We were introduced to this project by Andy who showed us through our month's sound clip and showed us how to break it down and how to understand it properly. We were also shown how to apply this sound clip into a dope sheet which i found extremely useful later on in the project when it came to lip syncing. As soon as i heard the sound clip for the first time i had a rough idea what i was going to do, my first initial idea was two bikers argueing over something as i thought i could hear some sort of engine in the background which i soon put down as fire. This lead to me coming up with the idea for the boiler room on a ship as i could imagine the fire burning the coals in the bakground behind the characters so i set about designing the setting for my animation and here is a rough idea i was aiming at:
I then went about creating a similar scene in maya as I enjoyed the scene project from my first year and i also had not created a full animation in maya at this time so i saw it as a learning curve. I spent quite a lot of time making this scene, probably too much but its an area i am interested in with animation so i may have got a bit carried away is the scenery is irrelevant to this project. I did learn a few new things though such as which material to apply for each object such as metal, plastic, glass etc. I also learnt about 'bump mapping' and how useful it can be to create a deep texture which is more believable and how lights react differently to each material applied. I found that some objects do not like the 'booleans' tool if used incorrectly aswell as this confused a bit because i thought i was doing right when extruding edges when i should have been extruding faces. I found my scene to be successful and completed the job nicely, all that was left to do was the animation itself.
With the animation i thought i would get the lip syncing done and out of the way first so i imported my two characters into the scene and added the audio so i could start scrubbing and comapring it to my dope sheet as to which mouth movements would be needed for each word. I did find this quite a useful way to do lip sycing as the mouths and faces stay how you put them throughout unlike other body parts.
The only problem i actually came across was the animating itself as i found it very hard to try and lose the rigidness and the jitter to the characters and they just wouldnt 'flow' as i would have liked them too. I did make the mistake by trying to animate the characters from memory and acting it out as i went as i thought this would be okay but i feel it is necessary to have a proper reference recorded to keep going back to and seeing the same poses again and again as it is more reliable and constant.
Once the characters were finished with i attempted to play with camera's for the first time in maya which was pretty straight forward, i mya not have caught the best angle for my animation but i personally liked the way it panned slowly across the screen and focused on one character more than the other.
Other than the actual rigidness of teh animation i am happy with how this project turned out as it looks pretty clean and rendered out nicely, I definately prefered making stuff to actual animating though where as i thought it would be the other way around when i started the project.
With the animation i thought i would get the lip syncing done and out of the way first so i imported my two characters into the scene and added the audio so i could start scrubbing and comapring it to my dope sheet as to which mouth movements would be needed for each word. I did find this quite a useful way to do lip sycing as the mouths and faces stay how you put them throughout unlike other body parts.
The only problem i actually came across was the animating itself as i found it very hard to try and lose the rigidness and the jitter to the characters and they just wouldnt 'flow' as i would have liked them too. I did make the mistake by trying to animate the characters from memory and acting it out as i went as i thought this would be okay but i feel it is necessary to have a proper reference recorded to keep going back to and seeing the same poses again and again as it is more reliable and constant.
Once the characters were finished with i attempted to play with camera's for the first time in maya which was pretty straight forward, i mya not have caught the best angle for my animation but i personally liked the way it panned slowly across the screen and focused on one character more than the other.
Other than the actual rigidness of teh animation i am happy with how this project turned out as it looks pretty clean and rendered out nicely, I definately prefered making stuff to actual animating though where as i thought it would be the other way around when i started the project.
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