Sunday 28 February 2010

22nd - 28th Feb

Since the previous journal entry, I’ve spent a lot of very busy hectic days on this project! I successfully finished my texturing of the flowers;


But ran into problems trying to sort out the grass. The only available pre-set Maya grass that looked like our concept art was too small, and when resized gave a terrible effect. It also slowed down Maya considerably and eventually we decided to not include the grass after all.

(with the grass)

(without! much prettier and less lag time :D)
This does however mean that we will not be able to have any animation for this part of our environment. However, since our project is set in an underground cave, there would not be a lot of wind to animate the flowers and grass anyway so I guess it makes more sense like this. Instead we are going to put our animation efforts into rocks and boulders falling around the environment, a bin rolling over and perhaps some sparks coming out of the poles and generator.

I also tried working on the camera. This is the first time I have animated in Maya for a long time so I was very rusty. Karen and James suggested I create a motion path for the camera to run around the environment on, but after two hours trying to get it to work with little success I gave up and animated the camera manually.
On Thursday this week I showed my first camera attempt (which is too big to upload onto here) to Jared and he gave me some helpful suggestions;
-Allow room for pauses
-Research into existing first person camera works
-Imagine you’re the camera and its not just a ‘showcase’
-And finally to animate the camera with ‘aim’ rather than by itself.

Taking this into account I first searched google for first person camera films and found a site with a list;
http://www.listal.com/list/firstperson-movies

Then set about incorporating it into my work. I have Blair Witch and managed to watch some of Cloverfield, but tbh they showed me more what not to do as if the camera is too jerky you feel sick! So I kept it as steady as I could and didnt move it excessively.

This time, I animated the camera going round the environment first and then concentrated on what it was aiming at. I think the final result is much improved from my last one! (but again the render time is too long and the file too big to post the test up here)

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