Building a Scene in Maya

For this assignment we had to make a scene with out initials in Maya.

For the appearance of the letters, I looked at Japanese Katakana and Hiragana for ideas and thought maybe I would attempt to male the K and L look similar to Hiragana characters.

Scores for my first and second term paper, not writing the third one.

I received a 93 on the first Term paper and a 91 on the second Term paper, I will not be writing the third term paper.

Third Term Paper Outline

Set sail on the seven CG High Seas!

1. Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink
1. In most films involving the high seas, the ocean is going to be the hardest feature to animate to the degree where it will looks realistic.
2. Before CG was used, scale models with some camera speed ups or slow downs would imitate the ocean, as a result, the waves would not look as realistic due to size.
3. Fluid simulators are used nowadays in CG animation to simulate water which can to varying degrees be realistic enough to not take the viewer out of the movie.
4. In addition On Stranger Tides also has on location filming, so they would have been able to use the water from a location shoot as a point of reference for animating the ocean.
2. Uncanny Valley Ho!
1. Some of the biggest issues with CGing water is making sure it moves like water.  Fake waves are incredibly easy to spot, especially if the movement is not proportional to the size.
2. On Stranger Tides uses a combination of practical and CG water effects so the chances of spotting a fake wave are rather small as the real waves direct the most attention.
3. In the case of CG’s water, often it is waves hitting a ship that are amplified real waves, seeing how a majority of the water is shot on location, it was more often a case of putting s CG boat in real water than the other way around.
3. Real water or fake water?
1. Due to the combination of real and CG’d water in the film it actually is very hard to find any fake water if it’s there at all.
2. Or maybe the CG water is just very cleverly hidden by use of mixing it with the real water and sophisticated fluid simulators.
3. In most cases, it was the ships that needed to look like they were being tossed at sea.
4. Should you use real or fake water?
1. If one has the choice, real water would be the best choice but not in scale models, so if a film’s budget allows a large tank can be used to simulate waves.
2. When the situation does not allow is likely when the animation team had to CG in ocean waves or a CG ship.
3. A combination of real water and CG water could be the key to avoiding fake looking water in CG.

Stop Motion Animation, Lamplight Mystery

For this assignment, I decided to tell a story using the first three random items I found at my house. 

The Stars of this show are: an old desk lamp, a small wooden mannequin, and a Beanie Baby.
This was the first time I had to pain my arm out as a few times I had to prop up the Beanie Baby's leg with a wand, but use of the clone stamp tool proved to solve that problem.