Moving the Camera:
Alt and left mouse click –Tumbles
Alt and right mouse click – Moves
Alt and middle button – Dollies
Terminology within Maya and all software is important to avoid confusion when giving or receiving tasks. This is especially important when in a working environment as many people will be responsible for a project.
Holding the mouse button and pressing “X” will snap what is selected to a grid position.
Holding the mouse button and pressing “v” will snap what is selected to a vertex.
The insert button allows you to change the position of the pivot point of an object. This is useful when modelling as you can ensure hinges, and joints will move in the desired way.
The “+” and “-” buttons will control the size of the axis buttons.
“w” and right mouse button will give the options for local and world view.
Saturday, 8 May 2010
Tuesday, 4 May 2010
The Sphere Project – Deciding the Sphere
The project for this module is to model a game ready asset that is in the shape of a sphere, it has to have some rendering and animation. It is linked to the http://cgsphere.com/ website.
After looking through some of the spheres on the website, I thought of possible game ready assets I could model, render and animate.
My aim was to animate unique movement that was an improvement on the bouncing ball animation.
Being a stereotypical student and fan of Star Wars, I thought the machines within the vast Star Wars universe could be used for the project. I did this for two reasons. Many of the Star Wars machines have been used within video games already so it relevant to a games design course. Also, as the machines exist in video games and film, there is plenty of reference material to compare to, this would show an understanding of modelling that an original creation would not be able to portray.
I considered the droid destroyer from the modern trilogy which is spherical when in motion, and unfolds to fire its weapons. However, the droid destroyer is very thin so may be difficult to model. Something more solid would be easier.
The AT-AT from the original trilogy is a four legged walker which resembles a horse or camel. Modelling this to resemble a sphere would be very difficult and the number of legs would require a lot of animation.
I decided the best machine to recreate would be the AT-ST from the original trilogy. It is a two legged walker that resembles an Ostridge or Chicken.
The AT-ST only has four parts (cockpit, engine compartment and two legs) which would be easier to animate than the AT-AT.
The shape of the AT-ST is recognisable because of its angular and box like cockpit. If a spherical version of it was made that people recognised it would be considered impressive. Also doing my own version (spherical) of an existing model has more merit than merely copying one.
Finally, the legs of the walker are similar to a chicken or Ostridge, they are inverse to human legs. This gives the unique movement that I wanted in the game ready asset.
AT-ST preliminary design sketches:
This sketch below was the first sketch I did of the ATST walker, It has a lot of detail that would mean a large polygon count and a long time needed to render and UV the whole thing. I decided that a simplified version would be better and if I got everything finished early I could then re-model in the missing details.
Below are front and profile sketches of the AT-ST walker that I would use as reference when modeling the parts of the model I would keep the same as the original.
Below is a simplified version of the walker. To compensate for the modeling simplification, I added some rivet detail. The next stage was to work out what part or parts of the model would be made spherical.
Below are some design sketches of how I would achieve a spherical shape which also included planar surfaces. Some drawings include where the edge loops would go showing I have thought about the polygon count and economic modeling in my designs.
Below are two design sketches to see which sides of the ATST head would look best as spherical. They are more conceptual rather than accurate as I wanted to exaggerate the spherical look of the model to see if it would still look recognisable as a Star Wars Walker.
After looking through some of the spheres on the website, I thought of possible game ready assets I could model, render and animate.
My aim was to animate unique movement that was an improvement on the bouncing ball animation.
Being a stereotypical student and fan of Star Wars, I thought the machines within the vast Star Wars universe could be used for the project. I did this for two reasons. Many of the Star Wars machines have been used within video games already so it relevant to a games design course. Also, as the machines exist in video games and film, there is plenty of reference material to compare to, this would show an understanding of modelling that an original creation would not be able to portray.
I considered the droid destroyer from the modern trilogy which is spherical when in motion, and unfolds to fire its weapons. However, the droid destroyer is very thin so may be difficult to model. Something more solid would be easier.
The AT-AT from the original trilogy is a four legged walker which resembles a horse or camel. Modelling this to resemble a sphere would be very difficult and the number of legs would require a lot of animation.
I decided the best machine to recreate would be the AT-ST from the original trilogy. It is a two legged walker that resembles an Ostridge or Chicken.
The AT-ST only has four parts (cockpit, engine compartment and two legs) which would be easier to animate than the AT-AT.
