Turntables for Tribe 17

Got round to creating turntables for the main three characters of Tribe 17, with Tribe A, B and C. Unfortunately, the latter two videos are not in HD yet (as vimeo only allows 1 HD video a week), but they will become HD sometime later in the next week or so.

Mental Ray - Caustics, Materials, Physical Sun, Portal Lights, HDRI

A lengthy post coming up - looking at Mental Ray with Caustics, Materials, Physical Sun and Sky, Portal Lights and HDR images.

Caustics
Caustics is the name given to the phenomenon of bright hot spots when light is refracted through materials such as glass or water. In this case, applying the caustic setting (along with final gather and global illumination) helps to simulate this effect.




Mix_Materials_X
Mental Rays default mix_materials_x has a number of preset settings that work quite effectively. The versatility of the material is impressive especially considering the fact that these presets can be combined and mixed together for entirely unique results.




Physical Sun and Sky
Mental Ray has the option of using a Physical Sun and sky to light a scene - here we delve into some of the finer settings.

With a default sun and sky, the horizon line must be adjusted to match the scene.


Adjusting the physical sun direction will simulate different times of day, where the sun disc scale attribute can be tweaked to change the size of the sun.


A early afternoon lighting is achieved by rotating the sun by a rough value of 135.


If necessary, the hue to red/blue can be tweaked to match specific scenes.


Where the haze setting can be adjusted to create a clear day or an overcast one.


Saturation levels can also be tweaked to a desired effect.


Shadows created by the physical sun and sky can also be tweaked. With the example below, increasing the softness and number of samples can help achieve a softer look to shadows while maintaining quality.



Portal Lights
Mental Ray's physical sun and sky do not work so well with interiors. However, this can be amended with the use of portal lights to help light any interior scenes. As such, ambient occlusion and colour bleed can be used to have colour bounce of surfaces.




HDR (High Dynamic Range) Images
HDR images used for lighting can provide a much greater level of detail to a scene, particularly with reflective surfaces. Often, it alludes to the world outside the scene with a chrome ball type reflection.

Base scene


Tweaking colour gain and offset values is integral to achieve desired results when using HDR images. While it may not be noticeable in the examples below, different HDR images were used to experiment with gain and offset values.

Maya Dynamics #08

This week, we also continued with some more Maya dynamic tutorials with particles. Here we are controlling goal weights with some expressions to allow the mud to slide off the golf ball. The later part of the video shows the goal weights being controlled by a locator control. And finally, we looked at using sprites as particles to create a sparkle effect.

Tribe 17 - Final Animation

Transcription project is over! I am proud to present Tribe 17 - performing a ritual to attract fireflies which in turn power themselves

Final Animation


Its been a very challenging project that I've certainly learnt a lot from; namely from character design, rigging and animating in Maya. Unfortunately due to time constraints, some scenes did not make it into the final cut. Namely a opening sequence moving slowly amidst the junk piles to better establish the scene of the ritual, as well as resolving the animation in terms of context with a firefly awakening a new tribe robot amidst the junk.

Despite this, I’m happy with what I have achieved in the 10 weeks that this project has taken. There may be opportunities to return to this project in the future, but in the mean time, the skills that I have learnt and developed in this project has been invaluable to me.

Catch a look behind the scenes with the art of publication below, as well as the technical paper which outlines the stages in the rigging process in more detail.

Art of Tribe 17
Art of Tribe 17

Technical Paper
Tribe17 Technical Paper Leo

Enjoy!

Turnaround - Tribe A

Turnaround for Character Tribe A

Update + DVD Cover/Label

A quick update as things are pretty tight around here. Scenes are off rendering in the background and well, hopefully everything will come together in the end. In the mean time, I'm taking care of the other tasks still left to do.

Here is a quick render of a scene in progress, note that things are unsmoothed in this image with no matte painting either.



I've also put together a DVD label and cover ready for submission.




Back to work!

Tribe 17 - Rig IK Legs

A minor setback, in that I had to edit the original rigs to include IK handles for the legs and feet. Learning from this mistake, I understand a lot more than I originally did with rigging and the use of IK handles. It will make life much easier when animating - which I'll be concentrating all my efforts to.

Displacement + Final Gathering + Global Illumination

Here we have explored the use of Displacement, Final Gathering and Global Illumination with Maya and Mental Ray.

Displacement
Displacement maps can add additional detail to basic geometry. Where black areas of the map are 'lowered' and white areas are 'raised' off the object mesh, 'Mid-Greys' are the baseline value where no displacement will occur.



