03/31 Class Progress [Factory]

Thursday, March 31, 2016

8:30am-11:10am


Progress today:

• animated ball, camera, arms, lightning

Setbacks:

• gravity not being affected by rigid bodies (had to animate ball with keyframes)
• too many balls in box interfering with each other; had to delete them
• each trap door had 32 copies in them that I had to delete individually

Plans for next time:

• lighting, rendering, sounds

~Jennah A

Candidates for Illustration Dept

Thursday. March 31, 2016

Last Wednesday and this past Wednesday, two candidates for the illustration department gave presentations at Montserrat. Eric Telfort and Britt Snyder explained what they plan to do for classes, their visions for the job, and expressed their skill through slideshows of their work and experience. Telfort fits quite well with the atmosphere of Montserrat; passionate and excited to tell his story and teach students to improve through various skills. Snyder has an experienced background and much to offer the department, though not nearly as exciting and passionate as Telfort. Those strengths alone make both pretty decent candidates for the college, though it is up to the rest of the student body and faculty to decide which is better suited for the future of Montserrat. I am impressed with the options so far! Both are excellent painters, illustrators, and designers!

~Jennah A

Class Time [03/29/16]

Tuesday, March 29, 2016

8:30am-11:10am


Progress:

• textured all objects
• created a fluid container (not sure what to do with it now... I will look up tutorials)
• created a room that the animation will take place, textured it

Set Backs:

• accidentally copied the ground layer 16 times, then those copied layers somehow duplicated as well (had to delete all 32 unneeded layers)
• tried to fill the box with the metal bearings; duplicating them took awhile; using gravity to arrange them in box naturally was unsuccessful (gravity ignored all the passive rigid bodies and just went right through them every time)
• had to delete all of those gravity bearings and create/duplicate all new ones and place them in the box manually (then make them rigid bodies so the main bearing does not go right through them in the final scenes)

Will begin animations this week!

~Jennah A

Now It Is Tuesday

Tuesday, March 29, 2016

No time to put.


Weekend was busy once again. Wasn't able to make it to the Hardie to work on my factory; I have mainly been going back and forth between reading a memoir for Narratives of Self and painting/sketching two illustrations, all due within days (at most one week) of each other.

Though, I am confident that I can catch up. At least two more work-in-class days and one more weekend to add textures and animate! Also the sounds... I will do those soon too. In the end, I need to remember to leave time for rendering! It can be done!!

~Jennah A

Class Progress Factory/03/24/16

Thursday, March 24, 2016

8:30am-11:10am


Made some progress in class to catch up to my schedule!

• chambers and chute: glass material
• ball gravity
• rigged the "push arm"(outside of chambers)
• created trap doors (rigid bodies)
• modeled "zap arms" (in chamber 1)
• saved some textures (solid white, metal, burnt, box)

Should be able to do more on Sunday or Monday.

~Jennah A

One Weird Week

Thursday, March 24, 2016

Mon-Wed: None


It's been a weird week; the weekend itself was distorted by an unusual sleep schedule and the apparent need to socialize (even if it was just for that one day; watched a movie). It was enough to throw off my entire week, so unfortunately, I have not worked on the Factory Project since my last post. I have been bustling around to keep up with my other classes that this one somehow fell to the wayside...

I'll just have to work that much harder in class today and over the weekend and next week; I don't mind, but I'd rather not give myself such trouble again (as in that one bad weekend that sets me behind in everything).

~Jennah A

More Boxes!!

Sunday, March 20, 2016

9:30pm-11:00pm


Slowly becoming the factory! Everything will be simple shapes so that the process goes faster. The animation will be the REALLY fun part!

• added center chute
• booleans in center chute
• ramp
• lidless box

It's not much, but I also looked up glass tutorials (though they're in Maya 2014...)

• Glass planes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmGnpmb5ibo
• Marble: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkxe-nmzm6E

~Jennah A

Class Progress [Factory]

Thursday, March 17, 2016

10:30am-11:00am


Created two chambers where the majority of the action will take place.

Each chamber has its own layer, but they must remain vertically parallel to each other- is there a way to lock them?

~Jennah A

Planning Document

Thursday, March 17, 2016

(03/15/16; 10am-11am)–(03/17/16; 9:40am-10:10am)

Just remembered today is St.Patrick's Day!

~Jennah A

Factory Storyboard

Thursday, March 17, 2016

8:30am-9:30am


Factory [Future Generator] Storyboard

Simple rendition of possible storyline/animatic for Factory. Simple camera angles and object in focus will allow extra time to go into animating parts in the factory, gathering sounds, and rendering.

~Jennah A

Future Generator Concept Sketch

Tuesday, March 15, 2016

8:30am-9:10am

Future Generator Sketch

Designed in a way to mimic an hourglass shape; the rusted or dirty material falls into the top chamber for some time in an electric shock-type surface therapy, then falls to the bottom where water will cleanse the soot off; the finished product is refined and ready for reuse. Also the chambers can represent the hemispheres of earth; the northern half was destroyed (the chamber where dirtied objects first enter into), but then in the south the ruined material becomes repurposed (the water cleans away the remaining damage and soot).

