Have a snowly Christmas

Christmas will soon be upon us so I wanted to finish off the modeling assignment before then...at least the main animation bit. That way, I don't have to worry about this assignment and can focus on my programming assignments. Funny, I thought I would enjoy my programming lessons and assignments more but this modeling assignment is not so bad after all. Maybe it's due to past experience or getting better tutors.

Fittingly, the final part represents winter so naturally there is snow. The sword will also go into a deep slumber. Unlike last time, there was no problems with animating the eyes besides resizing the pupils so that they fit inside the eyelids.

Here's the full preview (not rendered yet).





The animation is fully complete. The only things left to do include polishing the scene up like perhaps making the background look more like a mountain.

It's Raining Swords

Today, I've managed to get the rain falling to represent Autumn. Apart from my birthday being in October, Autumn is my least favourite season. It's the season where it gets colder and wetter. Adding rain was quite simple even though it may look like there's lots of rain that it blocks the scenery as you can see below:




In actual fact, the rain looks more natural in render as shown below:

Also managed to increase the size of the flames and tackling a problem I've had with the sword's eyes. You see, for some reason, the eyelids were moving erratically on their own in between the time frame from angry to sad when they're supposed to be still. This was a problem that happened in my last project too and I have no idea why it does that. To solve it, I had to copy and paste frames in between the gaps.

There is now only one more season to animate.

BURN IT WITH FIRE!

Moving onto spring and entering summer (I wish it was summer now actually. So cold this winter) with fire.

In order to make the fire appear at a certain time (six seconds onwards) and make the grass disappear, I've used the Visibility check box under the Attribute section. It is checked when I want them to appear and unchecked when I want them hidden. At both events, a keyframe is set on the timeframe.

There are probably other ways to achieve this but this is the method I've found and tested myself. You can have a look below:



Although I think the flames could be bigger...

In addition to the flames, you can see that I've got the sword's eyes to look angry. This was also achieved by using keyframes, moving the eye lids where appropriate. Its looks give me shivers down my spine...

Is it Spring yet?

Today I was leaving Blend Shapes for now and moving onto animating the scene (as there's about a month to go before the deadline).

One thing I've learnt is that it is better to have a couple of small patches of grass than one big one. When I've tried painting in a huge chunk of grass onto my scene, my computer started to load very...very....slowly...so after I've managed to delete the huge grass, I've made a few smaller patches. I can justify this reason by setting the scene in a mountain area as you don't get that much grass in the mountains anyway. It's mainly rocky. Speaking of which, I've needed a rocky texture to make the setting look more convincing. There are no mountains nearby where I live so I took a picture of the gravel in my back garden instead.

More background scenery could be added soon but this will do in the meantime as you cans see in this five second preview which represents Spring. The ideal total time could be 20 seconds, 5 seconds per season. You can see the grass blowing in the wind and the eyes moving from side to side as if it's waiting for someone and examining its surroundings.




The "Es" that were used to move the eyes (from the Aim and Constrain tutorial used earlier) are hidden off screen so they won't appear in the video but I can still use them while animating.

Gone with the Wind

I've added my first paint effect onto my project today. It's a grass to represent Spring. It can blow in the wind rather nicely as you can see here in a short preview:




I wish I have more paint effects to show you but I was also busy with a technique called Blend Shape which allows you to animate your model even easier than before. You create two different shapes and this option will allow to swift between the two even if you delete the original shape.

Here's how it works:

• Select the altered shape before shift select the original shape

• Under the Animation window, select Create Deformers -> Blend Shape toolbox

• Type in: blendShape (exactly as shown) in Blendshape node before clicking "Create"

• To actually alter and animate the shape, you need to open its window in Window -> Animate Editors -> Blend shape

• Move the slider up and down to alter the shape.

...unfortunately I have been having problems myself. My shape would not change as you can see below...


I've followed the steps shown above so I'm not sure where I've went wrong...

Sonic's eyes

Been wondering what kind of texture to use for the sword's eyes. Turns out that the answer was right in front of me.

Last month on the 30th was my 21st birthday and a friend of mine gave me a Sonic bobble head as a present.
He now sits at my desk and whenever I get stressed or bored, I just tap Sonic's head. Funny enough, Sonic has recently celebrated his birthday too with Sonic Generations which revisits past levels throughout the 20 years of Sonic.

Anyway, I've decided to use bits of the Sonic bobble head to use as the sword eye's textures. The eyeballs were taken from Sonic's own white eyeball. As you can guess next, the pupils were taken from Sonic's black pupils. But what about the eyelids? They were actually taken from Sonic's mouth. Here is the result:
They look quite natural for eyes and I believe the sword is fully textured. Animating the scene and adding environments shall be the next step.

Second thoughts

You know, something has been bothering me about the texture sword. I've recently figured out why. If you look at other swords, the handle and face parts of the swords are normally consistent. But because I've applied different colours to my sword, it sticks out like a sore thumb. Also, wooden handles are not really common in swords. So I've fixed this by applying the same texture from the sword's outer face to the handles and I must say that the design looks a lot better:

I've also added a new texture, this time to the inner face. I've used the bin texture but turned the colour white instead. Now only the eyes remain.

Texture Preview

I've decided to add some textures and here's what it looks like so far:

I must admit, it's looking a bit odd so far. Probably because the realistic textures takes away the cute look I'm aiming for. Here are the textures I've used for the sword.

The blade part needed a metal texture to make it look sharp. I've used a regular kitchen knife, chopping off the background so they would not interfere with the texture.
I've envisioned the handles to be wooden so I've used my wardrobe. Because of the lighting from my camera, I had to turn up the brightness in Photoshop making it look better.

