Category Archives: Maya 2

Week 10

Maya 2, Maya&Nuke, Nuke 2, Term 2

This week I finished my 3D composition assignment. Here is the final result. I encountered a lot of difficulties during the final rendering. Some problems have been solved but some problems still exist. In the next semester or when I finish all the assignments of this semester, I will come back to this project again and solve these issues.

Second version I made adjustments to some places.

The first difficulty is that I cannot remove the traces caused by the shadow matte. In the image on the left, you can see two obvious black squares. This is caused by ambient light. I tried many ways to make the screen show only the shadow of the object and not the shadow of the plane. I increased the shadow plane so that its edges do not appear in the picture. This is much better. But this will make the picture darker. I decided to solve this problem in Nuke.

In Nuke, I roto a part of the wall to repair the picture. But in this step, I still did not solve the problem of darkening of the picture. So I used a more clumsy approach to render the darkened background footage again in Maya.

In conclusion, this project gave me a more systematic understanding of special effects production. It may be one of the film production processes. But it let me know how most 3D or special effects shots show the final effect. And how to combine the 3D objects and 2D images together. Of course, I still need a lot of practice and study to control the overall picture. For example, include the adjustment of lights, the binding of bones, and the adjustment of object materials. Maybe in the next semester, I will start another new compositing project. It is used to help me master these contents and learn some other skills.

3D Compositing-week5

Maya 2, Maya&Nuke, Nuke 2, Term 2

Last week we roughly completed the creation of the model. The main task this week is 3D Compositing.

Firstly, we got video footage of an abandoned fatory. We need to track this video in Nuke. Then we got a 3D camera trajectory .

From the image, we can saw that the point cloud helped us roughly map out the space of the two rooms. I added a few planes and some cones to this space to help me verify the accuracy of the camera’s trajectory. It also helps me place the model in Maya.

When we import the camera trajectory into Maya, we can place the model we created earlier. Then turn to the camera’s perspective to get the following picture. Be careful not to move the position of the model when placing the model. It will be easier to change the position of the camera.

It is best to use the reference editor when importing the model during the compositing process, which can help us save time and not easily crash the software. When you want to make changes to the model, you only need to change it in another file and then update the reference again. It should be noted that after we reference the model, we cannot make changes to the model in the reference folder.

Maya-week 3 modeling

Maya 2, Maya&Nuke, Term 2

This week is mainly looking for reference pictures of steam engines and establishing a basic model structure.

At first, I went to the sketchfab website to find my reference model. I prefer this model. Because it looks nice and vintage. For a junior modeler this model is relatively simple to built. There is no complicated structure and movement.

So I start to build my model with the picture above as a reference.

This step of building a model is still a bit difficult for me. I encountered many problems in the process. For example, how to use modeling tools. In the beginning, I was not very familiar with the modeling tools in Maya, and I needed to learning and work at the same time. I found that modeling is a step that requires thinking. Before starting to create a model, we need to think about what steps can make us achieve our goals faster. Whether a cube or a cylinder is more suitable for this model. This can help us save many unnecessary troubles. This week’s work has given me the ability to solve problems independently. Whenever you encounter a problem, go directly to Google or find it on major forums. Many of the above have encountered the same problem as me. Most of them can be solved.

Maya-week 2

Maya 2, Term 2

For this session, we have learned basic rigging techniques in Maya.

Rigging is an essential step in character development and animation. It helps us move the character or objects. To be honest, it is quite complicated for me. For this week, we aim to create a steam engine. Rigging can help us making animation on the objects.

The first step is to create the models.

Then move on to the rigging. Creat locator first as the reference. moving the locator to one side of the handle which is connected with the cog wheel and copy it to the other side. For this step, you have to make sure the locator has been put to the specific point.

The next step is creating a skeleton and adding ikHandle to the skeleton. Changing the IK Handle attributes as sticky. Combine the locator with the skeleton.

Here is the outcome

Overall, rigging is a big challenge for me. To reach the result I have tried the process several times. From the exercise, I have realized that understand the principle is much important rather than just following the steps from the recording.