Category: Maya

This week we looked at rendering out our final animation. I remembered from our balloon project how to do this, however on the settings I needed a re cap of some of the options we need to select.

Before this, I had realised on the render screen I needed to add some more details that might be visible.

I created a new material when I had selected all the faces that would be the gums on the set of teeth I had made. I made them a gum colour, checking in the render screen to see if the colours looked right with the lighting.

I then created a tounge from a cube shape. I made the cube thinner and extruded faces until it looked like the shape of a tounge. I then scaled and moved it to fit in the mouth. I added it to the bottom jaw joint so it wouldn’t stray when the mouth moved, and would move alongisde this.

When I had completed this, I was then ready to render.

After a while, my render was completed and I opened this up on nuke. I noticed however that the lighting was way too dark.

I decided to add spotlights, and use the three light rule, placing one light in front, and two nehind, all at slight angles.

These improved the lighting, but after another render, the .exr file on Nuke was still too dark. I increased the intensity of the sky dome lighting, and this seemed to do the trick. I also removed the sky dome lighting’s visibility on the render screen so I had a black background instead. I then increased the frame range as some of the lip sync was cut off at the end. As you can see I kept noticing minor improvements throguhtout this render journey, and I must have rendered this scene in total about 10 times before I ended up with my final result.

My final render had come out with an Arnold watermark, but with a quick remult node, this got rid of it. I turned the output to sRGB and I then exported this as a mov file, and used a video editor to add back the sound so we could see the lip sync better.

Over christmas, I will be writing an essay for my Design for animation module. This contains a lot of research that aligns with Maya. The objects and animation I will be talking about use the same skills we have learnt about in Maya, so this research will be interesting to compare to what I have learnt so far.

This week we focused on lip synching our face model and animating the face fully alongside audio. For the audio, we chose the final scene of Bladerunner (1982), as this was a monolouge, focusing on one character, and included detailed expressions we could work with.

We took this youtube clip and screen recorded it through OBS Studio. We then exported this to Adobe After Effects so that we could transform this to audio that would work in Maya. We rendered it out as a j-peg image sequence and a wav. file for the audio. Then on Maya it was easy to right click on the animation bar, innsert audio, and then inser the wav file created from this.

We then worked on firstly getting the lip synching correct to the words that were being said. I did this by using a combination of adjusting the jaw joint using rotation, using the blend shapes we had made prior, and creating new blend shapes for specific shapes a mouth would make of specific letters. For example, when we say ‘P’, our lips go inwards, and when we say ‘O’, we create a round shape with our mouth. I used myself as reference for a lot of these words and letters, and also refered to images of mouth shapes such as the one below.

When I had created appropriate blend shapes, I then made keys of the jaw movements, which set the basic outline for then the mouth opens and closes during the speech. At each word said I partially opened the mouth, or opened the mouth a lot, depending on which shape I would need to make with the mouth next.

When the basic opening and closing was done, I started to add the appropriate blend shapes I had created for the mouth according to the letters used at the right time. I keyed the blend shapes to appear when they needed to, and adjusted how much they would show at certain points.

Work from home

At home, I worked on creating overall expressions on the face, to accompany the lip sync. To do this, I used the main head joint to tilt the head and dip the head at certain points. I keyed these head movements to align with the words he was saying, and what looked natural during speech. I again used blend shapes I had created prior such as the frown and the closing eyes, and I created new ones to create the other minor expressions, such as blinking, frowning a little and smirking where these would fit. I had to add correction blend shapes to adjust some geometry that didn’t fit some of the blend shapes, and I kept this contant.

I made sure this animation looked good in the arnold render screen. On the render screen it looks much more realistic and different to the model on the viewport, everything blends in with each other better, and the shadow on the mouth and teeth looks much more real.

I then recorded my animation of this to put here for progress.

This week we worked on more complex animation and facial expressions.

First, I realised that before I continued there was somewthing wrong with my mouth bag, it wouldn’t open properly. With some guidance I realised that my mouth bag was inside out and turned inside out. I turned it in on itself so it would work properly on the animation steps.

I then figured this would help the smile animation on the blend shape editor to look better, before this looked a bit off and could be improved.

