3D Modeling

Self Assessment of Work

December 12, 2021abk5821Leave a comment

During this semester, I felt like I put out varied quality of work. Some were better than others. I do believe I tried my best given the circumstances that befell me this semester involving Maya and my projects. It was not easy while my software was fighting me to put out the work that I had wanted to. I do feel like at many points, I took on more than I could chew and I wasn’t experienced enough to pull off the project to the caliber I wanted to.

I feel like my textures for my models in project two were some of my best work. I really loved how they came out, and how realistic they looked. I also feel my best modeling was in project two. My teacups, saucer, and teapot looked so good, and I felt very proud when I finished modeling them. It was hard. The software fought me again every step of the way, but it was very rewarding.

I feel like my challenge this semester was with anything animation oriented. My animation either happened too fast, too slow, too clunky, or unrealistically. And it was very frustrating to fix. I didn’t know how to at some points honestly. I can see myself doing small, noninvasive animations, but I can’t really see myself doing complex character or environment animations or rigging in the future.

For my favorite project, I think it’s project two. I think it turned out the best, and the rendered images are some of my favorites from this semester. I felt the dual color ceramic teapot, teacup and saucer turned out super well. I also think the image map, and blank planes I added in for the background added to the image. I know it was slightly cheating, but I think it added something it was missing.

I think project three brought me the most challenge. I just couldn’t get that environment right and it was causing all kinds of problems on my laptop. It was awful. I ended up having to step away from the project often because it was becoming so incredibly frustrating. And even when I tried, I couldn’t seem to find a way to fix it. It was so frustrating.

The project that failed (somewhat) but gave me an opportunity to learn, was the rig. In the rigging project, I didn’t necessarily learn something new about rigging, but I learned when to say something’s not going to work, and move on instead of endlessly trying to fix something that may not be fixable. The bend rigged bunny just wasn’t working, even when I tried all the solutions I knew of. So I eventually decided to remove her from my project. I did document that she was created, though.

I want to continue modeling. I am a cosplayer, and I learned from working in the Maker Space, you can fabricate some pretty amazing pieces. I want to model some props for my costumes and print them out in parts.

3D Modeling: Project 04 Final:

December 12, 2021abk5821Leave a comment

For the synthesis of this project, I started with referencing the rigs into the master scene. This was where the problems began. The main problem was the rigs came in way too small. They were about the size of a pin in relation to the scene. So in the original rigged documents we scaled them up. To my dismay, whenever I made a change to the original rigged document, the rigs themselves would disappear. Somehow the reference wasn’t working properly. The only rig that would stay correct in the document after re-referencing was the squash deformer rig, so I decided to work with that rig.

I have a playblast of the final animation. It didn’t turn out how I wanted to at all, but my computer was running out of memory for the project and it was causing my computer to chug. I decided to compromise as I was running out of time. I feel that this project ended as more of a work in progress than anything else.

I feel that some of the things I like about this animation are the bunny’s rotating turns as she looks around. I don’t like how the bounce’s squash and stretch turned out. And somewhat the bounce too. Also the slowness of the bunny was not optimal for me as well, and she runs off screen too fast at the end. If I could go back and fix these things, I’d definitely try to.

Despite trying very hard with the background, this is how it came out. It looks very odd, but it was proving hard to fix. The lower hanging fruit was to just have a background, so I left it as is.

Again you have that weird little spot with the tree panorama. I didn’t know what was causing it, nor how to fix it sadly. I even tried to mess with it in the UV editor, but I think it was a problem with the panorama itself. I definitely do not think this is my best work, but I feel that I tried my absolute best with it.

3D Modeling: Project 4 Iteration;

December 12, 2021abk5821Leave a comment

For the iteration of my rig and model, I decided to do two different rigs at once. One did not work out, but I have a playblast of the rig in action. It kept disappearing and scaling down during referencing, and I could not fix it. So I ended up removing her from the document and calling it a day. It was taking up too much of my time to try and diagnose what was failing and I had tried all known solutions with my limited knowledge of rigs. So the rig that did not make it into the animation, was the bend Space Bunny rig.