The shape of the AT-ST is recognisable because of its angular and box like cockpit. If a spherical version of it was made that people recognised it would be considered impressive. Also doing my own version (spherical) of an existing model has more merit than merely copying one.
Finally, the legs of the walker are similar to a chicken or Ostridge, they are inverse to human legs. This gives the unique movement that I wanted in the game ready asset.
AT-ST preliminary design sketches:
This sketch below was the first sketch I did of the ATST walker, It has a lot of detail that would mean a large polygon count and a long time needed to render and UV the whole thing. I decided that a simplified version would be better and if I got everything finished early I could then re-model in the missing details.
Below are front and profile sketches of the AT-ST walker that I would use as reference when modeling the parts of the model I would keep the same as the original.
Below is a simplified version of the walker. To compensate for the modeling simplification, I added some rivet detail. The next stage was to work out what part or parts of the model would be made spherical.
Below are some design sketches of how I would achieve a spherical shape which also included planar surfaces. Some drawings include where the edge loops would go showing I have thought about the polygon count and economic modeling in my designs.
Below are two design sketches to see which sides of the ATST head would look best as spherical. They are more conceptual rather than accurate as I wanted to exaggerate the spherical look of the model to see if it would still look recognisable as a Star Wars Walker.
Rigging Tutorial
Our tutor started off the tutorial on rigging by going through some problems that occur within modelling
The warp problem occurs if you were to move or scale an objects vertices and then rotate it, the object appears to warp while rotating. This is because the object is taking its transformation information as if it were the original shape created.
To resolve this problem, just freeze the transformations, it will now be a new shape and not have any new transform information in the channel box, it will then rotate and pivot correctly.
Rotation hierarchy:
We learnt that rotation values have a hierocracy. On the transform attributes, you can change the order of rotation. In Maya, “x” is the rotation parent.
It is important when animating to make the main axis of movement the parent in the hierarchy. This is to try and prevent Gimbal lock even before the problem has occurred. However it is always possible if an object rotates 90 degrees in two axis (this is rare).
An example of this would be a camera. The most important movement a camera usually does is panning left and right so and the least important is up and down. So if the left to right pan is the first rotation axis to be animated, the chances are a pan up and down will not result in gambol lock.
Joints:
There is at first an unorthodox approach to modelling joints, as it is best to make joints by changing between front and side views. This is so the placement of the joints can be accurate.
Before making the actual joints and like all other tools within Maya, it’s always best to reset the tool before using to make sure there isn’t any unnecessary tool usage.
Joints always have a translate value unlike objects, so it is best to be sure the joints are placed in the correct position first time. If you were to fine tune the position of the joints, they would have more translate values. This would make animation more confusing.
“Ctrl” and “V” will snap a selected locator to a vertices. This is important when creating joints
By selecting component mode and then the question mark button, you can select a set of joints to see the direction of the rotation axis. It is important to know the direction of the rotation axis. If they all face the same direction you can select multiple joints and make them rotate the same direction (this is useful for a leg or arm animation). If the rotation axis were facing different direction, a selected set of joints would create a hinge motion which may be desirable for an Ostridge leg or robotic walker for example.
The direction of the rotation axis on joints also affects animation in the graph editor, as it may create confusing curves that go in opposite directions.
Labelling joints is important to distinguish between left and right. As well as being able to allocate the correct joint to the correct shape on the attribute editor.
Layering:
Layering is important for joints as after they have been attached to the model you don’t need to see or use them. A layer will enable you to switch between seeing joints “V (in the layers box)”. And you can switch between being able to select the joints with the Reference button “R (in the layers box)” .
The layers can have allocated colours; this is handy for separating the left and right parts of the model.
Constraints:
Constraints override parenting, they are absolute. It is possible to place multiple constraints on an object to create an averaged transformation.
Constraints can be used to create the visual effect of muscle movement.
You can translate and rotate a constraint but not scale it.
The Connection Editor allows Constraints to be an effective way to create buttons, leavers and pulley systems within Maya.
The warp problem occurs if you were to move or scale an objects vertices and then rotate it, the object appears to warp while rotating. This is because the object is taking its transformation information as if it were the original shape created.
To resolve this problem, just freeze the transformations, it will now be a new shape and not have any new transform information in the channel box, it will then rotate and pivot correctly.
Rotation hierarchy:
We learnt that rotation values have a hierocracy. On the transform attributes, you can change the order of rotation. In Maya, “x” is the rotation parent.
