Project 4

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 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.