This is the bend deformer rigged bunny after frozen transformations, delete History, and simplification.

This is the squash deformer rig after frozen transformations, addition of a texture, delete history, and simplification.

I don’t really have any iteration photos as I was just struggling to get through the project, but I do have two playblasts of the bunnies rigs in action while they were in their iterative stages.

Here is the bend deformer rig.

The right side is more of what I was going for with the motion of the rig. It’s a little faster, and more energetic. Space Bunny is supposed to be a regular baby bunny who is just pretending she is this space alien that is on a hunt for something. So I wanted her movements to be energetic and spry.

The squash rig is definitely what I was going for motion wise, although in the final animation it kind of gets lost. Only one rig managed to work, and I’m really sad that I wasn’t able to get the Bend rig to be viable despite trying a bunch of stuff to fix it. But the lower hanging fruit was to just get the project done, and not to worry too much about things that I couldn’t change.

Works Cited:

Cromar, William. “possibleWorlds02”. newMedia Wiki. 2020. http://newmediawiki.pbworks.com/w/page/127731360/entitiesPossibleWorld02 Accessed November 19th, 2021.

3D Modeling: Project 4 Concept;

December 12, 2021December 12, 2021abk5821Leave a comment

For the concept of this rig, I had wanted to do a compound rig, but I had run into a lot of trouble trying to get it to work properly. I ended up separating the rigs, but something went array with the bend rig bunny, and her rig would not reference correctly into the master scene. So I ended up scrapping the bend rig bunny and focusing my attention on the squash deformer rig bunny. I started out with conceptual art and an orthographic drawing that I ended up simplifying as I worked in Maya on the modeling of the rig.

This was the first image of Space Bunny. She ended up becoming a regular bunny in the animation. I wanted to do a night scene and a more complex animation, but I ran into a lot of stumbling blocks with my software and my computer. So, I couldn’t create the project to how I wanted it to be.

This is the back and front orthographic drawing of Space Bunny. She was originally going to have stars on her fur, but I ran out of time to create that texture. Overall, I had a lot of trouble with this project that cause me to lose time.

Works Cited:

Cromar, William. “possibleWorld02”. newMedia Wiki. 2020. http://newmediawiki.pbworks.com/w/page/127731360/entitiesPossibleWorld02 Accessed November 19th, 2021.

3D Modeling; Project 4 Exercises

December 5, 2021abk5821Leave a comment

For my rig, I chose to experiment with the rigs created during the creation of my project 4 rigs. I made two different rigs, and they work in two different ways. I have a bunny and each bunny is in two different files. One bunny her ears move, and the other she squashes and stretches.

This is the squash deformer rig. It is a little clunky so I may replace it with a different type of rig for the final project.

This is the bend rig.

These rigs were created in two separate documents. The main difference is how the bunny’s ears are made. In the bend rig, they are separate from the body. in the squash rig, they are connected to the body using a boolean union. They have similar controller set ups, besides the ears being separate from their controller groups. They’re connected to the main controller but they’re not attached to the body. The squash rig is not doing exactly what I wanted, but it’s okay for now. I may do a lattice rig and see if that works better. I’m not sure. I don’t want to have the ears squashing too much along with the bunny, so to be able to fix that may be something I have to work on more.

For modeling classification. My rig is definitely a soft modeled rig. The bunny is squishy and is meant to be smooth instead of jagged.

Works Cited.

Cromar, William. “entitiesThreeKindsofRig”. newMedia Wiki. 2020. http://newmediawiki.pbworks.com/w/page/127713090/entitiesThreeKindsOfRig Accessed November 5th, 2021.

Cromar, William. “entitiesClassification”. newMedia Wiki. 2020. http://newmediawiki.pbworks.com/w/page/127731162/entitiesClassification#Classificationorganicvshardsurfacemodeling Accessed December 5th, 2021.