It is important when animating to make the main axis of movement the parent in the hierarchy. This is to try and prevent Gimbal lock even before the problem has occurred. However it is always possible if an object rotates 90 degrees in two axis (this is rare).
An example of this would be a camera. The most important movement a camera usually does is panning left and right so and the least important is up and down. So if the left to right pan is the first rotation axis to be animated, the chances are a pan up and down will not result in gambol lock.
Joints:
There is at first an unorthodox approach to modelling joints, as it is best to make joints by changing between front and side views. This is so the placement of the joints can be accurate.
Before making the actual joints and like all other tools within Maya, it’s always best to reset the tool before using to make sure there isn’t any unnecessary tool usage.
Joints always have a translate value unlike objects, so it is best to be sure the joints are placed in the correct position first time. If you were to fine tune the position of the joints, they would have more translate values. This would make animation more confusing.
“Ctrl” and “V” will snap a selected locator to a vertices. This is important when creating joints
By selecting component mode and then the question mark button, you can select a set of joints to see the direction of the rotation axis. It is important to know the direction of the rotation axis. If they all face the same direction you can select multiple joints and make them rotate the same direction (this is useful for a leg or arm animation). If the rotation axis were facing different direction, a selected set of joints would create a hinge motion which may be desirable for an Ostridge leg or robotic walker for example.
The direction of the rotation axis on joints also affects animation in the graph editor, as it may create confusing curves that go in opposite directions.
Labelling joints is important to distinguish between left and right. As well as being able to allocate the correct joint to the correct shape on the attribute editor.
Layering:
Layering is important for joints as after they have been attached to the model you don’t need to see or use them. A layer will enable you to switch between seeing joints “V (in the layers box)”. And you can switch between being able to select the joints with the Reference button “R (in the layers box)” .
The layers can have allocated colours; this is handy for separating the left and right parts of the model.
Constraints:
Constraints override parenting, they are absolute. It is possible to place multiple constraints on an object to create an averaged transformation.
Constraints can be used to create the visual effect of muscle movement.
You can translate and rotate a constraint but not scale it.
The Connection Editor allows Constraints to be an effective way to create buttons, leavers and pulley systems within Maya.
Sunday, 18 April 2010
The Rotation Problem
As homework, the group were asked to watch a video on http://www.guerrillacg.org/ about the “rotation problem”. I had never heard of this before and was intrigued to know what it was and what implications this problem had on animating in 3D, as well as any possible solutions to get around the rotation problem.
The video started off by identifying the two main different ways of calculating rotation within computer software, Euler and Quaternion.
Euler calculates it’s rotation in degrees on the three axis, where as Quaternion calculates it’s rotation with four values, the first three are position values of a vector direction (numbers on the grid) and one roll value.
The rotation problem only occurs within the Euler type of rotation. It happens when the rotation gimbal locks, two rotation axis align and by doing so affectively reduce the number of axis from three to two. This is problematic when animating within three dimensional space and only having two movable axis. When animating with Gimbal Lock, the computer works out that to get from one key frame to another, it has to move in the wrong direction to enable the two aligned rotation axis to separate.
A good analogy would be if a man were sitting with his arms crossed and someone threw a ball for him to catch. The most efficient way for him to catch the ball would be to move his arms directly toward the oncoming ball. However as his arms are tied up in this theoretical Gimbal Lock, so the man has to move his arms away from each other and the ball so they are uncrossed, this allows his arms to be able to move in the direction of the ball to catch it.
This rotation problem sounds enough for an animator to use the Quaternion way of animating rotation. However, Quaternion animation doesn’t have animation cures and Euler animation does, so it is usually more beneficial to animate in Euler, especially organic motion.
The video started off by identifying the two main different ways of calculating rotation within computer software, Euler and Quaternion.
Euler calculates it’s rotation in degrees on the three axis, where as Quaternion calculates it’s rotation with four values, the first three are position values of a vector direction (numbers on the grid) and one roll value.
The rotation problem only occurs within the Euler type of rotation. It happens when the rotation gimbal locks, two rotation axis align and by doing so affectively reduce the number of axis from three to two. This is problematic when animating within three dimensional space and only having two movable axis. When animating with Gimbal Lock, the computer works out that to get from one key frame to another, it has to move in the wrong direction to enable the two aligned rotation axis to separate.
A good analogy would be if a man were sitting with his arms crossed and someone threw a ball for him to catch. The most efficient way for him to catch the ball would be to move his arms directly toward the oncoming ball. However as his arms are tied up in this theoretical Gimbal Lock, so the man has to move his arms away from each other and the ball so they are uncrossed, this allows his arms to be able to move in the direction of the ball to catch it.