For displacement maps to work properly, its important to determine the Mid-Grey value of the map by adjusting the 'Alpha Gain' and 'Alpha Offset' accordingly.



Below are further examples of displacement, using a non-subdivision setup for unsmoothed objects, a subdivision setup for smoothed surfaces as well as a nurb surface displacement.




Final Gathering
Final Gather works by projecting 'Final Gather Rays' into a scene which scatter upon contact of an object's surface. This effectively calculates 'bounced light and colour' which can be used to light a scene independently or in conjunction with Global Illumination.




Global Illumination
Global Illumination makes use of the photons being projected into a scene. The photons are absorbed and reflected throughout the scene where colour inheritance can occur to bounce or bleed as it moves between different surfaces and their respective material. As such, global illumination can mimic real-world lighting conditions as the photons carries wavelengths of the colour spectrum. Final Gather can also be used to smooth the photons out.

Maya Dynamics #07

Here we explored how to control animation cycles with instancing particles. In the scenarios below, the animation cycle is offset for each instance while working with the scene; the robot's feet matches contact with the ground, as well as the spiders following the curvature of the nurb surface.

Environment + Blocking Animation

Apologises for the slow update, I've been working away getting my scene set up, reading up some animation techniques and resources (see at end of post); and embarking on some first steps of animation myself.

To reiterate, the members of Tribe 17 are performing a ritual amidst a junkyard to attract nature's fireflies which in turn power them. Tribe character A, being a 'witch doctor' figure, leads the ritual and will be the focus of animation. Character B will manually operating the pile driver, striking the junk to create sparks that attract the fireflies; where character C will form the makeup of worshippers and perhaps even a drumming accompaniment. And ideally, at the very end we will see a lone firefly enter some parts of junk to awaken a new 'junk' tribesman to the group.

Here is the setup of the scene where the animation will take place. There will be a number of establishing shots, which will cut to close ups of animation matching with the sound. I also intend to have some duplicates of the secondary characters B and C to help populate the scene, which slight variation should be simple enough to add to the models if necessary.





I've begun experimenting with the secondary animated characters B and C first to build up my confidence for the main character of animation, where I've started by blocking some of their key poses before animating fully. The first is pulling the rope to operate the pile driver, and the second is kneeling with some worshipping type motions. As such, its pretty rough as the keys are simply stepped at the moment moving from pose to pose.



Once I have more blocked/animated parts done, I will be able to start cutting clips together into a previs form to match with the original track of Soundscape 17.

Whilst establishing my scene and getting my hands stuck into the animating, I've also been looking at some resources to help me on my way. The 11 Second Club has some great resources on their site, particularly the 'Helpful Hints' section hosting a number of great guides when it comes to animating - so be sure to check them out.

I'm still reading through them, but some I found a good read so far are:

The Top Five
Why We Block
Back and Forth
Put It There
Giving Yourself Permission

Motion Blur + Depth of Field

Here we have explored the use of Motion blur and Depth of Field within Maya Software and Mental Ray.

Motion Blur

Motion blur can be useful in adding to the believability of movement as demonstrated with the jet planes below.



However, it can significantly increase render times and should thus only be used when appropriate to the scene. The image below demonstrates the difference between Maya Software motion blur to Mental Ray's motion blur, with the latter added another minute to fully render. Switching from 'Scanline' to 'Rapid Motion' (rasterizer) in Mental Ray can help reduce render time while keeping desirable results.




Depth of Field

Depth of field can be achieved with Maya's cameras to simulate real-world cameras in focusing on specific subjects. Again, this increases overall render time where Zdepth render layers could be used instead to simulate depth of field in compositing.

Maya Dynamics #06

Delving further into the use of instancing with dynamics, here we've looked at creating variation within the particle instances with rotation, scale and aiming expressions; to emitting particles from instances themselves, to populating a scene with trees using instances of paint effects.

Tribe 17 - Rigged + Controls

The members of Tribe 17 are now fully rigged with working controls. It took a little doing to get things moving as intended, most parts are parented to joints although a few specific areas had to be skinned.





Now the animating can begin in earnest!

Tribe Character Model C

Third character model complete! Again, areas were changed when translating the original design in order for the model to function better in a 3D space.







Front, Side, Back.





With the three character models complete, I hope to get them rigged up as soon as possible in order to begin some much eagerly awaited animation.

Tribe Character Model A - Edits

Made some minor tweaks to Tribe character model A, heightening the legs slightly and adjusting the feet.