3D Modeling; Project 3 Final

December 5, 2021abk5821Leave a comment

After all of the problems during the iteration of my project, I was finally able to synthesize something I somewhat liked. I was able to get two layered ground planes, a mountainous panorama around the scene, and a really awesome skydome and all able to work on my device. I still am not fully happy with it, and I probably won’t be fully happy until the trees are able to work and are successfully implemented. I think, at the moment, that’s one of the most frustrating things for me.

Overall the process of making this project had one stumbling block after another as Maya attempted to make a monkey outta me with it’s shenanigans. I had problem with the lighting, panoramas, and ground planes. Pretty much every step of this scene was fighting me. But I learned more than I thought I would about how UV mapping works in both the UV-Editor and by using the attribute box. I think if I had chosen an easier project, I wouldn’t have learned those complex steps. My rig is a similar situation. I’ve learned how to do complex things with rigs that if I didn’t do a complex project, I don’t think I would have learnt.

this is the ending environment. My apologies for it being a little dark. I hope for the final environment and rig image, to have much more powerful lighting.

Basically, the whole scene is made on a very large scale. The ground planes have both a image map and a bump map on them. That way they are more 3D instead of just being a flat image on a 3D flat plane. Also they are slightly warped so that the ground doesn’t look flat. The panorama is of a mountain. It also is an image plane on an aiLambert instead of an aiStandard material. It was the only way I could get it to work. The sky is an Arnold Skydome light with a sky equirectangular map applied. And it has directional lighting on the scene at a low intensity due to my computer’s processing. Overall this was a very frustrating but rewarding project to create and I hope I can improve it in time for the rigged animation.

Works Cited:

Cromar, William. “environmentsPossibleWorld01”. newMedia Wiki. 2020. http://newmediawiki.pbworks.com/w/page/127695491/environmentsPossibleWorld01 Accessed November 5th, 2021.

3D Modeling; Project 3 Iteration

December 5, 2021abk5821Leave a comment

For the iteration of this project. I started out in a night scene. I started with two different images. One of a moon, and another of a equirectangular nights sky from NASA’s site. I then added the moon over top the equirectangular sky in Photoshop, and applied it to the sky dome.

This is what the background looked like at first It’s just the moon graphed onto the image itself.

I then tried to add panoramas in, and it didn’t really work out. Here’s where my problems mainly started. The UV mapping was just not working, and the images wouldn’t show up. We found a solution by using an aiLambert Arnold texture and adding the real image to the image area, and then adding an alpha channel to the opacity map

I went through 3 panoramas before finding the one I settled on.

Here are failures 1 and two.

Failure 1

Edited Original

Alpha Channel

Failure 2

Edited Original

Alpha Channel

And then I started to add in the grass and meadow planes and their corresponding bump maps. I had a bit of a problem getting the grass to be seamless, but once I messed with the UV mapping in the attribute box, I got to get the plain grass and meadow grass to look quite nice.

Here are the images for the bump maps and regular images:

Regular Grass:

Original:

Bump Image:

Meadow Grass:

Original:

Bump Image:

I don’t really have any images of this in between stages since my computer would barely let me keep the scene open for me to render it. So I don’t really have many iteration images. I hope the images of the asset creation will suffice.

OH. I almost forgot. the tree assets. These I’m still working on and I hope to have working by the final, but there is a tree alpha channel, and a tree panorama that I had tried and failed to integrate into the scene.

Tree Panorama:

Original:

Alpha Channel:

And also here are the rest of the day assets:

Sky

Background Panorama

Original:

Alpha Channel:

The grass and meadow grass stayed the same and the some of the harsh spot lighting and directional lighting were removed. So the scene was not exactly how I wanted it, but it works.

Works Cited:

Cromar, William. “environmentsPossibleWorld01”. newMedia Wiki. 2020. http://newmediawiki.pbworks.com/w/page/127695491/environmentsPossibleWorld01 Accessed November 5th, 2021.