Since I was using different kind of materials, I thought I might use plastic for the outer face part. I've used my own bin for the texture.
The face, eyes and eyebrows has not been textured yet. I was thinking of using organic textures for them but I'm not sure what to use yet.

Presenting the Eyelids

Today (after a false start with the computer taking ages to load and then for no reason at all, decides to restart itself) I've managed to model the eyelid.

Firstly, I've decided to reshape the actual eyes making them more round. This is so I can model the eyelids easier using the previous tutorial I've found. This time I've managed to create a smoother shape. Last time, I was moving the shape's vertex in perspective view. The process works but the end result was that the eyelid looked messy. This time, I was using the Top and Side view instead which makes the eyelid a bit more professional as you can see below where the wireframes look natural.
I've tested the eyelids in different potions using the rotate tool. Pleased to report that they are working well so far. Admittedly, they don't make the sword look as cute anymore but that may change if I add textures...

Very first sword preview

Today I've got on modeling the sword. Here are previews of what I've done so far (without textures).



I've first started to model the face, consisting of two spheres. The front face is basically a duplicate of the back face only reduced in size. The handles were made using cylinders with the top part had their vertexes extended to make them more handle like. The blade itself is made from a cone (this may subject to change as it looks a bit too rigid at the moment, reminding me of an ice pick). The eyes were made last but I have not created the eyelids yet. I was mainly seeing if they would fit on the sword's face first and adjusting their size accordantly.

The progress was quick and I'm so far satisfied with the model so far. I shall be adding the eyelids next in addition on making the eyes move using the tutorial I've previously found.

Look into my eyes

Over the past few days, I've been trying to follow this eye tutorial I've found:

http://www.jawa9000.com/Technical/eyes/eyes.htm

It's an ok tutorial. Some steps are simple but it requires you to know a bit about Maya beforehand in order to follow the options (especially the textures part and the latter steps) and I think it might be more suited for an older version of Maya.

Anyway, I did manage to successfully make the eyeball move around. Here is a short video I've made demonstrating the tutorial:





I've created a simple shape that I can move around and by using the "Aim" option under the "Constrain" tool, the eyeball will follow.

Sadly, the other steps in the tutorial didn't help much. It goes onto how to make the eyeball blink but I was having a hard time following the steps and didn't think I was going anywhere with it. So I am pleased that I've got the eyeball moving but disappointed in that I couldn't finish the tutorial. It also would had been useful if it gave some more tips on how to model the actual eyeball. The eyeball itself was simple enough but the lids was a bit tricky (hence the reason why they look odd in the video). Truth to be told, my modeling skills aren't that great. Something that has stuck by me since college in 3DS Max.

However, I could use these eyes for my assignment so they're not wasted. In the meantime, I could try to look up more tutorials (specifically on the ones that tells you how to animate the eye's lids) or move onto creating the sword itself.

Plenty of designs

Using the mood board for ideas, I was able to design my own swords. The aim was to keep the design simple enough so it'll be easy to model & animate but also to show its emotions and sympathy clearly. As I was drawing designs, one reoccurring design was the round face which I particularly liked. It was perfect for showing off its feelings as faces are round and it also looked cute. However, I did not like drawing the actual textures and patterns on the sword itself as I thought it looked distracting. The final model will have textures but for now, I shall leave it out.


After drawing many designs, I've picked the one that I've liked the best for my final design:

My animation idea is for the sword to be left alone, abandoned by its owner, showing its emotions as time goes by. The environment and the emotions will change with the seasons. Starting in spring, the sword will be feeling anxious, wondering where its owner is. There will be some greenly like grass and trees surrounding the area. In summer, the sword will be experiencing anger. Fire will appear to help emphasize the emotion. Rain will fall in autumn as the sword feels sad. Finally in a snowy winter, the sword having accepting its fate, falls into a deep slumber.

I hope I will be able to model and animate this by the coming weeks. However I properly should look up pictures of emotions and look up how to model eyes in order to help with my ideas.

A Tale of Maya and Swords

I have some great news.

I've managed to successfully download Maya 2011 onto my computer. Last year I had problems due to the fact that I couldn't access my university email account in order to verify my account. Now that I've linked it to my home email account, I was able to complete the download. I'm very pleased about this as this will help with completing my assignment greatly where I can use my free time at home to work on my model instead of having to rely on the limited time in university.

Speaking of my assignment, it's likely that I will stick to the sword face idea. To help me design my sword, I've gathered some images of swords onto a mood board. It contains a mix of fantasy swords (mainly from video games) and real ones.

Swords with faces have been done before. One example is the sword named Caliburn from Sonic and the Black Knight released for the Wii in 2009. The sword could talk and during cutscenes, you can see his eyes and mouth below the hilt. His gentlemen attitude clashes with Sonic's and the two would often insult each other. Below is a video link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djucfJLEr68&feature=player_detailpage#t=165s

For my design, I would probably produce a similar design to Caliburn's but with more focus on the eyes as they can show off some emotions quite easily like anger or sorrow.

Fun with painting

Today's lecture was pretty fun. We were using the Paint Effect tool in Maya. Compared to the actual modeling it's pretty simple and fun. We've played around painting a plane with dry grass and trees as well as changing the colour of the grass. I've turned it blue as it's my favourite colour (it would be worrying however if there were blue grass in real life though).

Here is a screenshot of the results:

I remember using the Paint Effect last year when I've added Fire in my own project. There are plenty of other paint effects to use like weather. I also remember that you can animate them so it would really help my idea a lot if I can find out how to animate these effects.