I then moved onto the animation of the head leaning back and the mouth opening. I used the centre joint to lean the head back by using the rotation tool. Then we used the paint skin weight tool which allows you to drag the geometry and paint it downwards.

I selected a key on the animation bar, then the jaw joint to drag downwards to create the mouth opening. I then held shift which enabled the smooth tool to smooth out the surface so it would blend in.

This still needs some improving on the uv alignment which I will make sure to do.

This week we worked on joints, teeth and basic animation for our face model.

We started with creating blend shapes in the shape editor, this enabled us to make basic animation shapes by using the grabbing tool for sculpting, and adjusting where we wanted the features to end up at the end of the animation. Then when we selected the slider right to left we see the transition from a natural expression to the changed expression we had made. I did this for smiling, closing eyes, and frowning.

I then did some extra tweaking of my UVs whilst I was waiting for the next part of the lesson. I made the wrinkle lines and eyebrows more smooth on the geometry which made a big improvement.

Next, we worked on adding joints to our face model. For this, we changed to rigging and selected skeleton then create joints. I added 6 joints going from the bottom of the neck, to the centre then towards the chin, this enabled me to have joint manipulation throught the places we needed to move.

I then experimented with rotating the joints and seeing what areas they affected.

This seemed to work, however the eyes were not moving with the head so I needed to fix this. I added the eyes under the selection of the main centre head joint, so it would move along with the head.

Work from home

I still needed to add teeth to my model following through the online recording again. I started by creating a pipe shape, changing its dimensions to the amount of teeth I needed and adjusting the scale and thickness. I then cut it in half.

I then changed it to a smoother surface by pressing 3, and using the lattice tool, changed the verteces to be more rounded and shaped like a mouth.

I then extruded the top faces, and selected off on Keep faces together, so they would seperate. Then, using the move and scale tool I simply adjusted the size and width of them all to appear more realistic.

After this, I needed to seperate the teeth from gums. I created edge loops at the bottom of each tooth to create an indent. After this, I selected the bottom vertex on each tooth and dragged it down to make a more oval shape for the bottom of the teeth, enchancing on the realism we are trying to achieve. I then duplicated the teeth and rotated them so I had a full set of teeth, and placed them inside the mouth bag.

I then added these under the main head joint so that all my components move together.

This week we worked on texturing our face model using UV on Maya. Before this, I needed to improve on the shape of the nose and the nostrils. When I was working on this and asked for guidance, we came across the problem in which I couldn’t sculpt using the sculpting tool, This was because there was an error in the geometry of my face. I needed to re-mirror the face, but we soon came to see the mirroring wasn’t sucessful due to there being triangles and shapes that didn’t line up in my model. I re-did the geometry on the edge of the back of my face model to ensure the mirroring would be sucessful, and sorted any errors in shaping out. This took some time, but allowed me to mirror the model correctly, sculpt the nose and extrude the nostrils. I also added eyelids and a mouth bag. I also smoothed the head and shaped the back of it more.

I then added the eyes under the eyelids by creating a sphere and shaping it, and duplicated this to the other side, lining them up.

We then went on to texturing the face. We downloaded a skin texture and an eye texture and using UV we lined these up. We unfolded the UV grid of our model and used the grabbing tool to line up the appropriate parts of the texture to our model. I also repeated this for the eyes and lined these up with my spheres on the model.

I then wanted the ears to also be present on the model as it looked odd having just a hole, so I filled in the ear spaces and made the UV line up with where the ears would be. The model also looked very dark in the render screen so I added physical light and enhanced the brightness of the skin.

I played around with the UV some more to make the lips more accurate in shape and the wrinkes more lined up. I reshaped the eyebrow placements and adjusted te UV on the back of the head to line up more accurately.

This week we worked on face modelling. We downloaded a free face model and learnt how to use quad draw to draw geometry around his face, and mould it into our own face model. I started by using quad draw to draw the geometry around the eye to create the eye shape, and practice using the tool.

For a while, I couldn’t adjust the shapes and change the geometry. After I asked for guidence on this, I simply had the soft brush on and had to turn it off by pressing B. This was a very simple mistake but if I run into this problem again, now I know how to solve this.

I started building up the geometry on the full face.

