Animation 1 Final - Stage 2

Hub Model - Textures, smoke/mist effect and After Effects

Importing IGS file from Solidworks into Maya:

Then adding textures to the surfaces:

Making the fish tank green as later this will make it easier for After Effects to select it.

Adding smoke/mist effect:

After Effects:

Using the Rotobrush tool I was able to select everything apart from the fish tank and then remove it from the video, this then allowed me to put a recording of a fish tank beneath that layer.

Rendered Video:

Animation 1 Final - Stage 1

Character Walk Cycle

Walk cycle of my character as part of my final project. Further down the line I will be improving the timing of the walk to make it more realistic, at this point it's just proof of an animation and has helped me to practice animating a rigged character.

Digital Media Final - Stage 5

Digital Media Final - Stage 5

1st I duplicated the png sequence, darkened the top layer then cropped away part of the top layer to reveal the brighter layer underneath. This is just a quick test to show how I would combined different renders on top of each other to show the animation moving from the 2D to 3D world.

Other method tried:

Keyshot (Render er):

Adding ground plane across the pass through section of the model to add the shadowing and lighting effects to the model.

After trying to render out the animation I found that just one frame would take around 20 minutes to render. After consideration I decided not to continue with this method as it would simply take too long to render out the animation and file size could also be a problem. 

Digital Media Final - Stage 4

Digital Media Final - Stage 4

Scaling down the size of the dog video and keeping the animation render full screen to give the effect that the animation is moving forwards and backwards from the 2D and 3D world

Character Rigging - Toy Figure

Character Rigging - Toy Figure

Importing a model from Solidworks:

After converting my assembly into a few different file types, I found the best way was to convert it into a IGS file, and also keeping the model as an assembly instead of converting it into a single part as this helps to keep each limb divided when taken into Maya or it will end up as one big surface model which is incredibly had to manipulate.  

Imported IGS Assembly:

As I was saying before with the IGS file, it kept the the parts separate when it gets imported into Maya which was great, as it allowed me to bind the skin of parts to different joints. 

Once I had matched each part one by one and correctly bind them to the skin, I was then able to make the joints into an IK Handle which allowed me to move each limb.

Correctly naming all of the IK Handles so I know which handle is assigned to which limb.

Digital Media Final - Stage 3

Testing Performance render frames layered over film

By rendering my CAD model using Keyshot I was able to render out a performance version to quickly test how it would be layered over the film. The performance render was exported as batch png files which I imported into After Effects as a png sequence. I then placed this layer over the film and quickly rendered out the video as a FLV file as it would be a small file size which would be able to be uploaded to Youtube. 

-Rendering Process:

-Combining videos:

-Rendered video:

Improvements needed:

I will need to improve the walking speed of the robot in comparison to the dog. As you can see the dog moves forward quicker compared to the robot, so speeding up the robot or making it move backwards before the dog moves will make it more realistic.

Digital Media Final - Stage 2

Testing sizes and alignment of animation renders on top of film

Using photoshop I was able to quickly render the animation frames the same frame size as the film and then lay them over the top of it. This allowed me to test for the size and angle of the animation renders in the scene without me wasting time and pushing out a fully rendered animation which would take hours.

Start of Film:

End of film:

Textures, lighting and shadowing will come at a later stage. My next step is to look into the timing of the dog walking and replicate this in the animation renders so I can get them in time with each other. 

Digital Media Final - Stage 1

Testing out Adobe After Effects

Trying to use the rotobrush tool to cut the dog out from the scene.

After trying to cut out the dog from the scene I realised that the quality of cut would be poor and would look far worse compared to the quality of the animation renders from the CAD model. Cutting the dog from the scene also look a lot longer than I expected, so I will be keeping the dog on the original film and will add the animation renders over the top.

Stop Motion - Moving Mouse

Using Stop Motion Studios for Android I was able to create a stop motion animation of a moving mouse. After I mounted my phone on top of a water bottle I then positioned the mouse for its first frame, then slowly started to move the mouse and alter its position slightly every frame. The finished animation is displayed as a gif above.

If the image doesn't play automatically just give it a click to watch.

Maya Animation - Rocket

Using the key frame timeline along the bottom of the program I was able to add the first key frame of the animation by pressing ctrl + s. Then by moving the whole model along the vertical axis, stopping it where I wanted the animation to finish and pressing ctrl + s at my chosen key frame along the timeline (50th), I was able to make the rocket appear as if it was flying upwards. I also wanted the rocket to spin so I remained on the 50th key frame, added a rotation to the model and adding another key frame on top of the existing one. The final result is shown as a gif above.

Using my existing model of a rocket, I wanted to add it into an animation.