For my final project I decided to continue working on my midterm. This time it will consist of polygon objects since those seem to animate better and will be easier to work with in my case. The primary challenge will be creating the Helmet object once that is finished I will then create "heads" and spears. I will then create a simple animation with them and add some camera work as well as maybe trying to add some sort of particle "explosion" if I have the time. below is a picture of my storboard
I started out by recreating the helmet using a polygon sphere and stretching it and forming to the outline of a reference picture of a helmet.
I then selected the CVs and stretched them around so that the polygon faces covered the holes of the helmet and then deleted the faces to effectively poke out the holes of the helmet
I briefly played with the idea of adding a horse hair plume but concluded that I did not have time to add in one and have it look satisfactory. I also started to play with the bronze shader for the helmet
I then added a stretched sphere for the head and create their spears which consist of a very stretched sphere and a flattened and stretched cube.
I then worked on texturing added a bumpmap to the bronze texture to give it a more beaten bronze look and used the wood texture for the shaft of the spear the others are all images. I had also begun animating by this point.
Here I have begun working with the camera I tried to create a sense that an earthquake was going on by shaking the camera around erratically and having the characters jump up and down.
Here I have started to add in a particle effect to further emphasize the earthquake by having a sort of explosion.
It finally occurred to me to make the characters react when being hit. I feel this adds a lot to the overall animation.
Finally I added a sky background which is simply a half sphere with a sky texture.
Do to issues with rendering I only have a slightly older version which I was able to render out properly. The animation is the same it just lacks the background.
Overall I found the process of creating this animation to be an interesting experience. I was able to learn and develop my skills with Maya. I feel I accomplished the majority of my goals I was able to complete the stubbornly difficult helmets in a satisfying manner. I was rather surprised by how easily I was able to make the spears and have them look relatively good. I was even able to make the bronze texture come out quite well especially when fully rendered and uncompressed in anyway (the video above seems to have suffered from a drop in quality when I had to use another tool to actually save it as a video format).
As for the animation itself I feel that I accomplished everything I set out to do to the best of my ability (if I had unlimited time I would probably spend it all trying to tweak the timing of my animation.) I felt that the camera's jerking motions communicated the idea of an earthquake but I could not drag it out to a length that was both satisfyingly long and did not draw away from the rest of the animation. I originally thought of the project ultimately being in a Gif format so I tried to keep it relatively short so that a viewer could see the entire thing and get a sense of a story from it at the same time.
I spent a good deal of time trying to get the particle explosion to work properly but could not reasonably test it since it always seemed to change whenever it ran on repeat. I also experienced issues with rendering after I added in the half sphere sky. It might just be that I need to adjust the lighting but unfortunately I have run out of time to really troubleshoot the issue. I also noticed that something had gone wrong with the camera even though it looked fine in the prerender. Overall I am happy with the way that my project turned out and enjoyed creating.
Here is the result of me working with a simple LowMan rig. I managed to create a simple animation of him walking and he ended up hunched forward so I made him flap his arm as though he was attempting to fly.
Here I tried to create animation of a Roman Manipular legion engaging an enemy where the Hastati engage first followed by the Principes then finally the Triarii. I had a little bit of trouble with moving them as a group since it seemed to override key-frames for the individual parts but overall it came out just fine.
My intended Midterm project is to create a very simple animation of two "balls" with Greek style helmets and have them bounce into view on the screen and maybe have some text show up.
I started out exploring a number of different options and ideas including whether or not to bother with the horsehair plume which was later dropped due to time constraints.
Here I am exploring using a curve and the revolve tool where I would only have it revolve partially around to leave a gap for the face holes.
Here I experimented with a half sphere and found the picture which I used to mold my helmet but could not get it to work properly.
Here my project is getting fairly far along but this also where I discovered a number of flaws with what I had created especially in regards to the trim tool.
After a great deal of difficulty I was able to make a semblance of an ancient Greek helmet to use as a prop for my comic. Unfortunately when I started to add animation Maya began crashing nonstop hopefully I can trouble shoot this in the future so that I can expand on my project. I used the picture in the background as a template to make my helmets.
I learned a great deal while creating this project and I believe that I may be able to update it and get it to work more properly in the future. I was successful in realizing a basic shape of what I had hoped my project would be. I think that I did a great deal of important failing and thus learning I think that I will be able to more competently use the tools and assets that Maya provides. I discover that it can be extremely difficult to carve a hole into a NURBS object but I do think I have learned a good deal more about the Trim tool.
