Today's Maya workshop was all about soft bodies. Geometry that can be deformed though motion and influence from other objects. It is a useful tool to give objects that feeling of looseness like clothing, sand, snow or loose skin.
It was the first time in a while I have been scripting, but I am more comfortable with the process than I was when I started last year.
This week and last week there were classes in using dynamic rigging, which provides a more organic flow to moving objects like tails and cloth. After working with it, I have felt this kind of work would be very useful when reworking Colo Colo.or future projects that involve a more flowing body.
Another set of videos that I meant ot upload a little while ago. These are some of the last of the legacy particle tutorials that I needed to construct. This is an attempt to use this week to see if I can catch up with some of the things I needed to do to get back on track. It's taking its time but I am gradually getting there.
The conditional goals tutorial was relatively smooth to do although initially I had some trouble as while for a time the animation worked, it didn't correspond to the locator and particles would gather at the base after dropping off. That was until I realised my scripting error regarding connecting the particles' freedom to drop to the position of the locator, as I missed out the inclusion of a y vector i none of the parameters - a simple fix and everything is good and a charming reminded that all it takes is one small typing error to make a piece of software act crazy.
A long-overdue workshop video that I needed to publish. Things got quite busy in the past couple of weeks of the last term and only recently have I managed to find time to render this out.
The thing that got me most while working on this was that the goal weight had to be fine tuned. Too little and only a few would be drawn, and they would scatter like leaves in the wind. Too much weight and they'd lose their initial scatter. In particular I found myself tweaking around final weights of 0.10 to 0.15
Thursday's tutorials were primarily on instances and dynamics. These were interesting to do, however what really came to mind was how useful I felt this knowledge could have been while making Infiltrate Exploit Spread, particularly when it came to swarm models like the blood cells and the parasites themselves. This, combined with the use of gravity and turbulence mechanics could have made some very interesting and dynamic animation. It's part of the learning process I suppose.
I used today to catch up with the Maya tutorials I had not completed. They took a little longer than planned due to the involvement of render times. Nonetheless I feel I have been able to catch up for tomorrow.
Took a productivity hit this past weekend so while these animations were supposed to have gone up Friday, progressi n getting them up has been slow. The above animation has sound largely because I felt it was strange for such an event as this to be completely silent.
Provided below is the development progression of the Coca-Cola can's disappearance and the destruction of the planet. Particle mapping is getting complex but I am definitely enjoying myself while I'm working, which is a very good sign.
Today's Maya workshops focused on particle emitters. These are nodes that are designed to spew particles that when properly modified can be potentially anything. Our first use of them was the omni-emitter which spreads particles in all directions. We also had the chance to explore the use of colour and modifying the spread for different effects.
After this tutorial, while I was compositing the dynamite and the effects I thought I'd go back and touch-up the old alley scene, cleaning up the particle fog so it looks like fog and not a sea of massive clumps of dust by using a Gaussian blur. The effect difference that came from this change adds a much more spooky yet believable feel to the scene.
