This will be an ongoing portfolio of work created for RTF 344M: Computer Animation & 3D Modeling class.
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4/9/12
Another version of a flyover shot of Atlantis city.
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3/29/12
Second version of a flyover shot of Atlantis city.
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3/28/12
First version of a flyover shot of Atlantis city.
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3/8/12
I was happy with how this turned out. The movement is a little odd, but considering this is my first animation (and I devoted my weekend to living in the studio working on the multi-camera studio project I directed for RTF 340: Studio Production, which left me with little time for this assignment) I'm quite proud.
I decided to go sci-fi. I made the Enterprise a la original series Star Trek, complete with a shiny surface and glowing nacelles. I used the lattice distort to squash a sphere for the front section (handy tool). For the planet I found a texture that looked like it could be a far off planet's ground. The nebula is a preset 3D container effect that I tinkered with a bit to get it to look how I wanted. The stars in the background are actually the inside of a giant sphere.
I used the pencil tool to draw the path. I want to re-do this later when I know more. Right now I think a Bezier curve would make much smoother movement. I also wanted to have the ship speed up at the very end (to go to "warp"), but Maya wasn't cooperating (anytime I set a key frame it deleted the animation I had from the curve. Many online help searches didn't give me a solution to that problem).
Overall, very happy with the look of it.
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3/1/12
I was happy with how these projects turned out! My favorite was the ocean with the raft. I added an ambient light for the sun, a camera with the sky as an image plane, and built a raft with a wood texture and a cloth sail. The cloth is 50% burlap/50% silk. It's an interesting combination that gave me the movement and weight I was looking for. (The only thing I would have liked differently would be if I could render a longer clip.)
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2/16/12
I ran into many, many problems with this assignment. I'll start with the good- I'm happy with the footage I shot. I shot on a Canon T2i with a dolly, a Lowell Rifa light pointed at the ceiling for a nice bug soft light, and my brother acting.
The problems arose in the various computer programs. I put the 13 second video into After Effects, made a targa sequence, and brought that sequence into Match Mover. Here's why Match Mover hates me:
- Program stalled four separate times at 66% complete. Twice on one computer, once on another computer, and once with a super-compressed version of the video.
- Program crashed twice, both times with the super-compressed version of the video.
- Program crashed, I restarted the computer, and Match Mover crashed again.
After a couple stalled attempts, I brought the original video into Compressor, made the file size much smaller (which brought the quality down-- I didn't care about that as long as I ended up with something to work with), made an image sequence, and tried Match Mover again. No luck. I tweaked the density and sensitivity levels to see if that would help, but it didn't change anything.
Here is evidence of my attempts. There is no finished product, because I could not get past the Match Mover problems. There is the original video (minus 3D work, obviously), and screenshots of a stalled progress bar and Match Mover crashing.
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2/9/12
My Maya "Robot and Ruins" project is below (scroll down to see all the thumbnails). I tackled the robot part first. It took me a while to get used to the interface, but I got in my groove! I even played around with adding lights (colored lights). I like how it turned out, especially the squiggly arms and antenna. Getting it to be exactly 1,000 faces wasn't too hard.
The ruins was a lot more time consuming. I started with focusing on the area of the grid. I made one tower and duplicated it a bunch of times. The ground is a plane that I added some subdivisions to so I could make little hills and valleys. After several towers, rocks, and crumbling bits, I saw that either I had to expand from the area right over the grid or add extreme levels of detail. I decided to expand the area, so I made another plane the same size as the grid. More towers (some with some tall bits for detail), rocks, and a wall with bricks for detail. I still had thousands of faces left, so I extended the area even more. My favorite parts are the crumbling rock parts, the brick detail on the wall, and the parts of the fallen towers (some of the smaller cubes fell off of the tops of the towers and wall), and the little hills and valleys on the plane. Getting to exactly 10,000 faces was a lot more tricky than hitting the robot's target face number.
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2/2/12
My digital painting is below. I'm most happy with how the stars came out; I used a pen pressure brush to make various sized stars, so some would appear to be distant. The planets are the only outside images I used. For the planet in the foreground, I put a filter on it to make it look a little different and more "painted." Then I added a layer on top with different shades of dark blue, with lower opacity, to make the planet look more three dimensional and shaded. I also lightened up some areas on the outer edge of the planet. For the Earth in the background, I decreased the image opacity and added a black layer on top (brush with faded edge, some lower opacity on the whole thing) to make part of the Earth look shaded.
I thought about using an existing picture for the space ship (I found an excellent from Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic), but I later decided to try my hand at making my own, even if it wouldn't turn out as polished and awesome as the image I found. I'm not a big fan about how my spaceships turned out (I think they look like space-submarines), but I do like how I spruced them up with adding some highlights, shadows, and the glow from the burning fuel at the back.
My drawing experience is mostly doodles (see previous post for some examples), and I haven't done much painting from scratch in Photoshop. Overall, I'm happy with how it turned out.
[Note: I tried to upload it as a .png, but the only supported file types are .jpg and .gif]
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1/26/12
My bio is on the About page, my past films are on the Short Films page, and below are some photos of other related work including photos, drawings, and some minor Photoshop work (see captions for details).
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