This week we started a new project of a ‘feel good’ animation. There are famous loop videos online of satisfying 3D animation, and our task is to design and animate our own.
To help create these sorts of animation, we were introduced to the MASH tool in maya. We tried it out with some cubes first, I input 10 features, meaning 10 cubes appeared next to my original cube I had placed.
You then can change the scale and rotation of X, Y and Z, and these can tthen be keyed, making animation of various objects much easier to make synched.
I then started thinking about my design for my feel good animation. I really liked the idea of working with gears for this project and making a satisfying mechanical device animation. I started researching inspiration for this idea. I really liked the idea of many gears working together to move something, but also liked the more complex ideas of things fitting into eachother and the balls wokring with the gears.
I started modelling some components I could use in my animation. I made a gear from a pipe polygon, however was soon to learn that there were gears by defult in the polygon primitives section. I also made a spring from a helix polygon, I adjusted it to be more tin like a spring and increased the coils on it.
I then worked on placing two gears next to eachother and fitting the teeth together, making sure when this was animated they placed correctly together.
I then experimented more using MASH with the springs element. I increased the features to 5 springs and changed the pivot point the the end of the curve line of the springs. This way, the MASH animation of the springs stemmed from the bottom of the helix, and was more accurate to the movement of a spring. The animation was simply a scale up to reselmble the spring popping up and then a side to side wobble after this.
I then thought more about what I could add to the gear function. I thought about adding balls going in and out of the gear holes, and played around with this idea. I animated one and then decided to add another gear and add another two balls going in and out of all the gear holes and meeting in the middle. I made dure to edit the animation on the graph editor to make sure the tangents were curved so the animation was smooth. I did this by clicking the hill-like icon at the top bar of the editor on each tangent.
Work from home
I decided to download a HDRI to input into my scene for the lighting, so I could see how this would render out as I went along. I found a fitting background of a machinery interior, this however is too distracting to be in the background visibility when rendered.
I then decided to add some details and textures to my gears. I extruded some edges and added edge loops, I also played with the radius of some of the gears.
I had a turning point here at my design and decided to scrap the balls and the springs in my animation. I wanted to stick to the design being simple and satisying. I started researching more and found this animation that I could take from.
I extruded part of my first gear and created a pipe with a hollow circle at the end. I then created a pipe below and above where the balls would fall from and into. I then did a simple animation of the balls falling through at the perfect moment where the circle is open.
I then added materials such as metal and copper on the gears and the turning circle.
This was a good initial start and I like the idea more, but I will add more elements to this animation.