I kept running into areas where I couldnt complete the geometry without making triangles, and I needed them all to be 4 sided. However, with a lot of trial and error, and fiddling around with the shapes, and creating more or less edge loops, I completed the geometry on half of the head model. I used the relax tool to smooth out all the geometry which proved to make much of a difference and a benefit.

Next, we had to line up the edge and the verteces at the halfway mark so it was level. For this we switched to top view, and selected the end verteces and scaled them inwards to create a level halfway point. Then, we mirrored the half on which we applied quad draw to, switched the the smoother view (3), and I was suprised to see that the nose was almost completely hollow, and it just didn’t look detailed enough.

Work from home

I figured at home this might be becuase my geometry wasn’t detailed enough, as I deleted edge loops to ensure no triangles were included. Also, I hadn’t covered the nose in detail round the nostrils, and I needed to make the eye almost completely covered to create the eyelids. I worked on all of these improvements, then followed the same steps of leveling the halfway verteces and mirroring, and the result was much better, with the details I wished to be included present now.

This week, we developed texturing and details on our balloon. My previous model for my balloon was okay, but I’m glad we were given guidance on how to improve this because it was still lacking realism.

First, I added pipes to my boilers I had created and added some more colour to the actual balloon.

I then worked on adding ringlets to where the ropes would be attached. I struggled with the tool called duplicate special to do this, but then figured it was because my centre wasn’t in the centre of the world. I then also bent the pipes to align with the other bars using the soft brush tool.

Then I looked at adding a more realistic texture to the weave basket, and the metal on the balloon. I found a weave texture picture, and applied this to the basket. I then found wooden texture on Poly Haven to add to the trim of the basket to break up the colour. Finally, I found scratched metal to add to the metal on the balloon, to show a more worn and realistic material.

I then added an appropriate lighting source, of a beach downloaded from Poly Haven, checked if my texture looked okay from within the basket as well, and then reviewed the balloon for any other details I could add.

For the animation I set up 77 frames of my balloon turning 360 degrees, made the animation graph linear and played this through to see if it was okay. Finally, I was ready to render this balloon animation ready for my Nuke class. I waited roughly 30 minutes for this after class, and made sure all the settings were correct.

Initially when it was finished I was confused as it wouldn’t open on Nuke, and was just 77 exr images, but in my session with Christos I was taught that the .exr file would be under the read node of image reader.

This week, we developed our modelling skills, especially using the Resolve tool on Maya. Our aim this lesson was to create a hot air balloon model to use in rendering in our Nuke class. However, to become familiar with Resolve, we had a task of creating a glass and bottle using this tool.

I started by creating a wine glass and bottle with the resolve tool, and had basic 3d shapes of them to begin.

I then chose a standard surface and made their materials frosted glass to appear on the redering screen. I also altered the sizes, and made the bottle green to appear more like a bottle. I added lighting in the background for the render screen for the models to appear in a lounge also.

I then used the inverse selection of the cup to produce the contents of the wine. I made the material red and at this point I hadn’t caught onto the fact I should have been using aiStandard surface on the Arnold section, so I chose the preset surface of milk.

At this point, I felt like my models could be made to be better, so I played around with the materials and found the arnold option, which included Glass and Clear water as options, I replaced my materials with this and already it was starting to look better.

At this point, I was much happier with my models however something still seemed off. I realised the shape of my bottle and the sizings were unrealistic, when I modified these I was left with my final result.

When the class was done with this task, we moved onto making the hot air balloon using these same techniques. I began with modelling the balloon with resolve again, and created a balloon shape with intrusions made with the extrude tool.

I then created the bar that would hold the ropes by creating it from a pipe and making it a curved square shape.

Next was probably the most difficult part for me during the whole session. Creating the ropes. I drew the guide line for where I wanted the rope to go to. We created three circles on the base of the grid, and extruded them so they would make three cylinders. However I really struggled to twist the rope, with lots of restarting and playing with numbers on the twist option, I finally managed to get the rope effect and all three cylinders to wrap around one another. I then duplicated them symetrically to go all the way around.

I then created the baset using the extrusion tool on the bar I had already made. I started off with a rough basket but then re-did it to make it look cleaner and more realistic.

