ABC Maya – Jetfire Complete!

So we created the beauty, occlusion and shadow render layers and then rendered them out and composited everything in After Effects.

Here is a still from my final thing:

The video will be coming soon…

ABC Maya – Occlusion and Beauty

We learnt how to separate the images into an occlusion and beauty layer today by practicing with a sphere and plane.

We used the above hypershade settings to made the surface shader appear sort of ‘flat-like’.

Then we created an occlusion layer by changing the presets on the ‘render’ layer to ‘occlusion’.

The is the jetfire ‘beauty’ layer.

And here is the jetfire ‘occlusion’ layer.

ABC Maya – Bump and Displacement Mapping

We learnt how to give things a rough texture today by using bump and displacement mapping. I believe this will be very useful for texturing certain objects, like a concrete floor.

We used this ‘woven seamless texture’ to create the bump mapping.

We also drew a curve using the CV curve tool and chose ‘revolve’ under the ‘surfaces’ tab to create a vase-like shape. We then added this texture to the bump mapping option and the vase became like this:

The bump mapping was applied to the vase on the right. The left one has a blinn texture applied to it.

The vase on the left now has displacement mapping applied to it.

The settings of the displacement mapping can be changed to create difference effects.

This shows the settings that I had to make this sort of displacement mapping.

This is how the vase looked after I changed some of the settings.

ABC Maya – Shiny Screwdriver

We learnt how to create a shiny screwdriver using certain textures and mental ray. I think it looks pretty sweet and I would really like to use it on my character but it only works under certain conditions and probably wouldn’t work with live footage.

This one also has depth of field. I might try and have a go at creating this effect again sometime.

ABC Maya – The Start of Animating

We began learning about how to animate properly and started by creating a bouncing ball using the techniques that Mauricio taught us.

As shown, we used the graph to edit the movement of the ball a lot more easily.

We then set up our Jetfires for animation by adding locators and pole vectors to it. We also added planes to help guide us when animating so that his walk will look more realistic.

He will be walking soon…

ABC Maya – Jetfire Texturing and Rigging

I finally managed to finish texturing my Jetfire Robot. It was very time consuming to do because some areas of the textures did not match the model exactly, so I had to manipulate it on Photoshop to make them work together.

We also learnt about rigging the robot, which was very useful because I need to be able to do that when working with the Birdman in my 3D Animation Project.

ABC Maya – UV Texturing

We learnt how to properly texture items like the one below using a UV projection. I think this will be very useful for making realistic-looking objects such as the one below, but it’s also helpful because it lets us move textures around, which I think I will probably need to do when I create my animation.

ABC Maya – Birdman Paper Figure

We were asked to choose and make a paper figure out of the templates we were given and here are some photos of the one I chose:

Once I’ve completed modelling and rigging the Jetfire robot I will have a go at modelling this one, and because of the way it looks, it might actually work well if I texture it with fractal graphics and then make it interact with the 3D shapes in my 3D animation project. So I’m starting to think that it may be better to have character/main subject in my animation, rather than just random shapes moving and morphing because the use of a main subject will make it easier to plan and structure the animation.

ABC Maya – Jetfire Model

I feel like I’ve learnt a lot about modelling in the ABC Maya sessions. Here’s my Jetfire model:

Modelling isn’t actually that hard, which is why I’m considering putting a character into my 3D project. The next step for the model above will be the texturing. However, for some reason I think the texturing will be much harder to perfect than the modelling.

I just realised that this translucent colouring looks quite cool and I think it would work well with the abstract shapes in my 3D project idea. So, I may well adjust the transparency of the objects as they pass each other in my animation.