Although we came to a point towards the later stages of this project where we had allowed ourselves to get so far behind we had to power through creating everything, I think we managed to pull off quite a decent job with the final outcome. We managed to get everything done on time, with a few days to spare in fact. But due to the Rave On Air deadline, by the time we got everything ready for animating there was very little time left, so like I explained in my previouse post I had to YET AGAIN rush the animation. My fault really though..... I should have gotten the character model finished and rigged earlier...... even one extra day would have been enough..............
But on a brighter note, I have learned so much yet again this term. I now know how to use fluid effects in Maya to quite a high level, though more practice and experience will obviously be needed to fully master. I have broadened my knowledge on the nCloth system of Maya which I had started taking a look at last term, but again I hav'nt fully learned how to use it, so I will need to expand a bit more on the topic. I had to also get to grips with modelling a human face with good geometry, something that I was dreading as I had'nt PROPERLY modelled one to date. But I ended up really enjoying it, and am thinking my next personal project will be to create an even better face (human or otherwise), which I could also use for my portfolio..........
I'm also quite competant with using toon shaders now, which I had no clue on prior to this project. I do need to learn abit more about the diffent attributes when using toon shaders, and also play around with Maya Vector some more as we decided not to use that method of render for our final piece in the end. But overall I'v really grown fond of toon shaders, so I'll be using them in future personal projects.............
The mixture of all these new techniques me and Prince have learned this term for this project...... the fluid dynamics....... making trees grow......... toon shaders............... etc. have led to us managing to create a really nice looking visual style for the advert, and we have had quite good responses about it so far..............
So to conclude, overall I think as a group me and Prince have worked well together to produce a reasonably good final outcome for the Puma advert, we did fall behind quite a bit, theres no hiding that, but we also knew how work hard and put the effort into completing the work afterwards. But still, we did both learn quite a bit none the less, both from our own individual learnings and from each other. The lesson to be learned for future projects would be to plan our time ALOT better.
And all that being said and done........ its time to wrap up yet another project and enjoy our hard earned summer holiday.......... that is untill our bridging units start of course :P.....................
Animating.......................
The animating I have to say didn't go too well because again it had to be rushed a little, this time because we were trying to get the advert ready in time for Rave On Air, not because we ran out of time to meet our Summative deadline.......................
Another reason was because I did a slight fault in the rig which caused problems for me to animate properly. I did'nt add locators for the knees and elbows, as when I tested the rig they seemed to move fine. But when I ACTUALLY animated in the final scene, all was fine untill it came to the bit where the character had to run in the diagonal direction to how he was facing.......... the elbows insisted in pointing ONLY in their original direction............
I just cut out a big section of that run because it just wasn't properly animatable as I could'nt add locators afterwards, and NO WAY was I goin to reanimate what I had already done to re-rig because there simply wasn't enough time........ I also did'nt get enough time to add much secondary animation because rendering was going to take TIIIIIIIIIIIME.........................
Another reason was because I did a slight fault in the rig which caused problems for me to animate properly. I did'nt add locators for the knees and elbows, as when I tested the rig they seemed to move fine. But when I ACTUALLY animated in the final scene, all was fine untill it came to the bit where the character had to run in the diagonal direction to how he was facing.......... the elbows insisted in pointing ONLY in their original direction............
I just cut out a big section of that run because it just wasn't properly animatable as I could'nt add locators afterwards, and NO WAY was I goin to reanimate what I had already done to re-rig because there simply wasn't enough time........ I also did'nt get enough time to add much secondary animation because rendering was going to take TIIIIIIIIIIIME.........................
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On a brighter note though, the fluid effects worked quite nicely, but in order to speed up rendering time (so that we could get it ready for ROA) I had to reduce the quality of the 3D container thus sacrificing the shot of the smoke falling to the ground. But its ok because the end result still looked the way we wanted it to................
Below are a few shots of the final animation.................
On a brighter note though, the fluid effects worked quite nicely, but in order to speed up rendering time (so that we could get it ready for ROA) I had to reduce the quality of the 3D container thus sacrificing the shot of the smoke falling to the ground. But its ok because the end result still looked the way we wanted it to................
Below are a few shots of the final animation.................
Final Character.....................
The character is now completed. We imported the finished character into the city prince modelled to compare the scale as we didn't set a scale to actually work from.... modelling the city could possibly start causing problem in maya where thing start dissapearing due to the massive scale.........
So when we DID import th character, he litterally was like a giant in th scene, so we scaled him down and reimporter him into the character model scene so that I could scale down the original once I made some adjustments........
We also added toon shader to the city during the scale test and finalised all texturing, and decided to keep th test texture we had on the character (completely green three tone toon shader) as we thought it would give the advert a nice looking style...........
Below is a screenshot of the final character model scaled down...............
The rigging of the character didn't take too long either as I was fairly confident with making a standard human rig which needed to perform the way we needed it to for our advert idea.......
The thing I was especially happy with was the fact that once the rig was smooth binded onto the character mesh, the weighting was close to perfect. I didn't even need to add extra rings onto the parts of geometry where there would be bends (which technicly I SHOULD have done anyways before binding)............. and the reason why this pleases me is that it shows me how much I've come allong with modelling since the start of the year...................
So when we DID import th character, he litterally was like a giant in th scene, so we scaled him down and reimporter him into the character model scene so that I could scale down the original once I made some adjustments........
