Tie Fighter Texturing

This is my fully textured tie fighter for my star wars animation. I got the color scheme from the image above. I feel as if this model has come out exactly how I wanted it to with the window texture and the bump mapping on the winds, although when creating the wings material I struggled to get the bump mapping working as when I put the material on top the model didn't want to display it even when I rendered the scene. For creating the bump mapping I took the image above and used Photoshop to edit it. I then applied it to the material on the wings and moved it to the right place using the UV editor. From this I can see that creating textures for a model can take a while to do and can require a trained eye to notice differences and that you can get a good looking models without fancy textures but with even basic colors.

X-Wing Texturing

This is my fully textured X-Wing for my star wars animation. When adding the textures I used the schematics above as a reference for colors. At first I found it hard to create textures but I began to understand what properties to tweak to get the right colors. I tried to add a bump map of cloud type to my X-Wing's wings but I struggled to do so and after seeing that it would of taken to much time to allocate towards I decided to not implement it.

Animation Attempt 1

This was my first attempt at creating one of my scenes in Maya, I found it easy to draw and join motion paths together to create the structure of the scene but I encountered several problems. When I first created the motion paths I used one and duplicated it but when I attached the models to the motion paths they both decided to run across the same path instead of the ones I set them too, I tried to fix this by going into the hypergrath to detach them from the motion paths and deleted the models then I put them back in but it didn't fix the problem. So I then tried deleting the motion paths and creating the first one and duplicating it but that still didn't fix the problem so I figured it must have been something to do with me duplicating the motion path so I then proceeded to create two different motion paths and it just so happens this fixed the problem. From this I have learned that Maya can be fiddly to use at times and can encounter problems and not tell you whats causing them.

Relationship Exercise

In this exercise I had to pair up two objects so that when I moved the driver object the driven would also animate. I did this by first creating a cube and a sphere. I then selected the cube and selected key/ set driven key which brings up a menu where I then select who is the driver and who is the driven I select the sphere and click load driver and then I select the cube and click load driven. I then select what variables I want to alter I select translate X on the sphere and rotate Y on the cube after doing so I set a key for the sphere and then I move it along the X axis and then set a key again. I then set a key for the cube and added a rotation around the Y axis of 1800 after doing so I set another key so when I move the sphere I can see that the cube is also rotating. From this exercise I have learnt that these tools can be useful when creating for example a train where all the pieces move together in one smooth motion.

Hand Rigging Exercise

In this exercise I had to take a object of a had and rig it so it could move at individual points. I did this by first going to the rigging tab and selecting the joint tool. I then added in the different joints to the hand for each individual finger. I then moved the joints into player and selected both the joints and the mesh. I then went into rigging mode and went to skin/ interactive bind ski, which applied the joints to the mesh, and allowed me to change how much of an area each joint would effect when manipulated. I then manipulated the joints with the move and rotate tool. I can see that this is a vital tool when creating characters or less rigid models such as people. I also found this very easy to accomplish with no problems.

Bouncing Ball Exercise

In this exercise I had to create a animation of a ball bouncing from this diagram.

To start creating this animation I first created a sphere. I then used the Bezier curve tool to create the curved motion path the ball moves along. after doing this I attached the ball to the motion path by going into animation mode and going to constrain/ motion path which automatically attached the sphere to the motion path and animated it. I then went in to each fram manipulating the sphere so it would get the different shape as if it was bouncing.

I found this task fairly easy to accomplish without any problems. I can see that maya is very useful in automatically creating animations along motion paths and that this will benefit me a lot in creating my animation. I have also seen that by editing the animation frame by frame by using key frames that it can become a long procedure to do depending on the quality and length of the animation.

Skybox Exercise

 In this Exercise I had to create a sky box in Maya. I did this by first creating a sphere and deleting the bottom half of faces. I then proceeded to add a few more divisions to the object. I then used the mesh display, reverse tool to set the normals of the object from the outside to the inside of the object so the textures would display on the inside. I then create a new material and added the surface shader material type to it so that it wouldn't interact with any light sources or cause any shadows. I then went and added the sky box file to the material creating the sky. I find this to be very useful and easy to do as your able to create the entire area your animation will be set in very quickly, and after using these tools I will be able to create my sky box in my star wars animation allowing there to be an enviroment that the animation plays in.