Major Project - Mist Test #2

This test scene is looking a lot more like what I had pictured in my head, there are still some tweaks needed to make the mist blend better with the water however I am really happy with how this is turning out. Eva gave me some great advice on creating a specular map for the water which really enhanced the scene. I think there is another level of complexity to add which will be the glistening of the water, but that will take some figuring out.

This whole exercise has been very useful for me to get better at compositing which is something that I have always neglected. I quickly realized that the compositing is what will sell the shot at the end of the day.

Major Project - Mist Test #1

I played around with some particles in maya today, trying to create a nice mist/fog effect as I will need plenty of it for my animation. I think this test went okay but it can still be finessed a lot, I feel as if I needed the fog to be thicker but it was something I only really noticed when I was compositing.

I also quickly discovered that I will need to render out objects that are in the water separately, as it will be much easier to blur them and adjust them where it is needed. 

Major Project - Ocean Test

Today has been spent working on tests for the ocean scene, as it is one that will be difficult to pull off. Alan gave me some great advice on how to create it using the 2d placement node and soft bodies. Here is the end result thus far, I need to figure out a way of moving an object through the water while having it follow the movement of the ocean, so far it is just attached by a rivet.

Below are some playblasts of the tests that I did, It took a lot of adjusting the noise on the placement node to get a result that worked for me.

Major Project - Bed Animation Test #1

Today I worked on getting the teeth made and attached to the rig, I did this using the rivet script and parenting the teeth to the locators (I had to scale constrain the rivets to the global move group to get it all scaling correctly). I then moved on to creating a glowing effect for the eyes, this was done using after effects, this is something that I will touch up on and adjust to create something more interesting, however for a first attempt I think it works quite well. I just need to add rim highlights to the model which Alan suggested creating on the texture.

Major Project - Bed Rigging #3

Today I work on getting the bed to blink and to open his mouth, I did this via a duplicate mesh and plugged it into the main as a blendshape. I used blendshapes to also reshape the mouth as it opens, this then all got plugged into the main mesh.

This is what the blink and mouth opening look like, I still need to add the contents of the mouth which is what I will focus on next. I'm not completely sure how to make the teeth follow the mouths movement, as it is driven from a duplicate mesh. I may need to use rivets or something similar to have them follow the geometry but I am unsure at the moment.

Major Project - Bed Rigging #2

I've got the basic skinning done for the bed, so he can now move slightly! I had a few issues that I've now fixed, I needed to adjust where the IK's were for the rig to work correctly. Next up I will be working on getting the eyes to blink and the mouth to open.

Major Project - Bed Rigging #1

I started working on the bed's rig today, I did basically the same as what I did for the test except I added some extra joints and controls were necessary. Here is how the rig looks at the moment, I plan to use blendshapes for the mouth and eyes so that they can open.

I started skinning the legs, here's a little progress playblast: