Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Monday, May 3, 2010
Final Documentation: Storyboard
Here is my original storyboard for the final. During the production of the video, some things were changed and/or added. Instead of shaking his fist, the hand does a "thumbs down" motion. In addition, I added "lights" for the pinball machine.
Final Documentation: Self-Evaluation
Much like the midterm, I am satisfied with what I was able to accomplish but I wish I could have done more. I think the pinball machine looks much more authentic now, which was one of my main goals. In addition, I think the Pong machine, while simple, makes the video a lot more visually appealing overall. I also like the bright lighting as opposed to the darkness of my midterm video. When I finished my midterm I was considering using dynamics to make the pinball motion more fluid, but as I progressed on the other elements of the project, I soon realized that adding dynamics would be too ambitious. Also, If I had more time, I would have smoothed out the pinball animation on the rails as well. As it is, I think its passable but I wish it was a little better. Unfortunately, Maya has a bad habit of crashing at the worst possible times, and as a result I had to redo that part of the project more than once. Under my current time constraints, however, I felt I did a good job.
Final Documentation: Production Log
My first task was to create working hands. Originally, I had planned to create the hands using a NURBS sphere as the palm and cylinders as the fingers. However, I soon realized that using cylinders for the fingers made the hands look outright ugly. As a result, I decided to create the fingers out of spheres manipulated by CVs instead. The fingers are segmented at each joint, making it easy to implement the skeleton. The first time I designed the hand, the points on the skeleton were too close together and it led to several problems. As a result, I started from scratch and managed to get working hands. I manipulated the hands to put them in very specific positions. I wanted the motion of putting in the coin, pulling the plunger, and pushing the buttons to be somewhat realistic, so I manipulated most of the joints on each finger. In addition, I soon realized that I was unable to make a convincing fist due to the fingers being far apart from each other. Instead, I made a "thumbs down" motion with the hand, which worked well.
I made several changes to the actual pinball board. I made the red border on the side significantly smaller to give me more space. The two main additions were the metal ramps, which were made with cylinders. I manipulated each ramp so they would overlap each other in a way so the pinball could easily go over both ramps without running into one while going on the other. I added more NURBS planes to represent lights, which now change color when the pinball goes over them. I redesigned the bumpers to make them look closer to the bumpers on an actual pinball machine by lofting two NURBS circles.
The box in the original video has been replaced with a treasure chest, which I think looks nicer. In addition, the treasure chest opens up once the pinball hits it. I used Phong shaders to give the machine a more metallic feel. In addition, I added an area light in the center of the machine. I think the pinball in particular has a very nice metallic effect on it. When I rendered, I turned on raytracing to take adavantage of the high reflectivity on the shaders. I also added a semi-transparent plane on top to simulate plexiglass. Originally this was less transparent but I quickly realized that this caused the colors of the objects on the machine to look really washed out.
The Pong machine was probably the easiest part of the project overall. Much like the LED screen, I used small planes moving in front of a NURBS cube to create the illusion that the game is on the screen. The dot moved at about 15 frames per volley in order to ensure fluid movement. Ideally, I would have liked to simulated a more complex game like Space Invaders or Pac-Man but this was the best I could do in the interest of time.
By far the hardest part of the project was adding in more animation for the pinball to utilize the new ramps. I had to do a lot of copying and pasting keyframes in order to squeeze in the new animation, and it doesn't move as smoothly as I would like. However, I changed the camera to pan around the machine at this point which worked better than keeping the overheard cam and made the stilted movement of the pinball much harder to notice. The spanning camera view was also chosen because it shows that the models look good from several different angles. After rendering, I kept this shot because I really like how the view highlights the metallic shading on the pinball. Because it was hard enough to make the animation look believable with keyframes, I decided it would be too frustrating to try and add dynamics.
Unfortunately, I was unable to add sound. My plan was to add pinball style sound effects, and then a losing horn at the end. However, I spent over an hour trying to find public domain pinball sounds online, to no avail.
I made several changes to the actual pinball board. I made the red border on the side significantly smaller to give me more space. The two main additions were the metal ramps, which were made with cylinders. I manipulated each ramp so they would overlap each other in a way so the pinball could easily go over both ramps without running into one while going on the other. I added more NURBS planes to represent lights, which now change color when the pinball goes over them. I redesigned the bumpers to make them look closer to the bumpers on an actual pinball machine by lofting two NURBS circles.
The box in the original video has been replaced with a treasure chest, which I think looks nicer. In addition, the treasure chest opens up once the pinball hits it. I used Phong shaders to give the machine a more metallic feel. In addition, I added an area light in the center of the machine. I think the pinball in particular has a very nice metallic effect on it. When I rendered, I turned on raytracing to take adavantage of the high reflectivity on the shaders. I also added a semi-transparent plane on top to simulate plexiglass. Originally this was less transparent but I quickly realized that this caused the colors of the objects on the machine to look really washed out.
The Pong machine was probably the easiest part of the project overall. Much like the LED screen, I used small planes moving in front of a NURBS cube to create the illusion that the game is on the screen. The dot moved at about 15 frames per volley in order to ensure fluid movement. Ideally, I would have liked to simulated a more complex game like Space Invaders or Pac-Man but this was the best I could do in the interest of time.
By far the hardest part of the project was adding in more animation for the pinball to utilize the new ramps. I had to do a lot of copying and pasting keyframes in order to squeeze in the new animation, and it doesn't move as smoothly as I would like. However, I changed the camera to pan around the machine at this point which worked better than keeping the overheard cam and made the stilted movement of the pinball much harder to notice. The spanning camera view was also chosen because it shows that the models look good from several different angles. After rendering, I kept this shot because I really like how the view highlights the metallic shading on the pinball. Because it was hard enough to make the animation look believable with keyframes, I decided it would be too frustrating to try and add dynamics.
Unfortunately, I was unable to add sound. My plan was to add pinball style sound effects, and then a losing horn at the end. However, I spent over an hour trying to find public domain pinball sounds online, to no avail.
FInal Documentation: Proposal
For my final, I decided to create a more detailed version of my midterm. When I finished my midterm, I knew there was a lot more I could have added but I was unable to due to the interest of time. This time, I wanted to make the table more detailed, add better shaders, fix the lighting, and add more to the scene to make it a little less dull. I also decided I wanted to take a shot at rigging, so I modeled two hands that were each binded to a skeleton to operate the machine. My original plan was to have the hand put the coin into the machine, pull the plunger, and press the buttons on the paddles. In addition, one of the hands would shake its fist at the machine when it lost. In addition, I would have a Pong machine running in the background.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Midterm Documentation: Self-Evaluation
I put a significant amount of time and effort into this project, and I hope that it shows. Overall, I am pleased with how it turned out. I think the camera angles work well, and the LED screen came out as good as I had hoped. The only issue I really have with the animation is that I wish I could have given the pinball more realistic-looking motion. Animating with key frames definitely took a lot of work, but in the long run it was probably a better idea to do that than to use motion paths, which I'm not as familiar with. Next time I will also make an effort to try using more complex shaders and lighting. Considering that I have very little experience with Maya, I feel that I did a good job, though I always see ways I can improve my own work. Hopefully I will be able to implement more advanced techniques to adapt this project for the final. I think it could definitely benefit from adding special effects, better textures, and so on.
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