.

Issac was thinking, "Why Santa told me to do this kind of tiring job when I do not get any gift on Christmas Day at all?!" He began to start his work with a bad mood that day. However, after piling and stacking one box at the side, he was taken aback by a ball on the conveyor belt. He saw that the ball is distracting his work so he thought, "Why is this ball not even giving me a peace of my mind on this day?" Angrily, he whacks the ball away. The ball disappears for a moment.

Issac continued his work with a bad mood. After piling and stacking two more boxes, the ball, which was previously said to distract Issac's work earlier on, appeared on the conveyor belt again. The ball looked at Issac excitedly and thought that this is some sort of a game. The ball was bouncing happily on the conveyor belt. Due to Issac's bad mood, he thought, " You're not in the right time to mess with me. GET LOST, LITTLE BALL!" He then uses his head to crush the ball angrily.

2. STORYBOARD

Draw a storyboard of your animation before you start the actual animation work. This should be uploaded to your web journal by the end of the week 15.

Your storyboard should also highlight the key poses of the robot.

This is my storyboard of how my animation will turn out for scenario 3. I even added my own ending to the scenario given.

REFLECTION:
Overall for this part one of project 2, there are minor problems I faced like thinking how my story should end or is it very difficult for me to animate for my part two of this project 2. While picking with scenario I should animate, I can picture scenario 3 very clearly in my head with some of the principles of animation. As I like cute stuffs, I think the result of the animation for scenario 3 will be a cute animation.

Week 11: Key framing (E-learning)

These are the two videos for the e-learning week 11:





Reflection:
This exercise is not difficult at all and I have no problems with doing it. The tutorial was easy to follow and this exercise shows you the basics of animation in Maya.

Week 11 - Self Critic

5. Self Critic

The model I will modeling for this project is a laptop.

Front View - Maya

Front View - Real Object

Above are the front views of a real object - laptop. As there are not many texturing in Maya, the model in Maya does not look like its made of plastic on the outside. The circle on top of the screen is a webcam, but in the model, it doesn't look like a webcam. I have tried my best to make it look like a webcam, but it is very difficult to model the interior of the webcam, so I just used boolean and difference it with a thin cylinder to make the spaces in between the webcam. It is not difficult to add colours of this object because this object only include three colours - grey, white and black. If this laptop is in many colours, you have to remember what colour you chose to colour a particular part previously.

Top View - Real Object

Top View - Maya

Above are the top views of a real object - laptop. In the top view, half of the monitor is black and the other is white, therefore I coloured half black, and coloured half white. As mentioned before, if the material of model in Maya looks like plastic, the colour of the laptop in Maya will not be so solid black and white, it will be a lighter white and black instead. The speaker of this laptop is the most difficult part for me to model as there are so many holes. I tried using boolean> difference for the holes, but the whole part was gone when I used boolean. In the end, I just use many spheres and do the holes row by row. From any angle you look in Maya, it looks like holes. Moving on to the keypads, it faced the same problem as the speaker but after that, I extracted each key one by one and double click the top of the face of one key and scale it up a little more to make it bigger. I used boolean> difference for each keys one by one. It worked. I boolean>difference the keys to make the holes in between the keys. And then I used the previously duplicated keys and put in on top of the 'spaces'. As my real object has patterns on the back and on the base, the model in Maya does not look as real. The mousepad on the base of the real object has lights on when you launch the laptop. In the model in Maya, it does not have lights around it but I must say that the mousepad looks quite the same as the real object. In this top view, I feel that it is the most difficult part in the process of modeling and this part takes the most time to model too.

Side View - Real Object

Side View - Maya

Above are the images of a real object - laptop. The base of the  laptop is a bit thick than the monitor screen. But in Maya, the base if the model it thicker than the real object. The reason why I scale it so thick is because it is easier that way to model things as it has a lot of space. The top part of the base of the real object is a bit scaled up to give it a nice curve to the object. In Maya, I also did the same way and that part look like the real object. In this side view, I did not really do the detailed parts such as the parts where you normally put in your thumb-drive or hard disk and the holes for heat inside the laptop to pass through. It is too detailed. In the end I put three pipes only at the white side. Also the side of a real object is not only curved at the top part, but it also becomes thinner as it reaches the tip of the base. In my model in Maya, I did not curve exactly like the real object.

Final model - Laptop

Overall, if I were to choose between alike or not alike, I will choose that my model is alike the real object, although there are many small parts which I didn't manage to model. I believe that when one look at it, the first thing that comes to your mind is a laptop. This is a new experience for me and I made a lot of effort into doing this model. I hope I can do better next time.