Major: Final Submission: Links to Blog posts, Art of Document and Final Showreel
By Jess Sarah Louise - Thursday, May 18, 2023
Major: Reflective Statement
By Jess Sarah Louise - Thursday, May 18, 2023
Going into the Major project, I felt quite excited to continue from Minor and improve the modelling, as well as getting to work on texturing and lighting which I find is the most satisfying part of this animation course. There are so many different ways to texture and light, there are endless opportunities to learn and change the outcome.
Having worked on my time management skills quite well in the Minor project, I was determined to continue this into my final submission, however the final trimester of my pregnancy did not go as planned. Various health conditions and follow up appointments took more time out of my day-to-day schedule than I had planned and then after having premature rupture of membranes, I was admitted into hospital for a week until finally giving birth 3 weeks earlier than my due date. With my maternity leave planned for the end of March, I had been looking forwards to having a couple of weeks to dedicate to this project and instead have had to work inbetween raising a newborn once we were finally discharged to go home.
Despite all this, I’m really happy with what I’ve achieved, whilst it’s not the state that I had imagined it would be in, and I didn’t get as much time to experiment and improve as I wanted, I was able to complete the project and pretty much tick of everything on my list that I had planned to improve/do.
I’m really happy with my newly modelled christmas tree, it was my first time learning how to use MASH and the outcome was great, it works so much better in my scene than the first tree I had created. I’m also really pleased with the Mesh christmas tree lights, they look cheerful and bring the right amount of seasonal spirit to the room.
Another success in this project was the cardboard rocket, from my initial idea and design its turned out exactly like I had wanted and the texturing really completed it. I’m so happy with it and can imagine further spin off projects of the ‘cardboard rocket adventures’. One that I will be excited to pursue beyond finishing this degree.
If I could go back and do it again, I would have tried to reconfigure the room layout/objects better. I still feel it is empty looking but I was struggling with freezing/loading/rendering with my machine. I would also have liked to have played with the texture maps a bit more and get a better understanding of how all the different maps work with each other. There are some normal maps plugged into the bump nodes but I feel the effects are lost in the scene and aren’t very noticeable.
Another thing I think I could do better going forwards is working on assets in separate files. I think this would have helped prevent the crashing issues that I had and also would have stopped me from being overwhelmed and able to focus on creating an entire library of high quality items that I could then put together, instead of manically trying to work on the entire room and all the assets at the same time.
I’m not as confident about my animations throughout the scene, I feel that there could be some improvements to make them super effective, like with the present bounces and spins for example but the rocket with the fluid animation to add the flame did turn out well and I’m glad I persevered with trying to get the settings right for the right amount of flame, since it’s very effective and adds to the child’s imagination that would have created the cardboard rocket!
Major: Final Renders (Stills)
By Jess Sarah Louise - Wednesday, May 17, 2023
Major: Rocket flames - Fluid Animation
By Jess Sarah Louise - Thursday, May 11, 2023
When thinking about FX and animation, I knew I wanted to add in some warming fire but had originally planned to put this into the fireplace. As much as I tried to play around with the settings, I could not get the fire to look effective without having to compromise on the geometry of the fireplace setting.
Instead I thought about how else I could incorporate it and I realised I already was including a small animation of the cardboard rocket rumbling and shooting up in the air, so it made sense to add this fire animation here to further add to the child's imagination.
I used the Fluid animation tool and had it emit from a sphere object hidden inside the rocket. I animated both items to raise up at the same time so it would look as if it was coming from the rocket itself. I played around with the size, intensity and colours of the flame to get a suitable but interesting effect.
I did try to have it emitting form the actual rocket itself but was unsuccessful in not having the entire cardboard rocket covered in flames which would be less family friendly and more horror.
I really really loved this, it was fun to do and a good challenge to add this element into my scene.
Major: Texturing the rest of the room
By Jess Sarah Louise - Thursday, April 20, 2023
Before texturing the rest of the room, I set about making some minor changes as mentioned earlier. I softened the edges of the chair to look soften and added some bevelled edges to the fireplace to give more dimension. I tried to fix the bear slightly and even tried to remake but I decided to stick with my original since I wasn't getting a much better outcome.
The textures for the rest of the room are a mix of Materials created inside Maya, making use of presets and then adjusting to the need of the object. Some objects were exported as OBJ files to work on in Substance Painter, where I found what I was looking for and imported it back into Maya. This was a quick and efficient way of working and allowed me to play around with looks and decided what I preferred. For example, different 'marble' effects on the fireplace etc.
I was especially happy with how the rug turned out (I downloaded a texture and then adjusted the colours and saturation to fit what I wanted) and the plane I added outside the window with a personal photo attached onto it as a texture to create a view outside the window.
I also added a wallpaper and found some cute wrapping paper for the presents under the tree that worked really well.
Major: Rocket modelling fix and texturing
By Jess Sarah Louise - Thursday, April 13, 2023
My 'hero' asset in the room is the cardboard 'Rocket'. It's important that I fix the modelling in the wings and so I deleted them completely, 'filled' the holes and extruded to start again and reshape. I think these wings look a lot sturdier and look like they would have been attached from another cardboard box, which is the boxy look I wanted as if a child has created it.
Next I started creating the texture within Substance Painter. I struggled to find a good cardboard texture that I liked but I adjusted one that was a close match, I painted on some parcel tape to the edges and draw on the crayon drawings.
Whilst this looked great within Substance Painter, I struggled to get the shiny tape look to appear in Maya. I'm not sure if I'm placing the maps in the wrong nodes in Maya or if it is my lighting. Since I have a lot to work on elsewhere in the scene, I'll come back to this to perfect if I have time.
Major: Photoframes
By Jess Sarah Louise - Thursday, March 16, 2023
One of the suggestions for adding more interest to the walls of my room, was to add photoframes to the wall. I started with a cube polygon and extruded the side faces to create the 'frame' and also extruded the top face in to create the 'photo' layer. Once this was done I deleted the faces at the bottom that you wouldn't see and added bevelled edges to the frame to give more detail.
I also duplicated the object and deleted the 'frame' part so I was left with an additional 'photo' layer which I raised up slightly to later become the 'glass'. I'm trying to model this with consideration to how I will then go on to texture it, and I think having the photo with a glassy sheen on top will just give this an elevated design.
Next I noticed the corners needed fixing up, so I added some additional edges and deleted the middle edge/vertice that was not needed. This neatens up the topography of the object.
Finally, I placed on the wall to see how they looked and tested a photo on the photo layer to check the dimensions of my frame were correct to move onto texturing.
I created a nice dark walnut texture in Substance and applied it to the frames, I also added a Glass preset to the glass layer. Whilst you can't see the glass too well here, I'm hoping that once my lighting is all finished and in place, it will have a nice accurate glare and look less flat.
