Modelling and Animation
Put together an animation film using Maya and Adobe After Effects.
Prompt
A fisherman is on his way to the lake. It is moderately quite a distance that he has to cover via foot but he eventually reaches there at the lake. The journey is all worth it for him as he really enjoys fishing there and finds his peace of mind while spending some time around nature’s lap.
Working in Maya
Rigging of character, along with keying and adding attributes both in legs and wrists.
Character Rigging
Keying Attributes
Animating progressive walk cycle for the character using graph editor.
Keying joints in Timeline
Using Graph Editor
Using MASH to create repetitive instances of grass, trees, footpath and ferns by utilising random, transform and distribute nodes for efficient results and render output.
Use of MASH networks
Using Arnold’s aistandardsurface for creating materials and adding textures onto them.
Hypershade for creating materials
Creating lights - HDRIs with combination of directional light to resemble the theme of the animation.
Usage of HDRI and directional light
Using Arnold Renderer for renders
Setting render image size
Using Imagers in Arnold Renderer
After Effects to put together animation film and make minor corrections
Lumetri Color being applied as adjustment layer
Animation Film
Reflection
For someone who have never had any experience working with 3D animation softwares, I am really glad how this project presented me with such a huge learning curve.
By the end of this project, I got to work in all the workspaces: Modelling, Rigging, FX, Animation and Rendering. This experience has surely left me to be more curious and interested in this very field now.
Reflecting on the work that I did for this project, I felt the animation for one was really tough to get it exactly right. Inspite of my countless efforts in rigging and animating the walk cycle for my character, I still felt that there was a scope of improvement there which could have perhaps made it look more realistic.
Apart from the animation side of things, I believe as per the rough sketches that I had drawn earlier on during the planning phase and the feedback that I had recieved from my course instructor for this project, I can genuinely say that this project turned out to be pretty well for me.
