Week Two-Part A

This week I have been studying Fluids in Maya, well actually it's just been today. And I believe it's been a very productive day. I did a short course on digital tutors (which I have a subscription) on the basics of fluids. I rather enjoyed it and hope to work more with them.

So I took a few renders of each phase. First up is the default fluid emitter which looks just like a line of smoke.

I thought it looked really cool.

then I merged 2 emitters together in 2 different colours.  They blended together as they collided, also looks pretty cool.

The next step was adding volume in 3D space, I kind of laughed when doing this as it looked like shaving cream. So I made it hot pink instead so it didn't look as funny.

It's so frothy, But these were just experiments so I could get a feel for all the  attributes.

Next was a noise filter, There is no emitter in this image just a plane inside the container.

I then added an emitter and the colours all swirled, I forgot to render that.

I learned how to use the visor editor with presets. I always wondered how it worked, and now I know.

This was the preset I used. Fluffy Smoke.

Then I made smoke collide with objects.

This was fun and very valuable to know for our upcoming production.

After I finished all 27 videos I decided to take a look at oceans. In our production there is a scene with a character fishing. I was originally going to have a plane used for water but decided to play with the Ocean tool and shader instead.

This is the setting I chose. The tutorial was all wispy and rough with foam. But I needed a gentle lake sort of look. As the character is no where near the ocean.

I played around some more and made a plane underneath with a sand texture I picked up on Creative Crash.

This was how it turned out, It needs more work.

But as you can see the sand underneath looks all motley and there is a nice calm feeling about it.

So this is what I have done today, But the week is young I am doing some cool designs for the environment which I shall post up later this week, They look pretty cute. But then again designing, modelling and texturing are my element. I just worry about my team mates who will be animating the film.

Here's hoping all looks good. ^_^

Til next time.... 

Week One

So as our first week comes to an end for Post Production, I feel I can say I'm not too happy with what we have accomplished. I was hoping to have more done. But I guess that's hard with me scrapping the story we had last year and trying to write up something that is exciting and visually pleasing. I've been stuck in a cross roads with just one part. My group seem to like what I have come up with but I feel it's just not enough. I need complete support with what we are doing. Any way I'll discuss more about that later.

First I shall show what I had done last semester for Pre Production. I tried to do as much as possible to have us ready for This semester but it ended up being way over my head.

These are our main characters, There was meant to be a whole story with two lands, one magical and one real. But I personally thought in the end it would be bothersome to create 2 worlds, and all that Jazz. I wanted to keep things to a minimum as I would be doing all the set and character modelling on my own.

Tammy is our heroin type character, She now has a new costume and hair cut which I will post up once it's textured.

Billy is our Protagonist, He is a tad smug and likes to get dirty. But then again what boy doesn't.

And Jimmy our Antagonist, he wasn't originally but this have turned out that way. Maybe he is just misunderstood.

And lastly Dragon, I personally named him Petey, because that's just how he looks to me. He is Billy's dragon, sort of like a secret weapon.

These are my original concepts, I more or less went with the last one and just embellished them more in Maya. I find my creativity flows best when I don't have a set design. All I had was an idea. And my idea came true. Isn't that what the creative arts is all about?

So all in all I have 4 characters which are being rigged by my team mates. I have completely unwrapped their Geometry and just need to texture them. 

 Original Concept      

Here is the first finished animatic from pre production. I wasn't happy with it, personally thought it was boring and linear, Not just the camera angles but they way the story flowed, So I decided to take it upon myself to do a rewrite.

And this is what I have so far for our animatic. My team mates like it, some timing needs to be sorted but I figured why not show how it will progress.

I know it doesn't seem like I have done much, and I personally feel like I could be doing more, but having the characters modeled at this time of our last semester is a good thing. The less time wasted the better.

Well that's me out for today. 

Til next time....

P.S. Those black dots are magic particles not flies ^_^