Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Rough Animation for Shot 2 of Alien Abduction



Here is shot 2 for the Alien Abduction short [a project from 3DBuzz. So far this is still kind of rough and I'm trying to continue to wrestle with the Graph Editor in Maya to sort out the following:

  • How to make a more fluid and lively suck up of the beach ball [I know...doesn't look like it without the textures, lights, etc. in this Playblast].
  • Need to tweak out the spin when the alien launches the tractor beam.
  • When the ball goes into the cockpit and causes the alien to lose control of the ship I need to work on smoothing out the rotations a tad so they aren't quite so choppy looking...subtle stuff.

Any feedback is most welcome for any other problem areas thus far.

Friday, May 11, 2007

Shot 1 Animation of Alien Abduction [playblast]



I'm currently nearing the end of Project 2, Alien Abduction, from the fantastic DVD training materials provided by Buzz3D. This is certainly the most complex piece of animation, texturing, rigging, lighting, etc. I have delved into. In this shot, the alien comes into camera and spots our home planet and plots some sort of scheme [you'll see when I post more films].

In this shot I'm primarily concerned with:
* how to get the ship to fly in without seeming to stop too suddenly defying some sort of physics out in space
* figure out with the simple rig how to convincingly get out alien to move around, look back at the earth with a moment of shock and then turn back to the camera and indicate his plotting scheme [rubbing his tentacles together]
* I also added a little wave as he blasts towards earth

There are plenty of things I could work on I am sure, but sometimes you gotta take your limited knowledge and move on to the next thing for more insight.