3D Modeling; Project 3 Concept

December 5, 2021December 5, 2021abk5821Leave a comment

This environment started as a night environment with a small bunny pretending to be a space alien. I ended up running into a bunch of problems trying to synthesize that, so we’ll start at the concept and then go through each stumbling step methodically until the final.

The concept art started as a meadow at night, with layered ground planes, tree panoramas, a mountain panorama and a nights sky skydome.

Here is the first image of the layered environment and the bunny. I have a more refined sketch that I will link next. It has the cameras in it as well. It has two layers of grass, a tree panorama, and a mountain panorama. At the farthest curve, is the skydome light. It was supposed to be a nights sky, but the lighting was too dark and I had to add too many bright lights in order for the scene to be visible.

So this is the shot design. it goes into a bit more detail, such as where the cameras were, the bunnies jumping pattern, where the carrot is. And what cameras are stationary and which were moving. Also the different panoramas and grass planes.

I decided to remove the nighttime scene at the middle of the project, due to the fact that the heavy duty lights, and amount of rendering I had to do with the scene. It was causing my computer to overheat, and I decided that the lower hanging fruit would be just to get the scene done, rather than trying to get something that’s the ideal done, but failing.

After realizing that, I started to gather assets, and synthesize the scene in Maya. Which was an animal in itself. I had to switch types of assets. I was using silhouetting at first since it was a night scene, but once I switched to a day scene, I had to change the way I was working and the assets I had. I had to scrap the assets that I had, and find more. Once they were found, I could finally get moving with the iteration.

This is Space Bunny and some of the environment plans. Along with Space Carrot.

Some orthographic drawings of Space Bunny.

Works Cited:

Cromar, William. “environmentsPossibleWorld01”. newMedia Wiki. 2020. http://newmediawiki.pbworks.com/w/page/127695491/environmentsPossibleWorld01 Accessed November 5th, 2021.

3D Modeling; Project 3 Exercises

November 27, 2021abk5821Leave a comment

For this set of exercises, I was had a hard time mastering the concepts. I especially struggled on the environment. First was the project folder. I had a mostly easy time with this as it was just shot design, and creating the basics for the animation such as a storyboard, dope sheet, and the project management document. I also did concept work so I could plan my environment accordingly. My main character is a baby bunny called Space Bunny. Her story is she likes to play pretend that she’s in space at night when the sky is slowly darkening, and she makes up a story that she is the only one that can find and eat the elusive Space Carrot.

Here is Space Bunny and in the corner of the top image, you can see the Space Carrot. One is just concept art, and the other is a front and back orthographic view. She’s also not a regular fuzzy bunny, she’s kinda squishy like a bouncing ball.

here is the brainstorming post for Space Bunny and the environment she’d be in.

Here is the shot design. You can see the various layers in the environment and the cameras that pan and are the cameras that are stationary. You can also see the bounce trajectory of Space Bunny.

Storyboard Sheet 1 see above.

Storyboard Sheet 2 see above.

Dope Sheet for Space Bunny Production (see above):

Project 3 and 4 Project Plan:

Next is Bitmaps and Bump Maps. I had a lot of trouble with this exercise, but once i figured out the process it was pretty smooth sailing. I had a lot of trouble with the bump maps and image maps due to the UV editor. It’s something that I definitely need to work more with and master.

Here is the final rendered image:

It didn’t turn out as good as I wanted it to, but I tried my best.The front far left sphere is supposed to be rounded, but it didn’t end up that way and I’m honestly unsure why.

For the environment, I decided to use my own environment to make things slightly faster for the final project. But I didn’t realize how difficult a night scene would be. I have a render of it, but it’s dark due to my computer being unable to render higher values of lighting. There was also an issue with the panorama, that still seems to be unresolved. I’m not sure how to fix it, but I’m sure there’s a way to.

