Animation Strategies (Week 3)

Topology & Asset Modelling

This week Henry had set us a series of tasks to work on throughout our morning lesson and I think the reasoning for these tasks was to test our knowledge of Maya. These problems were to see if we knew how to fix and model various of problems and perhaps to see if we notice any difference in our skills from our first-year learning Maya. In looking at these problems at first, they looked really easy and were just a few shapes that had different problems such as recreating topology’s, fixing spheres to replicate one another and fixing a donut by trying to locate the problem.

Although I judged these problems to be an easy enough task on Maya these were really difficult, and I was relieved that some others in the class felt this also. I’m unaware if it’s because I wasn’t regular practicing Maya over the summer and if I had become a bit rusty in the buttons and terms used within Maya, but some of the language for these problems were even confusing me and I couldn’t wrap my head around anything. This was disappointing as I thought I had a better understanding of the software overall, but even with Henry was giving us all a tutorial on how to fix some of the problems, I was still lost.

This meant that when I had been given the task to do, I really had no clue on how to even fix the first problem, never mind the rest and had left me feeling a little disappointed in where I had come with learning Maya. I had thought to myself that it was only the third week back to university and from not working in Maya for a couple of months and to have to do a number of difficult tasks, I should probably give myself more credit and time to solve the problems. This is why I had set myself out a task that when I began creating my assets in Maya, I will return back to the modelling puzzles and just test whether my knowledge of Maya is not as strong as I had thought or if I just needed to familiarise myself with its controls once again.

This is why even after a couple of days after using Maya and posting this blog post, I had gone back and looked at the puzzles once again to find that at least a few of them were not as difficult as I once thought. I’m not sure if I had completed the puzzles the correct way or just the way I had known how, but I was happy to see that my knowledge for Maya was still there and improving, but I had just not used these skills in a long time and was rusty. I attached an image of the first puzzle, a simple one but one I still looked at and thought was once to confusing. The task was to make the squares that Henry created match the black squares below, I had done the simple action of deleting some of the polygons edges and vertices and added in a few vertices to match the exact way they were designed above. This puzzle had only taking me a few seconds to complete for each of the squares and I’m eager to go back, finish off the rest of the puzzles and see how far I have come with my ability in Maya.

I think these puzzles were a good way to allow everyone an idea of where they stand on how much they understand Maya and how to fix problems and use its software without the help of a YouTube tutorial or their lecture. I know for me even if I think I would do better if I had been using Maya a little longer coming up to these puzzles, I still heavily depend on the help of my lectures and YouTube to help me understand parts of Maya that I need. So, this puzzle task helped me know where I’m at and helped push me to want to know how to solve all of these problems without any help and really push my capabilities and what I can learn about Maya.

Giving that this week is week three and we are moving along in developing our environments bit by bit, in order to keep up to date with the work and attend the classes that are going to help us work on our environment. I am trying my best to keep up with modelling my assets, in time for or next lesson, which includes texturing and setting up our scene in Unreal.

The afternoon session of our Monday class was again sectioning off into our breakout groups and having everyone together discussing their work and what they have managed to work on for their world up until this point. Everyone had been in attendance for today’s class again, so it was good to have everyone there ready to share their work and ideas. As a group we were roughly on the same track as each other, feeling inspired by our last group chat and having gone away to really think about what we wanted to include within our own personal island and what we wanted to add to the fairy’s centre piece.

The Gantt chart had allowed everyone to have a rough idea of what structure to follow in order to have their work ready and the group meetings were a nice time to discuss what we had went away and worked on, discussing each other’s work and gathering everyone’s opinion.

When we last had our group meeting, we were a bit erratic as a group as it was only week two of the project and we were still overflowing with ideas. This was good thing as it showed how interested and excited, we were about our world and now it was time to put down some final decisions of things, be realistic about what we could create on time and decide what assets we would be best to create for our own world and that we can later share within the environment.

In our group meeting when we were all again brainstorming ides before we settled upon some decisions, when we were discussing on how to provide light to our island for each area and for the fairies to be able to see. I had taken the idea that we as a group had decided upon having a centre island with a temple, but suggesting combining to temple with a tree, to have a crystal light and incorporate this crystal as the bulbs which to use in the fairy’s homes, streetlights and handheld orbs of light. I thought having this be the main power source and history of the island and how they discovered light would be a nice touch, as well as them being able to break off crystal flower stems and hold them as they walked home.