Still having a hard time deciding how to begin the animatic... how the factory is introduced is very important!

Sketch, design and concept by

~Jennah A

Short History of the "Future Generator"

Wednesday, March 16, 2016

10:00pm-10:30pm

The Future Turns Back Time

Many years ago, a terrible war devastated the entire northern hemisphere. Only rubble remains of the material possessions and sturdy architecture that once represented luxurious living among the first world countries. Despite the destruction, the southern countries grew strong and fought to protect their livelihood in absence of their northern counterparts. Whoever was left, the best designers, mechanics, and scientists, combined their knowledge and advanced technology to create a mechanism that restores old material into new material. Resources are hard to come by, so regular factories that can no longer mass produce become obsolete, eventually to be replaced by the Future Generator. Even the smallest or most useless of objects can be restored and repurposed! Some of the featured Generators clean dirty and damaged marbles for new glass. Another can cleanse and refine metals with electricity and heat. With time, the north can be rebuilt with the same materials that made it strong in the first place. These Generators will recycle much needed resources and provide more for future reconstruction; defensive action must be taken!

Set post-apocalyptically, but with shinier machines! A monstrous threat tore apart a good portion of the surface of the earth; much was lost in the wreckage. To recover more useful resources, mini factories were designed to restore damaged material for future use.

Concept by
~Jennah A

New Project: Factory

Tuesday, March 15, 2016

8:30am-11:10am


I did not think as much about it during Spring Break as I probably should have; in fact, I completely forgot about the project! The week wasn't as much of a "break" from work as I hoped it would be, but time with family and some focus on illustration was necessary.

So,  as soon as I entered the classroom this morning, I began to brainstorm an idea...
A factory/machine that takes rusty, worn-out objects and cleans/sanitizes them into new, shiny objects! Electricity, fire, and water will be used in the cleansing process. I would like to experiment with pulsing lights as well (glowing points that indicate when a machine has power?)

I have a vision involving mechanical arms (jointed cylinders) and/or walls that eject electricity where the old object lays in between. The electricity burns off the rust, leaving the object on fire (for refining). The object will then be dropped into a vat of water to cool it, washing off the charred surface and leaving the object clean and shiny.

That's about as far as I am with the idea right now.

~Jennah A

Cylinder Rigging Test

Tuesday, March 15, 2016

8:30am-9:50am


The cylinder

• 1w x 20h
• 20w x 20h (subdivision)

Rigging menu/Outliner/Front View

• Joint Tool (1 click to each: bottom, middle, and top of cylinder)
• move center joint off to side just a tad bit
• name those joints to tell what from what
• IK Tool (inverse kinematic tool); click bottom and top joints
• Bind Tool; bind the joints to the cylinder (select all joints, then add select object)

Curves/Surfaces

• Create Circle, snap to top of cylinder
• In Outliner, select circle and IK handle
• Constraint –> Parent
• Do the same with another circle to the bottom of cylinder

(The circle curves are used as "handles" to grab the joints they are connected to; without them, just grabbing at the joints may lead to accidentally grabbing a vertex and dragging it around, messing with the shape of the object)

Animate

• move the joints and create key frames using the S key to animate the cylinder bending

I animated the arm cylinder slowly, every keyframe at 50 frame intervals, as if the arm is stretching, coming alive for the first time after being created!

~Jennah A

FX

Thursday, March 3, 2016

8:30am-11:10am


Viewed and critiqued everyone's Word_Play.
All were very well done!

Now moving on to the next project: "Factory"

Rest of class used to play around with effects!

Fireworks (default)

Fire (default)

Lightning (default)

Intense Lightning

Glowing objects and Lightning

3D Container (default)

Also nParticles, which I will get to shortly.

Hair [static vs dynamic] (default lol)

With each of these I can further play around with color, light, shape, etc.

~Jennah A

Word Play Final

Wednesday, March 02, 2016

9:30pm-11:30pm

Rendered entire Maya Word_Play into frames and imported them onto Premiere.

Premiere is really fun to use. Easy to import numerous rendered JPEG frames!

This vid is quite short, but I did not expect it to be long for such a short project.

Still an engaging project! So much to know, but very useful knowledge; it is a pleasure to have the skills even if I may not be doing this for a living. Simple 3D animation is intriguing!

~Jennah A

Continue Word Play

Tuesday, March 01, 2016

8:30am-11:10am

Got quite a bit done today!

• animated rain on final piece
• animated "solid" into ground as water rises (simulating melting...)
• animated water rising
• animated block with "liquid" boolean to fill with the water
• animated camera full
• textures and such are set
• lighting and such seems quite alright
• successful render of last 10 frames

Now all I need to do is render the entire thing, put it in Premiere and add sound!

~Jennah A