Sluggy Rigging

Its took a while, but I've finally got the rigging done for the slug's body. he can now slug along happily when the times. Although his mouth can't move and he can't blink yet.

Paint effects and more progress!

Just posting a few renders I've made over the last few days which I forgot to upload earlier. But first, an update on the environment for my animation project:

This render of a cherry tree was made a few days ago when I was trying out the tree paint effects:

Another paint effects render using the galaxy brushes:

Some cheeseburgers.. mmmm:

Laser paint effects:

A quick render test of the plant pot model for my animation project:

Another render test from a few days ago of the slug character before the eyes were added:

A test render of the skyscraper/city paint brush effects:

Environment Render Test

I've spend part of today getting started on the environment that will contain the plant pot and slug.

I was originally going to make the character a worm, but switched it to a slug instead. Slugs are a little easier to characterize than a worm in my opinion, since they have two pointy eyes which can be helpful when showing emotion, whereas a worm just has, well nothing except a mouth.

Here is a render of the environment so far:

A new year! A new project!

Its been a while. I've just started back on the third and final year of my course and began a new animation project.

Right now I have a basic idea for an animation involving a worm and a plant pot full of soil. The worm will play around with the pot and investigate it, like a child with a new toy, in the back garden of a house in an undisclosed location.

My rough timetable for production so far is something like:
6th October - quick sketch of ideas in the form of storyboards

9th - 10th October - first draft of the chosen idea in the form of a more refined storyboard

11th - 15th October - Start working on the worm character model in Maya 2012.

16th - 18th October - Render a few animation test scenes of the worm and refine the model and fix any problems with its rig (if any)

19th - 25th October - Work on the exterior environment in which the worm and plant pot will be situated.

26th - 28th October - Create the plant pot model

29th October - 6th November - Collect and Create any textures that will be needed for the animation/scene

7th - 13th November - Texture worm character, plant pot and environment

14th - 20th November - Render tests and texture adjustment. This will basically be me trying to sort out any messy/bad textures. :p

21st - 27th November - Addition of soil and dust particles. These would be used for when the worm burrows out of the ground at the start of the scene and when the plant pot gets knocked over by the worm, causing the soil to flow/fall out of it.

28th - 4th December - Another week for adjustments and fixing any problems with the scene.

5th December and onwards - Post production, tweaking and refinement. This also leaves plenty of time to add any extra detail if needed or fix anything that comes up in the final render of the animation.


I already have a few sketches made of my initial ideas, so you can expect to see those scanned and uploaded here sometime this weekend. I've made set the timetable realistically, giving plenty of time for each stage of the process, but hopefully I can stay a little ahead of it to give me some breathing room for anything bad that might happen during the final render, like last year. :)

Flash Animation

Last but not least, here is the flash animation storyboard, each frame lasts for about 2 seconds:

Flash Animation

Last but not least, here is the flash animation storyboard, each frame lasts for about 2 seconds:

Textures, Textures and more Textures!

All of the textures used in the lamp scene were created by me, except for one, which was the door texture, which i found on google (forgot the link), but I applied my own wood grain texture over the top of it and made it much darker than it originally was. The metal parts of the original were also removed and changed to wood instead.

Anyway, heres the textures listed in no particular order, a little description can be found in the caption beneath each of them:

Door texture

Wooden skirting board and shelf texture

Wall texture

Window texture - this never made it into the final scene

Sofa texture - basically, just a black texture with some noise on it

Wall socket

Carpet Texture - A red texture with noise applied to it.

Light switch

Box texture with a postage label on the side of it

A variation of the previous box texture, without the postage label on it

Vertical blinds texture

Another variation of the box textures. This one was for the sealed boxes.

UV Template for the second box texture (directly above this one)

UV template for brown table next to the sofa, which ended up with a brown blinn effect instead.

The next few textures might look a bit weird, but they are actually normal maps. Normal maps are used by certain effects in Maya (and in a lot of modern games) to give objects the appearance of bumps, grooves or any kind of fine detail that would take way too much time model by hand (i.e. the individual grains and knots in wood). These textures can be made easily in photoshop with a plugin called NVidia Normal Map Filter, which can generate normal maps for any kind of image you wish.

Door normal map texture

Carpet normal map - I removed this from the scene, because it made the carpet look more like red metal

Box normal map - this was for the box with a postage label on the side.

And thats all of them. Enjoy!

Textures, Textures and more Textures!

All of the textures used in the lamp scene were created by me, except for one, which was the door texture, which i found on google (forgot the link), but I applied my own wood grain texture over the top of it and made it much darker than it originally was. The metal parts of the original were also removed and changed to wood instead.

Anyway, heres the textures listed in no particular order, a little description can be found in the caption beneath each of them:

Door texture

Wooden skirting board and shelf texture

Wall texture

Window texture - this never made it into the final scene

Sofa texture - basically, just a black texture with some noise on it

Wall socket

Carpet Texture - A red texture with noise applied to it.

Light switch

Box texture with a postage label on the side of it

A variation of the previous box texture, without the postage label on it

Vertical blinds texture

Another variation of the box textures. This one was for the sealed boxes.

