Week 10 - Relationship Constraints

This week we looked at object relationships and how they can be used to link objects together.

Point constraints

These are a good way to keep a certain distance between objects or to get one object to follow another without animating both. If an object is constrained to two different objects it will calculate the difference between them (see image).

Aim Constraints

I think these types of constraints are the ones I will be using most in my animation if I decide to use them. These allow and object to track another objects movement and 'look' at that object. I set up a quick system where one sphere is following a motion path and the cylinder is tracking that sphere.

One way I will most likely use this is for camera tracking on moving objects, a couple of my scenes in my animation require the camera to track a ships movement, this is a perfect way to do just that.

Week 9 - Rigging And Skinning

This week we learnt how to rig models with skeletons and manipulate them using joints.

First step was to make the joints of the skeleton and align them with the hand, this is so they can be manipulated and controlled later









After this I used the interactive bind tool to make sure that no volume was extended more than required.



After this all that needed to be done waws to bind the skeleton to the model and then manipulate the joints. The main problem I faced during this was the model losing shape during joint manipulation, i think this was mainly due to me not editing the bind heat maps very well. I may use this technique in my x-wing model for the animation of the wings but we will see when the time comes.

Week 8 - Motion Pathing

Motion pathing is a great way for objects to follow a pr-set path or for use a a make shift camera dolly.

This week we learnt about motion pathing by making our models follow a pre-drawn path. One of the difficulties I found with this tool was that you had to make very smooth lines in order for the movement to look realistic. Also it is hard to change the objects rotation and scale mid way through the path as this stops the animation. I tried adding a keyframe for the U value of the motion path but this didn't seem to change the objects position.

A major problem that I had with motion pathing was that every time I tried to edit the motion path after an object was attacked to it, Maya crashed, it seems like this is a problem with this version of Maya but luckily there was a fix for it by changing the evaluation type to DG from parallel then changing it back when you are done editing the path.

Week 8 - Bouncing ball Animation

This week we learnt about keyframing and animation.

In this practical we were tasked with creating a bouncing ball animation using a schematic as reference. This was easier than I thought it would be and taught me some useful techniques when creating my star wars animation such as key framing and how to use the graph to manipulate certain aspects of the object.

Downfalls/Useful Tools

One of the hard things about this task was keeping the objects shape throughout each frame when I changed the shape in 2 frames after it seemed to change the shape of the first frame too. To fix this I found that the graph editor was very useful, It helps give a smooth animation and helps to visualise what the actual animation is doing.

Week 7 - Skydome

This week we learnt about lighting and camera movements as well as how to add detail lto our scene using skydomes.

Skydome

For this weeks practical we had to create a skydome. This is basically the sky for your scene and is created by adding a texture to a dome.

This is a really useful tool for adding depth to your scene and making it feel more real rather than having no background. I will be using this technique when I come to make my animation and will replaye the clouds with a space texture.


One problem I had when creating this was that when I imported the picture onto the material, it also imported it onto the transparency layer as well as the colour layer. This meant that my dome was transparent. To fix this i had to break the connection between the material and the transparency layer in the hypershade window.

Blog/model Reviews

Blog 1

http://rayhan3dmodellingandanimation.blogspot.co.uk/

One good thing about Rayhans blog is that it is very detailed and clear to understand, new techniques are highlighted in bold like in my blog. The main problem I have found with his blog is that although the sections for the blog are split into each week, there tends to be too much all in one post, it may have been easier and clearer for other people to find what they are looking for if he split it up into separate posts for each section e.g. 1 post for a practical and another for making the model, post a new enrty as you go through each section. Saying this, I like how Rayhan has each of the class practicals shown step by step where as mine just shows the finished product at the end and a breakdown of what I learned, looking back it may have been better to show the process of each practical and reviewing it as I went along.

The models themselves were good detail and fit his schematics well, the only thing I would have said is that it might have been better if he included a picture of the finished model at the end rather than just the modelling process. I like the way he has reviewed his models at the end of the blog in a clear bullet point list, I decided to review my models as I was talking about them but it might have been easier or clearer to discuss them in a list at the end.

Blog 2

http://danieltsang435.blogspot.co.uk/

I like how Daniels posts are split into sections as he was working on each part, this makes it easy to view a specific section using the menu on the side. The models themselves are well detailed however it would have been nicer to see text highlighted bold where new techniques were used. Again, like with Rayhans blog, Daniel included more detail on the class practicals and how he actually made the models for them, this is something I feel I could have done more of in my blog.

Dreadnaught - Modelling Process

I decided to change my model from the phoenix home to the Dreadnaught as there were no schematics that I could find for the phoenix home, the storyboard still remains the same however.

Basic Shape

As with the other models I started with the basic shape, with this model I found it hard to find schematics and had to resize the images to fit and align correctly. I did this with multiple edge loops and extrusions. 

The main problem I had was trying to get the rounded shape for the bottom as I was using a cube to start with, in the end I added more edge loops to create a rounded effect. What I also found hard was trying to figure out the size of the rounded edge from the front schematic as it wasn't a very basic schematic. I tried to find an easier one to work with but this was the best I could find.

Engine

The engine was quite a simple design and was achieved with extrusions with beveled edges. Once one engine was done I just needed to duplicate it and move it to the right place.


I made a mistake on this bit at first and by the time I realised it was too late to undo, in the reference I was working on the engine only had a cover on the top and bottom half where I put a cover all around the engine. To fix this I deleted the side faces and then bridged and filled hole to fill in the gaps, then used the multi-cut tool to create the edges again.

Ship Details

I created the outer braces and windows of the ship based on the schematics with extrusions and bevels again.

Outer Details

After this I created an antenna and some bulbs for the outer decor. For the antenna I created a cylinder base then reduced the subdivision axis to make it more octagonal, i then extruded the centre upwards and moulded the vertex into shape based on the schematic, After this I created the antenna dish by cutting a sphere in half and extruding the faces.

(I'm not a fan of the bulbs on the outside of the ship but that's what it has in the models I've seen)

Overview

Overall I feel like I need to add more detail to this ship but from the references I've seen, most of the other details are added with textures rather than moulded on the ship itself. One thing I would like to improve on is the shape of some of the edges of my ship, parts are a bit jagged and aren't quite smooth, I wanted to use a similar method I used for the X-Wing but because there were a lot of edges and uneven surfaces it was hard to add edge loops and smooth the surface.