I was quite proud of this idea I had suggested and was even more chuffed when the group liked my idea and that in the end, we were able to agree on combining aspects of each other’s ideas that we liked and had kept a temple and tree combination as well as the light source being found in areas such as Emily’s mushroom forest.

This was allowing us as a group to become even more excited as a team and I was proud of my contribution and how ever one really liked my idea and concept design. This was a proud moment for me as most of the time I tend to be a bit shyer in group scenarios or opt to not speak up when I have a suggestion or idea, in fear of sounding silly or not being heard and was happy when my idea was even considered. Im aware that in this industry that as an artist there is going to be a lot of times were your work is not respected or that the majority does not like and that it will have to be something that I accept, but to have an idea accepted at all was the victory for me and how it was tweaked to fit everyone’s needs and wants was a better result. This mini experience at least provided me the confidence to speak up and as an individual or within a group and show that my ideas will at least be sometimes considered which is what I am happy with.

In this meeting after we had all finalised what part of the fairy’s realm, we were each going to create, we all decided to create a chart of all the assets we either wanted to make or needed within our own islands. Some of our assets were common and items that everyone needed in their islands and then there was some items such as a mushroom house for me and a farmer’s stall for Megan that were going to be modelled just for our own personal islands.

We sorted out the decision of who was going to make the items by listing and making a chart of all the items which we needed to complete our group environment. Everyone had a fair choice and got to choose the assets which they wanted to make, which more or less was based on their island and the assets I chose the make was a mushroom house, a well, a log bench, a picnic table and spider webs for the trees. This was a good way to pass out all the assets for everyone as we all got something we wanted to make and also got the opportunity to test our modelling skills with something for the other environments, which for me was the fairies wishing well.

When we had all been given our assets and class was nearly over, I had gone onto Pinterest and searched for styles of textures and assets I could be inspired by for my own modelling and I also searched up YouTube for some tutorials on my models. This was to provide me a realistic approach on how to make my models and what may be achievable to create on Maya. I was going to draw up some concepts on my iPad to begin my own brainstorm of ideas and was excited to start drawing up a design, that I would soon see come to life as I modelled on Maya. I had been able to already come up with a few rough ideas for what I wanted to make as I was working with some initial thoughts on what type of assets I wanted, such as the idea of a mushroom top and acorn bottom combination for a fairy’s house, a flower-based picnic table and a stone well, the rest I would need to do some more research to find a design I was going to make.

In next week’s lesson Henry and Alec had told us that we needed to create a PowerPoint presentation of the ideas and concept we have decided upon as both a group and individuals up until this point. This was going to be for the upcoming week and the things that they would like to see included is our Gantt chart, are mood-boards, any timetables or other charts we have created, our own personal concepts and to just overall provide them with a clear presentation on what type of world we are going for, what assets it is going to include and what research and personal research we have done to help support our ideas.

This was going to be our first group presentation of the semester and also our first presentation under the new and different online learning. This was actually cool to see that we are still going to be able to present our work to both the class and lectures and retrieve some feedback, helping to keep us right and help us with our work. This obviously will be a more relaxing way to present a PowerPoint to the entire class, as standing up in front of fifty people can be very over whelming and I am looking forward to seeing the work which everyone has done up until this point.

In my own personal section of the PowerPoint and in the presentation, I am going to begin talking about my initial ideas for my fairy’s realm and what part of the realm I was most inclined to work on and why. I think it be good to begin with how I have looked into Irish folklore and the aesthetic of the vintage era, working with a similar colour palette of orange, browns and creams and what research I have gathered to support how I would like to design my island. I am also going to show the first initial concepts I had drawn up for my own personal island and talk a bit about how I am going to incorporate my style in the texturing and designing of my island and its assets. I am going to end on what I will be working on achieving the next couple of weeks and hopefully what the lectures have seen so far is in the right direction of what they are looking for and I am looking forward to what the lectures have to say about what I have done so far and their advice on how I can continue.