Visual Effects 2 Presentation

We had to do a presentation in class for visual effects and I partnered up with my friend Alex. We ended up doing a galaxy or milky way out of particles in Maya. It was fairly easy and I added some animation to it to make it seem more 3D. I had a lot of fun with this project and I really loved how the galaxy came out.

Visual Effects 2 Class

For our first project we had to create a fluid fire in Maya. I decided to do a simple campfire fire, that looked something like the image below. I broke down the color of the fire, the shape and where the heat seem to be the hottest. I had some trouble when I messed with the opacity in Maya to get it just right. I had the most fun messing with the colors, at first I made blue fire then green. In the end, I went with the reference colors from the image.

My final version of the fire:

STE-Software Technology- Research Project

The Marble Machine

For our research project we were allowed to work in teams. Our goal was to make a simulation in Houdini without any key frames on the marble. Each of the team members had to model at least two props for the marble machine. I partnered up with Hannah. For my models I made the ramp and the shovel that would guide the marble into the funnel, they were both made in Maya. Originally, the marble was supposed to reach the edge of the ramp, fall into the shovel and then slowly be dropped into the funnel. What actually ended up happening was a sort of edited version.

Reference:

Modeled:

At first we had trouble getting the merge node to work because of a little caution, I found out that it was the funnel causing the error. Hannah believed it was because it had inside faces so she deleted the outer ring of the funnel which seemed to fix the problem.

We made the marble into an "Active" rigid body, which in Houdini is called "RBD object" and made everything else a static object. The ball kept falling through the ramp and stop at the ground plane. We both researched the possible causes of it, but after awhile Hannah figured out by not merging them but keeping them separate would it register as static objects. The marble kept floating off to the sides and then get stuck on a turn for the funnel. We couldn't get the shovel to get the hinge constraint so it would swing down when the ball hit it, so it was made into a static object. It was originally supposed to be one piece, but it was changed to be two pieces where the marble would fall into the ramp.

What we didn't manage to fix was when the fall dropped down the funnel and reached the ramp it would forcibly try to make its way through the geometry. So we couldn't get it to move anywhere after it reached the ramp.
This is how it looked in the end.

Here is the video of the simulation. 

Character Animation 2:

For our first major project we had to do an animation that included at least three steps and followed a prompt that was given to us. I chose one where the character is to be texting and then bumps into a glass door, but I decided to make him look down at his watch which is broken. I filmed the reference to where he dramatically falls to the floor, but I decided to cut that part out to keep it simple. I had the most problem trying to make him seem like he slams into the door rather than just bumps into it. The antenna were fun to animate to create weight and emotion.

The following is my pre-pro which includes exploratory thumbnails, breakdowns and a storyboard for my project.

This is the final product:

VSD- Final Project


For our final we rendered all the things we textured during the month [except for week 1, which was a reminder of how to light things in Maya] into different passes. What I did was the stain in the front of the box, added the sticker, UV/Textured the scrapper, made the bottle look transparent and the "soda" look like soda from a jarrito [Mexican drink].Once we rendered the lights in Maya [warm light, cool light, key light] we broke them apart in Nuke and put them back together adding grades and color corrections. I have to admit I enjoyed Nuke a bit more than the hypershade in Maya because it is easier for me to understand. The sticker on the box gave me the biggest problem because the first time around it wouldn't show up and I didn't know why that was happening. Apparently I had some issues with it being a surface shader and not showing up. I managed to fix it later on for project 3. Here is my before and after picture for my scene, the one on bottom is the render straight from Maya and on the top is the one edited in Nuke with grades, color corrections. I also added a ramp and changed the colors to give it an instagram filter feeling. The darkest/shadows being dark blue and the lightest a light warm orange. We were asked to make a vignette which was to make the surrounding area fade to black. [The little confetti is from NukeX PLE version, who has the money to buy the real thing anyways.] I gotta say overall the caustics was pretty interesting to learn, The light coming from the bottle and the little ripples were interesting to make. Wish I could have worked faster to add in some spheres to give it its fizzy feel.

                                          After:

Before:

Here is also a picture of the sticker up close: [Drawn by Luisa Reyes a.k.a Gunmi] 

VSD- Visual Development

For project 2 we created UVs and textured a scrapper. I took longer than expected with the UVs, but I did enjoy it because of the final outcome of it. It was a nice reminder of the tools that I could use to speed up my workflow. I took the parts of the scrapper that were seen and made them as big as possible in the 0 to 1 space then scaled down the parts that were hidden to take up as little space as possible. The scrapper had several pieces to it and despite the little inside faces of the bolts on it I really liked making the UVS neat using the cylindrical mapping. Here is the texture for the scrapper.

I will upload the finish product in my next post along with a few other things I lighted and textured for class.

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So much blogging today hot damn! So to the next project! My most recent project for now is the MeltMan. (It probably won't be the most recent for long though) We were given a scene with a high res poly melt man. He had the goals already set up so it was easy to handle the soft bodies from that point on. I like to stick with the basics and learn them real well before moving on to the harder more original things. I made him melt and then added a glow to him to make him look radioactive. I added some lighting and got to model the barrels real quick. The render took about 2 hours for 120 frames that were then taken to after effects, composited together and then added the little clip of music. See for yourself how it came out! Critiques would be very much appreciated.