We also added toon shader to the city during the scale test and finalised all texturing, and decided to keep th test texture we had on the character (completely green three tone toon shader) as we thought it would give the advert a nice looking style...........
Below is a screenshot of the final character model scaled down...............
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The rigging of the character didn't take too long either as I was fairly confident with making a standard human rig which needed to perform the way we needed it to for our advert idea.......
The thing I was especially happy with was the fact that once the rig was smooth binded onto the character mesh, the weighting was close to perfect. I didn't even need to add extra rings onto the parts of geometry where there would be bends (which technicly I SHOULD have done anyways before binding)............. and the reason why this pleases me is that it shows me how much I've come allong with modelling since the start of the year...................
Making the Head..........................
I'v modelled the body of the character, though it needs a bit of proportion changing so I'll have to do that a little later on..........
Now though, I need to create the head for the character which I'm not at all confident with as I have never PROPERLY modelled face, with good geometry, and I'm running out of time too...........
I briefly looked at a few tutorials on the net and asked class mates for tips on how I should go about taking on this task. I then looked at some videos on youtube, and found the following one the most usefull for the way I personally like to model.............
Below are screenshots of how I modelled the head for our character.............
Now though, I need to create the head for the character which I'm not at all confident with as I have never PROPERLY modelled face, with good geometry, and I'm running out of time too...........
I briefly looked at a few tutorials on the net and asked class mates for tips on how I should go about taking on this task. I then looked at some videos on youtube, and found the following one the most usefull for the way I personally like to model.............
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Below are screenshots of how I modelled the head for our character.............
The Products Modelled............
Below are images of the poducts which I have modelled . I added toon shaders to everything, and they look quite nice. I havn't shown the stages of modelling except for a screenshot of how I modelled the Puma logo (which had to be done accurately in the original modelled mesh as smoothing it gave an unwanted look) because they where very quick..........
To make the logo, as with pretty much everything I model, I started off with a cube and just extruded and added edge rings, then moved the vertices into place and deleted the front and back faces of the model as they were not needed...................
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To make the logo, as with pretty much everything I model, I started off with a cube and just extruded and added edge rings, then moved the vertices into place and deleted the front and back faces of the model as they were not needed...................
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Tutorials and Tests.......................
Now that we have a finalised idea for our advert, me and Prince have both set off to learn some new techniques in Maya in order to produce our visualisation. Prince being the environment modeller has researched how to actually make trees and plants grow, while I tried to find a way to generate some kind of energy burts or aura look in Maya................
While looking at some tutorial DVDs by Digital Tutors, I stumbled upon their fluid effects DVD. It teaches how to use fluids in Maya in many different ways, and one particular method I think we can use for our energy/aura. By simply adding an emitter into a 2D or 3D container you can generate a form of smoke..... if you and more (different coloured ones) they will mix...... and you can even make geometry objects collide with the smoke and alter its dynamic state..... etc..............
An Example of the fluid particles in their smoky appearance.......
I have FULLY learned all the DVD has to teach (even the ocean and pond tutorials) and will be able to create both the initial burst AND "magical" aura look coming out of the back in our final advert...................
I also thought I'd take a look at the nCloth tutorial DVD by Digital Tutors to prgress my knowledge from last terms attempt. I'v progressed quite a bit in this field by doing so, but left the tutorials half way into th DVD as I'v come to the decision that we won't really be needing the knowledge for our advert........... So I'll take a look at the rest after the completion of this project so as not to waste time.....................
We have also decided that we want to stylize our advert by using either toon shaders, Maya Vector to render, or a combination of both..........
To learn how to use these I have asked members of our class who have experiance using them. Prince and I are thinking we will test both visual techniques out on the modelled city and character we create later on........................
While looking at some tutorial DVDs by Digital Tutors, I stumbled upon their fluid effects DVD. It teaches how to use fluids in Maya in many different ways, and one particular method I think we can use for our energy/aura. By simply adding an emitter into a 2D or 3D container you can generate a form of smoke..... if you and more (different coloured ones) they will mix...... and you can even make geometry objects collide with the smoke and alter its dynamic state..... etc..............
An Example of the fluid particles in their smoky appearance.......
I have FULLY learned all the DVD has to teach (even the ocean and pond tutorials) and will be able to create both the initial burst AND "magical" aura look coming out of the back in our final advert...................
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I also thought I'd take a look at the nCloth tutorial DVD by Digital Tutors to prgress my knowledge from last terms attempt. I'v progressed quite a bit in this field by doing so, but left the tutorials half way into th DVD as I'v come to the decision that we won't really be needing the knowledge for our advert........... So I'll take a look at the rest after the completion of this project so as not to waste time.....................
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We have also decided that we want to stylize our advert by using either toon shaders, Maya Vector to render, or a combination of both..........
To learn how to use these I have asked members of our class who have experiance using them. Prince and I are thinking we will test both visual techniques out on the modelled city and character we create later on........................
Inspiration.............
After the actual idea pitch (which didn't go too badly) we discovered a new advert on TV for Pepsi which had trees growing in the same way we were planning to have ours, so its sort of inspired us.....................
I later also saw this advert for Laughing Cow which again had trees and plants growing the way we are planning to......... seems we'v coincidentaly come up with a popular conept :P.............
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I later also saw this advert for Laughing Cow which again had trees and plants growing the way we are planning to......... seems we'v coincidentaly come up with a popular conept :P.............
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