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
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