UV Template for the second box texture (directly above this one)

UV template for brown table next to the sofa, which ended up with a brown blinn effect instead.

The next few textures might look a bit weird, but they are actually normal maps. Normal maps are used by certain effects in Maya (and in a lot of modern games) to give objects the appearance of bumps, grooves or any kind of fine detail that would take way too much time model by hand (i.e. the individual grains and knots in wood). These textures can be made easily in photoshop with a plugin called NVidia Normal Map Filter, which can generate normal maps for any kind of image you wish.

Door normal map texture

Carpet normal map - I removed this from the scene, because it made the carpet look more like red metal

Box normal map - this was for the box with a postage label on the side.

And thats all of them. Enjoy!

Small Things

So, after spending the last 4 hours figuring how to compress a 2.2gb AVI video down to something more realistic, I've done it!

The tool I used was called Oxelon media converter (free to use), which allowed not only me not only shrink the file down to 9mb (yeah seriously) and keep a decent amount of quality, but convert it to MOV format too. I always wondered how they did those 100mb HD movie trailers that were over two times longer than my animation, but now I know. =D

Also, since it was small enough to upload to youtube, heres the finished version:

Small Things

So, after spending the last 4 hours figuring how to compress a 2.2gb AVI video down to something more realistic, I've done it!

The tool I used was called Oxelon media converter (free to use), which allowed not only me not only shrink the file down to 9mb (yeah seriously) and keep a decent amount of quality, but convert it to MOV format too. I always wondered how they did those 100mb HD movie trailers that were over two times longer than my animation, but now I know. =D

Also, since it was small enough to upload to youtube, heres the finished version:

Close to finishing!

I'm almost done with the lamp animation, which is around 27 seconds long at the moment. I've also managed to improve the lighting and shadowing quite a lot, in comparison to the last few posts. Heres the latest single-frame render from just before the lamp approaches the box next to the brown table, before climbing onto it to reach the vase.

Larger Version: http://tinyurl.com/665enzo

Close to finishing!

I'm almost done with the lamp animation, which is around 27 seconds long at the moment. I've also managed to improve the lighting and shadowing quite a lot, in comparison to the last few posts. Heres the latest single-frame render from just before the lamp approaches the box next to the brown table, before climbing onto it to reach the vase.

Larger Version: http://tinyurl.com/665enzo

Improved coffee table

I've finally fixed the reflection problem on the glass table:

larger Image: http://tinyurl.com/2ezv7nw

 The reflection of the boxes get rendered on it now. The next problem is that the glass isn't letting any light pass through it and casting a dark shadow, but at least it doesn't look as lame as before. :)

Improved coffee table

I've finally fixed the reflection problem on the glass table:

larger Image: http://tinyurl.com/2ezv7nw

 The reflection of the boxes get rendered on it now. The next problem is that the glass isn't letting any light pass through it and casting a dark shadow, but at least it doesn't look as lame as before. :)

First test clip

Last night I did a short 4sec render of the lamp looking around the box its sitting inside of, in draft quality, just to see how it turned out. The results were good, although I had to export it as an image sequence, since the mental ray renderer doesn't have any kind of video format option (which I spent over an hour finding out).

I used Adobe After Effects CS5 (trial) to create a video out of all the rendered images Maya had created, which was suprisingly easy to do. Here's the tutorial I used to figure it out: http://www.vtc.com/products/AdobeAfterEffectsCS3/Footage/69370

And finally, the test clip of the lamp having a quick look around its box:

First test clip

Last night I did a short 4sec render of the lamp looking around the box its sitting inside of, in draft quality, just to see how it turned out. The results were good, although I had to export it as an image sequence, since the mental ray renderer doesn't have any kind of video format option (which I spent over an hour finding out).

I used Adobe After Effects CS5 (trial) to create a video out of all the rendered images Maya had created, which was suprisingly easy to do. Here's the tutorial I used to figure it out: http://www.vtc.com/products/AdobeAfterEffectsCS3/Footage/69370

And finally, the test clip of the lamp having a quick look around its box:

The one thing you can't live without

A TV! The scene of the lamp animation now has a television and a stand/unit to go with it. The TV unit isn't textured yet and still needs something to fill it, like a DVD player or something. Heres a render of it so far:

Larger version: http://tinyurl.com/39ooncx

You might of noticed the walls have a texture as well and that there is a skirting board around the edge to break up the wall to floor transition a bit. At the moment though, I'm finishing off the basics so I can get to work on the actual lamp animation and come back later to finish off the little extras and minor stuff.

The one thing you can't live without

A TV! The scene of the lamp animation now has a television and a stand/unit to go with it. The TV unit isn't textured yet and still needs something to fill it, like a DVD player or something. Heres a render of it so far:

Larger version: http://tinyurl.com/39ooncx

You might of noticed the walls have a texture as well and that there is a skirting board around the edge to break up the wall to floor transition a bit. At the moment though, I'm finishing off the basics so I can get to work on the actual lamp animation and come back later to finish off the little extras and minor stuff.