Abstract:For this project, I started with an unattainable idea. I originally wanted to animate the nursery rhyme “hey diddle diddle.” Obviously, I have a hard time keeping things simple and do not understand the idea of complexity and time constraints. Therefore, I decided to model a pretty landscape scene, and animate a bee flying around.
Storyboard:
The sides got cut off a bit, sorry about that. The computer with the scanner was taken, so a cell phone picture will have to suffice for now.
Production (what I did and how I did it):
I started this project by creating two nurbs planes: one for the sky and one for the ground. I used the “select by component type” to select points on the ground plane to create a small hill. Not knowing how to model grass, I spent days trying to find a tutorial or information that would teach me how to create a nice plane of grass. After finally finding one, I settled on the idea of using paint effects. I learned how to make the ground plane “paintable” and how to use the visor in
order to find a brush. (I also learned that holding down the ‘b’ key and dragging makes the brush bigger.. I wish I had figured this out earlier then I did). So, I went at it and painted the ground plane. I even added different grasses to try and make it more realistic.
After finishing the grass, the program slowed down a bit. If I clicked on a menu, it took awhile to pop up, I couldn’t move the window around without it skipping, etc.. However, me being the person that I am decided to keep building the scene! ..but in the same way. Next, I built two trees using the paint effects. After, the program slowed down even more. However, I decided to just let it be and suck it up. Next it was time to model the bee.
To model the bee, I created a nurbs sphere and used the scale to manipulate it into a more oval/tube shape. This was the body. I then made five nurbs spheres: two for the eye, two for the pupils, and one for the head. I also created a nurbs cone for the stinger. Next were the wings. I started with a nurbs sphere and used the scale tool to squish it flat, and the “select by component type” to select points in order to shape it like a wing. When I was happy with the result, I duplicated it. Lastly were the bee’s antennas. I created two small nurbs spheres and two nurbs cylinders. I manipulated the cylinders using the scale and rotate tool. Then, I took all the pieces and put the bee together. Now on to the beehive!
To model the beehive, I used the CV Curve tool. I created a curve, and when I was happy with the result, revolved it around the axis. This created the hive, however, I wanted to touch it up a bit, so I used the “select by component type” to manipulate the points to get it into the perfect beehive shape. (Looking back on it now, I do not think that I would have spent as much time as I did making the beehive perfect. And why do I feel this way? Well, my perfect beehive is not on display like I thought it would be, rather it is hiding in the leaves of the tree.. barely visible). Time to color!
To color the bee, I used a phong on the stinger, the antenna, and the pupils. I used black to color these parts of the bee. I used the phong because I did not want to color to be completely flat, but I didn’t want it to be unrealistically shiny/reflective either. The eyes of the bee are a white lambert, the head of the bee a yellow lambert, and the wings of the bee a white lambert. To color the body of the bee, I created a yellow and black stripe pattern in photos
hop. I then saved it as a jpeg, and uploaded it as the assigned material for the bee’s body. To color the beehive, I created a pattern in photoshop again. I took a texture and overlaid it with a golden yellow color. Again, I saved it as a jpeg and uploaded it as the assigned material for the beehive. For the sky, I decided to animate clouds. In photoshop, I put together an image of a sky, saved it as a jpeg, and uploaded it as the assigned material for the sky plane.
After all the modeling and coloring was done, it was time to animate. However, because of my paint effects, rendering the current scene took a few minutes and clicking menus and objects gave me the spinning pinwheel of death. Therefore, I knew it would take forever to animate the project like this. So, I had to template all the grass paint effects and hide them. This allowed for the program to pick up, and for me to animate.
In order to animate the two hundred frame scene, I used key frame animation. I started with the body of the bee. I animated the path the bee would take, the turns it would make, and how it would go off into the distance. As the bee got farther away, I made the image of him smaller. In turn, as he got closer, I made him bigger. When the path of the bee was finished, I animated its wings. Every five frames I changed the position of the bees wings. There are two positions: up and down. I copied the up key frame and pasted it on every other fifth frame. Then I copied the down key frame and pasted it on the left over frames. Therefore, every five frames are set as key frames so that the wings of the bee move up and down as the bee flies around the scene. The last thing I had to animate was the sky. I set a key frame at frame one.
I then moved the sky over and set a key frame on frame twenty, moved the sky over and set a key frame on frame forty, and kept doing this until I reached the two hundredth frame.
Lastly, I added a directional light in the top left corner of the scene with a luminosity of 1.700. I rendered the scenes and played the animation in the program to make sure the animation worked the way I liked, and the scene looked right. Time to render!
With it being time to render, I knew I was not in good shape with the paint effects. I knew that with the way my scene was, rendering was going to take a nice looooong time. So, I deleted them. I deleted all the grass I had previously done and redid it all. I painted with a bigger sized brush and used the tool more sparingly. Redoing the grass was such a good idea and really helped with the program-stalling problem I had. I just wish I had done it sooner. Rendering was tricky for me. I had no idea how to make a quicktime movie. Every time I tried to render as a quick time, it didn’t work. Back to google tutorials for advice! From what I read, people were telling me to render as jpeg
s, go into quicktime pro, and “upload image sequence”. However, the quick time on the computers did not have an “upload image sequence” option. In fcheck, I could only figure out how to play one frame of animation. So, I set out down the hall looking for somebody, anybody. In one of the labs there was a guy working in maya and he was able to teach me how to render. My new best friend! So, I rendered using jpeg for the image format and name_#.ext for the frame/animation extension. I set the frame range to two hundred, turned ray tracing on (I figured “what the heck”), and let it render! After getting the image sequence, I brought it into Adobe After Effects. I put the scenes next to each other, played it out to make sure it was correct, and then saved it as a quicktime movie file. Saved everything, backed it up, and the project was finished.
Self Evaluation (what worked, what didn’t, and what I would do differently):
I feel that this project has taught me a lot more about the Maya program. Starting this class, I thought I would be a lost cause. However, as I started on the project I realized how much I had learned, and got motivated to animate the bee!
What worked for me was the use of key frame animation. The motion path and kinetics that were discussed in class seemed very overwhelming, so I wanted to use key frame. This worked well for the animation I was doing and for the very basic skill level that I am at. Another thing that worked well for my animation was making patterns in photoshop and uploading them in order to assign them to objects. This helped me get the desired look and feel that I wanted. Lastly, what worked well for my animation were the paint effects. I really like the overall look of them, and I like how easy they are to work with.
The only thing that didn’t work for me was the rendering. I don’t recall using After Effects in class, but because I couldn’t remember fcheck, I had to go about making the quicktime file differently.
Even though I like the look of paint effects, I would use them differently next time. I would model and animate everything first, and then add the paint effects last. I would also use them more sparingly. I also wish I didn’t spend so much time on the beehive. If something is not going to be seen, I should save the time modeling it perfectly, and put that effort into a different aspect of the project. I wish I would have deleted the grass sooner. I know it took me a long time to do (which is why it was so hard to delete). However, if it is going to make the rest of the operation move smoothly, I just have to suck it up, delete the work, and redo it (although, the mistake of using paint effects before animating and such won’t be happening again).
If I were to continue on with this project, I would probably add another bee to the scene, and make the two race. At the beginning, there would be a butterfly that would hold up a “go” sign. Her wings would flutter while the two bees raced. At the end, she would wave a flag. If possible, I would also have a couple flowers growing in the scene.
Overall, I enjoyed doing this project and am happy with the way it came out. I learned a lot more than I had expected, and have a newfound appreciation for animators.
