Wednesday 17 March 2010

Blog problems

In the blog post called "Progress Update: Modelling the Dog" there has been problems. It was fine in the "New Post" section but when it is published onto the blog gaps appear. I could not solve this, sorry hope you can understand it.

Final Opinion

From this assignment, I am pleased with the modelling and the rigging of my dog, but I would like to try and improve the animation in my spare time.
I really enjoyed going through the experience of modelling and rigging a character especially as it is the first time that I have ever properly completed a task using these methods. I also enjoyed designing my dog and thinking about what film I would like to use and insert the dog into.
Overall, this has been one of my favourite assignments as I feel that I have learnt a lot about creating characters which I would like to keep doing in my spare-time. I also think that it was very challenging as a lot of it was new to me and because it was at the same time as a very difficult group assignment.

Monday 15 March 2010

Compositing Problems

Today I set out to put my animation together by doing the compositing and updating my blog. When I tried this process I experienced a problem with the rendered scenes from Maya they would not seem to fill in the gaps planned e.g. so the sequences of the dog moving did not last as long as they were made to in Maya. After many hours of trying to sort this out and looking things up on the internet I accidently imported one of the sequences again. When I was about to delete the clip I noticed that it was longer than the earlier version! PHEW! what a relief!

Shining the 2nd

I found this when I was searching for The Shining on YouTube and I couldn't stop myself from putting it on here. Interestingly in this the plot and the building are very close to the actual film.

Learnt a Lot

In this assignment I have learned many new things in Maya. For example My dog (Damon) is the first model that I have created myself in Maya. In the past I have always animated with a model that I have been given. I also learned a lot when rigging my character. At the start of the assignment I didn't know anything about rigging but I used various tutorials that I found on YouTube, websites or in books to build my knowledge.
Other firsts on this assignment are:

Maya Live
More sophisticated texturing

Toy Story

I watched some of Toy Story to observe the movements of the dog "scud". I was very impressed with the way that the animators had created expressive facial gestures. Also the co-ordination of the legs when Scud was chasing the toys gave a great feeling of speed. The close up shots of the face were very impactful. I will try to include some of these ellements in my work.

Schedulue







Here are is my schedule. Sorry if it is difficult to see. If it is I recommend looking at them in three separate parts and zooming in on the page.