Maya Tutorials: Rigging Techniques — Part 2

Maya Tutorials: Rigging Techniques — Part 1

Basic Squash, Stretch, & Volume Preservation

Minor Project: Studio Blog

✦ ▶︎ Link to studio blog for my collaborative project with Cat ◀︎✦

Life Drawing: 28/09/16

Year 2: 2016 Showreel

Before diving properly into Year 3, I thought it'd be good to post a recap of what I've worked on so far since starting the course

August // DO bring around a cloud

Could do with one or two above my parade

July // Isometric Terrarium

Little experimental thing prompted after I realised isometric perspective could be easily achieved within Maya

Adaptation B: Renders fixed

After another series of rendering mishaps, the sequence presented at crit day is now technically running ok. It is simply followed by a couple of stills as I didn't find enough time to render camera movements, but it'll do for the time being 

[abrupt hand drop is abrupt]

YPGTTO #10: The String City / The Harp District

I feel like in terms of animation, invisible raindrops should fall and make surfaces ripple...
~ More to come I hope ~

Maya Tutorials: Year 2 Term 2 Submission

1)      Pipeline 2: Modeling

          a)     Low Resolution
          b)     UV Layout
          c)     High Resolution
          d)     UV Maps

2)      Pipeline 2: Baking Maps

          a)     Base Normal Maps
          b)     Rope Normal Map
          c)     Ambient Occlusion Maps

3)      Pipeline 2: Diffuse Maps

          a)     Base Diffuse Maps
          b)     Diffuse Maps - Stone Base
          c)     Diffuse Maps - Stone Pillars
          d)     Diffuse Maps - Rope
          e)     Diffuse Maps - Wood & Metal
          f)      Diffuse Maps - Fabric Flag
          g)     Normal Maps Using Xnormal & Photoshop - Shield
          h)     Using Viewport 2.0 for Look Development & Rendering

4)      Pipeline 2: ShaderFX

          a)     Intro to Shader FX Networks
          b)     Displacement
          c)     Lighting
          d)     Transparency
          e)     Reflection
          f)      UVs & Animation

5)      Dynamics 1: Legacy Particles

          a)     Sketching Particles
          b)     Particles Grids
          c)     Omni Emitters
          d)     Directional Emitters
          e)     Volume Emitters
          f)      Emit from Curve
          g)     Per Point Emission 
          h)     Surface Emission
          i)      Curve Flow
          j)      Emit from Particles
          k)     Collision Events
          l)      Instancing Objects
          m)    Instance Rotations
          n)     Animated Instances
          o)     Goal Weights
          p)     Conditional Goal Weights
          q)     Sprites

6)      Lighting and Rendering 2: Mental Ray

          a)     Samples and Quality Control
          b)     Final Gather
          c)     Linear Work Flow
          d)     Physical Sun and Sky
          e)     Portal Lights
          f)      MIA Material X Shader
          g)     HDR Lighting
          h)     Displacement Maps
          i)      Ambient Occlusion
          j)      Motion Blur
          k)     Mental Ray Proxies

7)      Adaptation A: Submission

Maya Tutorials: Mental Ray Part 2-3-7-8-10-11 + ShaderFX 1-2-3-5-6

Mental Ray Part 2: Final Gather

Mental Ray Part 3: Linear Work Flow

Mental Ray Part 7: High Dynamic Range (HDR) Lighting

I know the light source was supposed to be placed where the sun was situated on the dome, but I thought it'd make more sense to have the shadows go in the same direction as the shadows from the background image

Mental Ray Part 8: Displacement Maps

Mental Ray Part 10: Motion Blur

Mental Ray Part 11: Mental Ray Proxies

Shader FX Part 1: Intro to Shader FX Networks

Shader FX Part 2: Displacement

Shader FX Part 3: Lighting

Shader FX Part 5: Reflection

Shader FX Part 6: Uv's & Animation

Maya Tutorials: Mental Ray Part 4-5-6-9 + ShaderFX Part 4

Mental Ray Part 4: Physical Sun & Sky

Mental Ray Part 5: Portal Lights

Mental Ray Part 6: Mia Metarial X Shader

Mental Ray Part 9: Ambient Occlusion

Shader FX Part 4: Transparency

Adaptation B: Crit Submission

Adaptation B: Texturing and Scene Progress

Adaptation B: Updates #1

[Updates I meant to post a bit sooner]

Last week I made the decision to drop the idea of making the full short I had planned, as well as the set, in favour of detailing and finishing the soldier character. Because I didn't want the environment to suffer from being hastily dealt with, it's going to be reduced to more of a turn table type of set meant to showcase the main model. On that note, the latter has been skinned, positioned, un-skinned, tweaked a little, then re-skinned to a simplified skeleton in order to perform the final, 'revealing' hand drop (see test video below). What follows is a series of work-in-progress renders for the scene:   

(Maybe the platform might beneficiate from being shrunken a little more)

A couple of tests for the grass, which I textured with scans I made from various grassy-type of plants (though the current result is still looking very generic).

Skin texturing progress

I made the mistake to start working on the normal maps on the positioned model rather than the T pose, which meant that when it came to baking the maps the above mess happened. The normals made for the belt details are however still usable.   

Adaptation B: Character Modeling Complete

Adaptation B: Character Modeling Progress #3

Since I wasn't sure what would look more adequate in the final output, I spent a couple of days researching and fiddling around with Xgen and nHair techniques for the hairstyle. In the end I did not really know enough about those to get convincing renders, so I decided to leave it as a solid mesh as shown below. 

I also started working on the upper body, but because I attempted to have the uniform opened up and folded over, it seems to have made me deal poorly with some of the areas. Perhaps reverting to a fastened version might be safer in this case (though I feel less in line with the narrative behind the scene).

Adaptation B: Interim Crit

Adaptation B: Rough Animatic

The following video is very rough version/work in progress of what I had in mind if I were to go down a different path than the single tracking shot suggestion. My goal was to create, through camera movements, some kind of contrast between motion and stillness as the poem draws closer to its conclusion. I can't say I am entirely satisfied with the general pacing and staging but it's a start.

Apologies for the typo "Smiling like a sick child" 

On a side note, the opening shots of the animatic are working as placeholders at the moment, as I think there might be more clever ways of illustrating the text. For example, I reckon sound effects alone and perhaps a shot of dewdrops on blades of grass could be enough to encompass the "Madly hanging on the grasses tatters of silver" verse, without having to show an actual stream of water.

Adaptation B: Character Modeling Progress #2