Works Cited:

Cromar, William “enviornmentsProductionFolder”. newMedia Wiki. 2020. http://newmediawiki.pbworks.com/w/page/127588334/environmentsProductionFolder Accessed October 27th, 2021.

Cromar, William. “environmentsThreeKindsofMap”. newMedia Wiki. 2020. http://newmediawiki.pbworks.com/w/page/127651019/environmentsThreeKindsOfMap#Threekindsofmap Accessed October 30th, 2021.

Cromar, William. “environmentsWorldBuilding”. newMedia Wiki. 2020. http://newmediawiki.pbworks.com/w/page/127591247/environmentsWorldBuilding#Worldbuilding Accessed Novembe 7th, 2021.

3D Modeling: Project 4 References

November 14, 2021abk5821Leave a comment

parallelUniverses:

In these parallel universe readings, I learned many interesting things. I will also say, there was quite a lot of link rot and videos that were unavailable. I will try my best to point out where they were. In Chapter 6, or Kinematics, I found the whole idea of multi-photo motion captures being recreated as 3D Modeling experiments by Peter Jansen fascinating. I also knew of many things in this reading. Mainly the ancient roman bronze sculpture and Muybridge from my previous classes. Also, the video from this reading that was unavailable was Cage’s composition video game.

For Puppet As Metaphor, I found the fact that there are so many cultures that use Marionettes. Also that marionettes are so ingrained that they are the namesake of Pixar’s in house software. I loved how pretty the Japanese marionettes were, but the more modern versions were also very unique and cool. I can see how it connects to 3D modeling, since rigging is basically creating a system similar to how a marionette works. For videos unavailable in this article, Figure 5, Figure 10, Figure 11, Figure 16, and Figures 33 through 35 were the ones that were taken down or removed.

DIY had a lot of links, and I did click through almost every one. A lot of them lead to the same DIY wikipedia post. I did click through each one and a lot of them were very fun and interesting. I really liked playing around with the Jackson Pollock game. It was very fun to play with it. Also I was interested to hear that open source software came out of the Arts and Crafts/DIY culture movement. Open source software, like Blender and Ren’Py are very helpful when creating content on a low budget. Sometimes you don’t even need to sacrifice quality for that either.

Linked-In-Learning:

Linked in Learning I was a little confused as the names for the Graph Editor video and the Dope Editor video are actually mislabeled. Once I figured that out, I was okay, though. I watched through them all, and I think the most important one for me (since I am doing a bounce) would be the visualizing your animation. I think the editable motion path is going to be key for my animation. I also feel like the ghosting will be a good visualization technique too. Another good thing I think I can work with is a spline path animation.

Keep-It-Simple:

This article reminded me of the importance of not trying to achieve perfection. Learning as you create is important. Perfection out of the gate is impossible. I struggle a lot with trying to overachieve and it often undermines me, or causes me to look at the mountain of work that has piled up for myself and freeze in terror. I don’t know how I can get it all done. Reading this article reminded me that things aren’t necessarily going to be perfect on your first try. Using what you know and learning along the way is better than trying to perfect your skills before you even begin.

Nothing will get created if you don’t create something in the first place. I think that’s something every artist needs to hear at some point in their lives. I remember often getting the advice to just start something and thinking, “But I can’t draw (insert subject here) well yet. I need to be perfect before i begin.”. That fear of being imperfect would stop many a project from being started. I’ve only just begun to overcome that fear. Fear of failure can be the artists greatest enemy.

Arielle Kearns Illustrations

Art is Life.

3D Modeling

Self Assessment of Work

3D Modeling: Project 04 Final:

3D Modeling: Project 4 Iteration;

3D Modeling: Project 4 Concept;

3D Modeling; Project 4 Exercises

3D Modeling; Project 3 Final

3D Modeling; Project 3 Iteration

3D Modeling; Project 3 Concept

3D Modeling; Project 3 Exercises

3D Modeling: Project 4 References

parallelUniverses:

Linked-In-Learning:

Keep-It-Simple: