I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream For...

3D ANIMATED AND TEXTURED ICE CREAM!!!



This project has a bit of a funny history. I actually finished modeling this before the pen, but made the pen in between modeling and animating. I don't know why we decided to make the pen in between animating the ice cream, maybe we could have done the pen before or after the ice cream, but then I would expect the pen to be animated, nothing makes sense anymore, holy heck my head is spinning more than the lazy Susan carrying the ice cream and I need to move on.


ANYWAYS!


First, I'll discuss the modeling process of the ice cream. It started like any other project in Maya- WITH CIRCLES! Well, to be more specific, I began by making the general foundation of all the objects out of basic shapes. The table was made from a large, flat cube and four tall, skinny cubes to make the legs. The bowl was made using boolean'd cylinders, and the ice cream stand was made with long thing cylinders and two toruses (basically a doughnut shape). The scooping apparatus was created using a sphere that had been boolean'd to make a scoop shape, a long cylinder for the handle, and a tiny half sphere for the end of the handle. You know, because it's fancy. I'll give you three guesses as to what I made the cone out of. Finally, I created a boatload of spheres in differing colors to make the best part- the scoops!


Next up was shading and texturing. I had to dabble into 3D textures and bump maps in order to achieve a realistic look on all the necessary objects. Examples of such being applying a cloud texture to the carpet and the scoops to make them look nice and fluffy instead of smooth and boring, and applying a wood texture to the table (which was a nightmare to work with). The rest of the objects either used Lamberts, Blinns, and some variety of Phong.


Next on the list was 3-point lighting. It's the same as it's always been- strong main light, gentle fill light off to the side, moderate back light behind everything to make the scene pop. After that, I rendered the final image and called it done!


Except, I wasn't done.


There was a surprise final challenge- animating the scene!


This was entirely new material, but it was surprisingly easy to accomplish. All I had to do was group every object together (which, in hindsight, I should have already done to make my life just a little bit easier), create a Lazy Susan out of a flattened cylinder, and group the objects to the Lazy Susan. Next, I set up a timeline, making the first out of 120 keyframes. It wasn't too hard, considering the fact that I didn't have to do anything to it.


But on the 120th frame, I set the rotation of the group to 359, in order to make it spin! I didn't make it 360, simply because doing that wouldn't make the objects move. It was surprisingly easy, considering the fact that I had no clue what I was doing. Exporting was just as simple, if a bit tedious. The way it exported left it as a huge pile of JPEGs that I had to compile into After Effects in order to achieve the final, fully modeled and animated video. The lighting looked a bit wonkier in the animation than how it looked in the single rendered picture, but that's okay. The video is at the top of the post for you to watch and enjoy!


I'm very proud with the final product. The shaders and bump maps look great, everything is fairly well modeled and the animation is wonderfully smooth. If I did this again, all I would change is the lights so that the animated product looks just as good as the rendered image.


Thank you so much for reading! I hope the rest of your day is wonderful.


-Tate

Music Video Project Personal Blog

Hello!

Our first video project in 2018 was to find a music video we liked, and then recreate it to the best of our abilities. It was a group project, so everyone had a specific role to focus on. I was appointed as the editor, but I ended up doing a couple of other odd jobs along the way (such as storyboarding, holding onto the camera+tripod until the filming date, even being in the video itself).

Getting Started

Before we could even think about filming, we had to choose a music video to replicate. There were a lot of good options that we came up with before we ended up choosing Try by Colbie Caillat. The first thing we had to do was create a beat sheet, which was basically just a sheet of paper with all the necessary information regarding the video and song, such as publisher and release date.

After that came the film scape -- which is a selection of possible props, backgrounds, etc... which we didn't necessarily have to do since all we needed was a white background. Next in line was storyboarding, which I ended up doing because I am (somewhat) good at drawing, and was willing to draw as much as I did to complete the storyboard. It was five pages of different angles, zooms, and facial expressions which we didn't even end up using since we forgot to bring it on filming day. Worth it? Absolutely.

Filming

Since the video features many people of different appearance, we ended up asking some friends to volunteer in the filming. All they had to do was put on a white t-shirt and some makeup, lip sync, take off the makeup, and lip sync again. Easy!

I will admit that I was a little shaken up by the thought of spending a few hours or more filming with people I either barely knew at best, or who were complete strangers at worst, alongside a sudden schedule change. I'll admit it was a little silly to get so worked up over, and deep down I knew everything was going to be okay, but my dormant chronic social awkwardness was telling me otherwise.

My fears were dashed entirely as soon as I set foot in our art director's house (where we were filming). Everyone we were working with was friendly and cooperative, and we ended up having a lot of fun filming everything! Since we were short a few people, both the director and art director (named Jess and Jessica respectively) had to step in and be in the video as well. I wasn't planning on being in the video unless it was absolutely necessary... and, as fate would have it, I ended up being filmed for the video as well. It wasn't hard at all -- I brought my own white shirt to use in advance, let one of the other girls put makeup on me (which was awkward since I don't wear any makeup aside from chapstick, and eyebrow pencil if I'm feeling up to it), and lip-synced a couple parts of the song. Remembering the lyrics wasn't a hassle at all, since I had heard the song so many times at that point that the lyrics were basically drilled into my skull. After a few hours of filming, impromptu makeup sessions, and awkward lip sync, we were done and ready to edit!

Well, not yet. We ended up leaving the equipment at Jessica's house, so that she could film another friend in order to accommodate for the lack of people, which was still in the way despite our last minute fill-ins. These later clips were harder to work with due to a difference in white-balancing, but it was easily fixed during editing.

Editing and Exporting

As the main editor of the video, I got to work saving clips and audio as soon as I walked into class that day. There were a lot of clips to work around, including some we couldn't use in our main video, so just saving everything from the SD card to a separate folder consumed a whole day of our time.

Since I wanted the final product to look as much like the actual video as possible, I did my best to make the lip sync in our clips match up to the song, along with cuts to other people in lines to keep the video from going stale. After the opening verse and chorus, there was a short instrumental break that was perfect for some makeup removal filler, followed by another verse and chorus plus instrumental filler. Since we didn't have enough footage to make the whole video (and also because frankly, I was getting tired of editing at that point), we cut out the final verse and did our best to mask the sudden transition between the instrumental break and the final verse.

Throughout the entire editing process, I had to keep continuity in mind. I couldn't use clips of people with makeup after showing them removing it, and vice versa with using people without makeup before showing them with it on. The lack of clips remained an issue through to the end, necessitating some clip-stretching and slowing in order to fill larger gaps.

Editing was still fun and manageable, and we were able to finish editing the video before the deadline and export it for all to see.

Conclusion

This project taught me many things -- refreshers on storyboarding, working with general video equipment, and everything few and far between. The main thing I learned, however, was in regards to working with a group. Setting dates that would work with everyone's schedule, working with each other during filming and editing, agreeing on decisions made by part of the group, and generally making sure that everyone was working together as a team and not on their own without other members' consent. There is no "I" in "team", after all.

If I did this project again, I'd obviously gather more varied footage to keep everything fresh, along with more footage of people lip-syncing in general so that we don't run short. A possible solution would be to film everyone in three parts- one run of the whole song with and without makeup, and removal filler.

In editing, I'd pay more attention to color correction and syncing so that everything runs smoothly. I'd also do a better job masking the cut in the audio so it sounds more natural.

Overall, the project went very well and I'm pleased with the final product. And I hope you'll like it too.

Until next time,

Tate

The Pen (Cumulative Maya Project)

Hello!

Recently, I've made a lot of things in Maya. Usually they were small, stand-alone projects meant to teach us about one specific tool or set of tools in Maya. See for example the Polything (for three-point lighting), the castle (basic modeling+imported textures), and the cup/shaker (revolving and lofting). However, this next project was not meant to teach us something new about the program. This project was meant to test our knowledge and require use of everything we've learned up to this point. What did we have to model, you may ask?

Well, when we walked into class and sat down at the tables we were told to pull out a pen and study it. Then close our eyes and try to mentally recreate that pen. We were then sent to the computers with one simple task -- model that pen.

I chose to model a fine-tip Sharpie pen, because the complex label would be a good way to show off my texture knowledge, and the simple barrel-shaped body paired with the intricate tip would make for a good challenge to model.
 The plastic tip of the pen was made similarly to how I made the salt shaker in the previous posts- I made a "wire frame" consisting of differently sized NURBS circles at different elevations, and lofted them to make a nice, curved tip. The metal part of the tip was merely one cylinder with a bit of a tapered top, and a long thin cylinder placed on top, with an even smaller black cylinder to act as the nib- the part that does all the writing.

The body of the pen was supremely easy to model- I made a cylinder, made another cylinder that had a slight taper at the top for the bottom of the pen, and then I made the cap from there and the pen was done!

The cap was just as easy to model as the body. I made a cylinder big enough to fit on the top of the pen without squishing the tip or leaving too much room, hollowed it out using boolean differences, added a little handle consisting of a cube with an extension modeled similarly to the hammer claws, and added a little piece of a flat cylinder. You know, for realism.

Aside from the label of the pen, shading and texturing was very easy. The plastic tip and bottom of the pen along with the cap were shaded with a very dark gray (not black. but almost.) Blinn texture, the nib was shaded with a pure black Lambert, and I was able to grab a nice brushed metal texture from Google Images for the metal tip.

The label of the pen was, surprisingly, the part I had the most trouble with. I couldn't find a flat image of the label, so I had to grab a picture of the pen off of the internet, take it into Photoshop, crop out the cap and bottom, and subsequently rotate and stretch it to make a nice wrap-around texture for the label. But getting the texture on the pen was tricky as well. I have a fair share of sour history with texture placement, and it took me a while to find the right amounts of repeated textures, sizing, and placement before I was able to make it look just like the pen I had on the desk in front of me.

Lighting was nothing special either- It was your run-of-the-mill three point lighting with a strong main light, gentle fill light, and back light to help everything pop. All that was left to do was render, and now it's done!

This was a fun and unexpected project -- and as for what we're doing next, apparently we're going back to our previous project (one that I've yet to post), and we're actually going to... ANIMATE IT.

...It's about time!

Well, see you in the next post!
-Tate