This rotation problem sounds enough for an animator to use the Quaternion way of animating rotation. However, Quaternion animation doesn’t have animation cures and Euler animation does, so it is usually more beneficial to animate in Euler, especially organic motion.
Saturday, 17 April 2010
Introduction to Rigging in Maya
The first thing the group looked at was a video from the website http://www.guerrillacg.org/ which is a great website for learning the fundamentals of 3D software.
The first video we viewed was on hierarchy basics. A hierarchy of two or more objects controls the rotation scale and position (also called transforms) of said objects. A hierarchy is like a chain of command or relationship between a parent and a child. The terminology of parent and child is used to describe the hierarchy of objects in Maya. The “parent” object controls the “child” object, the child is free to rotate, scale and position themselves in 3D space with no consequence to the parent. When the parent object rotates, moves or scales, the child object duplicates the same transforms in 3D space.
The video also explained about grouping under a null. A null is usually a cross, box or grid and is used for several things, marking a position for multiple objects to transform from, storing rendering information and be used to label a group of objects. This is useful when animating several things that have multiple objects. A null is not seen after rendering.
On the video, an analogy used to explain the relationship within a multiple object hierarchy was a fruit bowl on a table, which is on a rug. If the rug is moved, the table and fruit bowl move, if the table is moved the fruit bowl moves but the rug stays still and so on. While this analogy is useful, I feel that gravity acting upon the objects could get confusing.
I prefer the analogy of the tree, imagine a tree with branches and leaves, the tree is the parent, the braches are parented to the tree and the leaves are parented to the branch. Therefore, you could pick the leaves off a branch and move them independently. If you broke a branch off the tree, the leaves would move with the branch, and if you moved the tree, the braches and leaves would go with the tree.
One of the most vital things we learnt when modelling for animation was how to move the pivot point of an object, this is important because when grouped objects are animated, they take their transform information from the parent objects’ pivot point. When animating anything with more than one part, the pivot points need to be moved into the correct position (sometimes not even on the object) so that the objects animate properly.
Problems can occur because in the real world, objects that are attached to each other, move as if they are attached, but in the 3D world, objects can pass through each other with no consequences, the animator has to cheat physics to recreate it’s affects on the animated objects.
The first video we viewed was on hierarchy basics. A hierarchy of two or more objects controls the rotation scale and position (also called transforms) of said objects. A hierarchy is like a chain of command or relationship between a parent and a child. The terminology of parent and child is used to describe the hierarchy of objects in Maya. The “parent” object controls the “child” object, the child is free to rotate, scale and position themselves in 3D space with no consequence to the parent. When the parent object rotates, moves or scales, the child object duplicates the same transforms in 3D space.
The video also explained about grouping under a null. A null is usually a cross, box or grid and is used for several things, marking a position for multiple objects to transform from, storing rendering information and be used to label a group of objects. This is useful when animating several things that have multiple objects. A null is not seen after rendering.
On the video, an analogy used to explain the relationship within a multiple object hierarchy was a fruit bowl on a table, which is on a rug. If the rug is moved, the table and fruit bowl move, if the table is moved the fruit bowl moves but the rug stays still and so on. While this analogy is useful, I feel that gravity acting upon the objects could get confusing.
I prefer the analogy of the tree, imagine a tree with branches and leaves, the tree is the parent, the braches are parented to the tree and the leaves are parented to the branch. Therefore, you could pick the leaves off a branch and move them independently. If you broke a branch off the tree, the leaves would move with the branch, and if you moved the tree, the braches and leaves would go with the tree.
One of the most vital things we learnt when modelling for animation was how to move the pivot point of an object, this is important because when grouped objects are animated, they take their transform information from the parent objects’ pivot point. When animating anything with more than one part, the pivot points need to be moved into the correct position (sometimes not even on the object) so that the objects animate properly.
Problems can occur because in the real world, objects that are attached to each other, move as if they are attached, but in the 3D world, objects can pass through each other with no consequences, the animator has to cheat physics to recreate it’s affects on the animated objects.
Introduction
In this blog I will be explaining the technical processes and contemporary theory of digital 3D. And explain my experience of rigging fundamentals and how a game ready asset was created.
There will also be technical and conceptual drawings to illiterate the process of the project.
There will also be technical and conceptual drawings to illiterate the process of the project.
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