This semester was a bit of a rough one, but fulfilling still in some degree. Overall I would say I definitely learned a lot about the basics of using 3d modeling software, especially in modeling and shaping 3d objects. I would say the first two projects we had is where I shone the most.
In the first project with creating a moving 3d model of a Piet Mondrian painting, I knew immediately how I wanted my piece to move and interact with itself, capitalizing on the aspect of time in motion. I think that the time I spent tweaking and perfecting the motion exhibited by the clockwork pieces of my object ( the hands and large yellow cube), really paid off to give my piece a unique and fascinating definition. It also probably helped that literally everyone else in the class chose to use the same artwork, whereas I was the only one to pick something else. It was very fulfilling to see the adjustments I would make in the graph editor translate into a realistic and fluid motion. I also think my camera work in all projects was very beneficial to make my work stand out and the Mondrian project was no exception.
I am also very proud of my second project with creating a chess set. I’ve done enough projects, both in school and at home, to understand that taking something simple and extrapolating it into something complex is a lot easier and more rewarding than taking a complex idea and shaving it down to something easier to understand or work with. So I applied the same methodology for that project too, making sure the basis of design for my pieces was simple enough at a ground level, and could literally be raised in various ways to provide depth, and a collection of distinct, yet cohesive language. Taking inspiration from the exercises was a great route for me that I tried to emulate in all of my projects.
In the latter half of the semester is where I think I fell off. A combination of work obligations and some sickness made it hard to make a project I was really proud of.
I think that the first half of the final project went pretty well for me all things considered. I used many assets provided in the example and tweaked them to be unique to my project, which was a great idea I thought in a practical sense. It also helped that I aimed to keep my landscape a simple one from the get-go, being a desert with a few raised dunes. Where other students chose to add other elements to their landscape I chose to let the ground do all the story telling. While my personal machine was not able to handle the processing power necessary to provide high quality renders of the landscape, the IPRs I could generate showed a very rich and intense landscape which turned out better than I imagined.
Making the character that would traverse the landscape was my downfall this class. I underestimated the time and energy needed to make a working rig, not even just a simple one. I tried 4 separate times just to create a working and unique worm to go across the desert, but each time my creation would break or pieces would fail to stick onto the model. In the end I felt utterly defeated by this portion of the project, and opted to highlight the strengths of the landscape while shoving the worm off to the side, in order to make a nice playblast to share with the class. Again my camera work I think helped to save my skin here, since I could manipulate the camera to act like a character itself with bobbing movements to simulate walking.
All in all I think I learned valuable 3d modeling skills that I can apply to multiple different software.
Third try this time. I decided to tone down the design factor and focus on the rigging specifically. I again went for joints, but instead of doing cluster handles, I tried parenting the joints to each controller so that everything would stick together and move fluidly along a motion path. However the same problems continued arising. Things exploded, things being left behind, and now the worm was not properly attaching to the path, instead of straight-on it was sliding along like a skateboarder grinding a railing.
What you will end up seeing are different perspectives taken from within the scene. I chose not to include any top-down rendered images because they did not turn out too well. In the second image you can sort of see the platform in the distance, but I am afraid that the lambert was too dark for it to show up. Even after playing with the image levels in photoshop, I could not figure out how to make it stand out without over-saturating the rest of the image. In the third image it looks like there was some weird rendering occurring at the center of the scene. Since that spot had a lot of edges and vertexes bundled in that area I think the software had some trouble interpreting how the light would bounce off in that condensed area. Otherwise I am pretty pleased with how the landscape turned out, but that is where my pleasure ends…
The first image shows the ‘skydome’ as the large grayish marble. For some reason it was not showing up properly in the view of Maya, but in an IPR it looked very nice. In the second picture the warping of the disc is clearly seen. I manipulated the vertex points on the disc surface to raise portions of it. Then using the tools in the sculpting section I was able to smooth, stretch and file down parts of the disc to make it more natural. Finally the last picture shows where the camera will be situated for the movie. Instead of creating a boat, (which I tried, but ultimately did not like what I was coming up with), I opted for a simpler castle tower that I would apply a yellowish lambert on to make it look like sandstone.
