Animating and rendering the first scene

As this animation is taking a long time to render, it is now taking 5 minutes per frame, I am going to animate and render in stages so that i am able to do both simultaneously. I decided to animate the opening scene and whilst that is rendering I will animate the next scene.

Initially, I viewed some reference on YouTube of babies crying in their crib. I noticed that their movement is random, more of a flailing motion therefore that was how I was going to animate the baby and I would have the camera zooming in from outside.

The animating was a lot easier than I anticipated. I think it may be because the rig is simple, before, I have attempted to animate with complex rigs and found it too difficult. I slowly animated a limb at a time until I had a movement that I was happy with. I then had a few issues with the cameras as I haven't animated a camera in a while and when I created a camera, the settings where different so it came out looking like this:

Clearly this is not good so I had to render using the perspective camera but I feel like you have less control of the movement, or I find it easier to use one I have created.

As always in the rendering stages, I encounter problems, after rendering for several hours, I assembled the jpg's into a video in After Effects and here is the video:

As you can see, something weird happens. I am pretty certain that it is the glass material that I placed on the window that the camera is moving through. I was experimenting with different glass shaders and had forgotten to change that window. I had checked before I rendered however the change was so drastic it happened between two frames.

I then changed the glass and rendered it again, however, the glass material affected the mirror material and caused it to be non reflective. The mirror jumps straight from a dull to a reflective material which obviously is not good. I altered the glass again, double checked by rendering particular frames and produced an opening scene that I am pleased with.

Baby Character Production

As I have previously mentioned, I will not be modelling the baby character. I was unable to find a baby rig that I was able to use therefore I had to download a model of a baby. I then applied a simple rig to the character so that I was able to animate it. The model did not come with textures and I have not previously textured a character. As I wanted the characters to look as realistic as possible, texturing was important. I searched for skin shaders and information concerning them, I discovered that Mental Ray has a skin preset that is of a good enough quality in my opinion. I did discover other methods however these appeared extremely complex and I do not think I have the time to explore this particular avenue. I applied the texture and then followed this tutorial as you have to play around with the attributes until you achieve the texture you want.

http://youtu.be/VIYopSeGnoI

I am happy with this texture and am now ready to start animating.

Modelling - Nursery Complete

I have now finished my Nursery scene:

Modelling - Day 11

My scene is pretty much finished now, I just have to add a radiator and a door and then I think it will be ready for the characters. I gathered some reference for the radiator and began modelling which was fairly simple for me, I used a polygon cube which I formed into a rectangle and again used the edge loop tool and extruded the faces in to acheive the characteristics of a radiator.

I then repeated this process for the door and placed it in the scene.

I think that is everything that I want to include in my environment, I will add any finished touches such as the window frames then my scene is ready for my characters.

I am going to find character rigs to use in my animation as my character modelling, rigging and skinning skills are not strong at all and I am restricted to a deadline.

Modelling - Day 10

Now it is time I finally address what I have been avoiding, creating a texture for the fabrics in my scene. Not only that, I was unsure of how to get a realistic looking material shape, with the same characteristics as cloth.

The obvious answer to this is Ncloth, I have used Ncloth a little but I am not confident. I think it has a lot of potential of which I am yet to explore, it slightly intimidates me for some reason. I decided to turn to Google to find out how to make a bed sheet. There were several tutorials on YouTube so I decided to absorb the different methods and experiment with creating some cloth objects.

I was quite surprised by my initiative as I had an idea and it actually worked exactly as I had anticipated and produced exactly the visual I was hoping to achieve. I created an Ncloth from a polygon plane and used the mattress as a passive collider. This resulted in the plane acting like a cloth and falling onto the mattress, eventually as you continue to play the animation, the object is dragged down. As I want a still object, I decided to pause the animation that had been put in place by the Ncloth when the cloth was behaving how I wanted it to - with the appropriate shape, creases and folds. I duplicated the Ncloth which produced a polygonal shape identical to the Ncloth but without the Ncloth attributes therefore the shape was still.

This worked well so I decided to use this method to place a blanket inside the moses basket. I finished modelling and texturing the moses basket which was simple and used the moses basket as a constraint. I placed a polygon plane above the basket and the plane fell into place, again I stopped on the most appropriate frame and duplicated the shape that I was looking for.

Now I have the models done, I need to create some textures, I have gathered a few different fabric textures and am going to experiment with them. 

I experimented with these textures and using bump maps and eventually ended up with a shader that I was happy with. 

Getting close to finishing my scene now. 

Modelling - Day 9

Next, I am going to focus on the mirror frame, again this is another object that I am unsure about modelling. I have an image of a frame that I am going to attempt to replicate, i'm thinking something similar to this:

I like the style and again it is an opportunity to test my skills. I initially thought about creating a polygon plane with a high amount of sub divisions and moving the vertexes but it didn't really seem to be working for me. 

I have created a few objects using the EP Curve tool and seeing as this object is very curvy, I thought that this may be the best option, although I wasn't entirely sure how to do it. I projected my reference onto an image plane and began tracing the mirror frame with the curve tool, this took quite a long time and initially, I had traced half of the mirror but had stopped at stages which seemed to produce issues so I realised I would have to trace the intricate object with one line. 

So I traced the whole mirror and then I wasn't really sure what to do.. I realised I wouldn't be able to fill the gaps however I decided to carry on and see what the result would be. I wanted the curve to be a polygon so that I could manipulate it and I wasn't sure how. 

I discovered that you can turn curves into polygons by converting them to paint effects first, I'm not really sure why but it worked. I then made the frame thicker and this is what it looked like. 

I then placed it in my scene and textured it, then attached it to the mirror plan. This is the final result of which I am quite pleased with seeing as I improvised. 

Reflection of the project so far..

I feel as though the project is going well, I am spending roughly a couple of hours a day on this project as I want to take my time to absorb the methods I am taking and the mistakes I may be making. With each object I am creating, I am taking my time to research extensively regarding the form and in particular the textures and how to achieve the best quality I can using Maya and Mental Ray.

I am particularly enjoying this project as it is enabling me to focus on a particular area that I wish to explore further. Ultimately I would like to pursue a career as a 3D environment artist therefore this project is helping me towards reaching that goal as it is developing my skills within that area.

I have particularly improved my knowledge regarding shaders and textures and have genuinely surprised myself with what I have achieved so far which is a really positive and encouraging feeling. I am becoming increasingly passionate about this project and am looking forward to the final product.

I am however not looking forward to the animation aspect of this project but I have surprised myself so far so I am going to be positive and push myself as I don't want to bring the overall aesthetic of the animation down.

                                                                         From this

To this

To this

In this space of a few weeks.