I then created the metal bars to hold these peices together by rotating the same cylinder shape on its edited pivot and dupliated these around the baset leaading up to the bar. I then added a rope material and colour to these, a brushed metal material to the bars and a red balloon suraface material to the balloon.

For this session, time had run out but I ended with this model.

Work from home

I knew this wasn’t complete, so in my spare time at home I worked on inputting a model and chair to make it more realistic. I made the chair a tree trunk to create a vintage feeling for the balloon. I then put a pre-made female sitting on the chair to see what a person would look like in my model. I also made the ends of the balloon curved so it would look more like a real hot air balloon would.

I then added boilers to the balloon. I made these from cylinders, then used the extrusion tool to make them have a boiler shape, and details. I created the bar to join them with a cylinder also, then created the brushed metal surface material to complete it.

This week we really worked on more modelling in terms of manipulating shapes and turning them into what we want.

We were given the task of making a Lego man, a simplistic place to start in terms of reshaping cubes and cylinders on Maya. I chose the reference photo below:

I started by creating the head shape from a cube, smoothing it off and creating a more rounded shape. We worked a lot with extrusion of faces, which made an indent in the head, and created the neck.

We then created the torso, this was perhaps the easiest part of the task as we just took a cube and adjusted the vertexes.

One of the more challenging steps was creating the waist and legs. We used a cylinder shape and played with extrusion again to create a part in-between the legs that I spent some time trying to line up with the legs. To create the feet I extruded the faces at the bottom of the legs.

I then put what I had made together, making sure they lined up and connected.

Then I faced the most challenging part of the session, making the arms was most difficult due to the sculpting and rotation angles involved. We created a base arm shape from a cylinder, and circularized the bottom of it to come to a more narrow end. With help from Nick, I eventually learnt how to construct the arm shape better, and realised it was because I forgot to edit the pivot of the rotation on the arm. I then used sculpting tools to round and smooth the shape.

Creating the hands was a little bit easier, I created a pipe shape, deleted the bottom faces and played with the vertexes and smoothness to match the reference photo. I then mirrored the arms and hand to duplicate it accurately on the other side.

This was the end of the session, but when I went home the rest of the week I wanted to add some more detail so it matched my reference photo more. I added standard surfaces through assigning new materials to make the colour of the Lego man, and added a sky dome light, both things in which I learnt from last week, and I finished the final model.

Before this class I only had basic knowledge of Maya, I had done the tutorials provided by Maya when you first download the software. I knew how to move around, scale objects, rotate objects and basic sculpting. I also had learnt some lighting techniques and animation. However, in this class I learnt about these things in more detail and put these into practice with making a tesla truck model.

Before this, we learnt how to sculpt a cube into a shape, add environment lighting by adding a sky dome light but customizing the area and lighting we wanted. One challenging part was creating a shadow for the render frame. We picked the material of area lighting from downloading an environment from Poly Haven, my shadow wouldn’t show up for some reason, however with some help I found it was due to no shadow mat being applied to my plate under the shape. With this we could see the shadow of the shape by adding a hidden plate below it.

We then applied this directly to making a model of the tesla truck. I learnt how to take a cube and make it into a truck shape, experimenting with vertex and edge rotation and scaling. My tesla ended up being very similar to the reference picture I took from being that it was a blocky shape, so was a good starting point to practice modelling.

We then added surface materials to make the truck look metal. I downloaded a modern building scene from Poly Haven and applied it to the sky dome light surface. This made the truck look like it was in this area in the render frame due to the shine on the metal surface responding to the lighting of the environment. We also experimented with shadows; I applied what I had learnt from my previous mistake and added a shadow effect on the plate below.

Probably the hardest part for me was constructing the tyres, when I got the hang of this though I applied it to all 4 of the tyres, and added a rubber and metal surface material accordingly to them. To make them look realistic we had to experiment with dragging selected faces inwards to create the ribbed effect tyres have.

We didn’t complete adding windows and other details to the truck, but this is something I will experiment in my spare time. I am happy with how my truck turned out, regardless of some imperfections for my first time modeling I was happy, especially with how I managed to get the shaping and construction very similar to the reference picture we had.