Animatic 4

After multiple comments regarding the animatic, I went ahead and removed all the turning cameras. I have now replaced the dizzying scene with a more direct approach.

Animatic 3

An updated version of the animatic. The beginning animation is done by Daniel Brigido.

brief walk cycle

Hi everyone,
here is a clip of a walk cycle with dynamics. Some hiccups here and there, but it's moving along.
Thanks Dan Brigido for the animation. More to come!

new basic animatic

Here is a basic animatic. The other concept was too complicated and needed to be simplified. Let me know what you think!

Pose1

Hi everyone,
Here is my character with new hair and posed!

nCloth dynamics

Hi everyone,

I've been working on my thesis dynamics. The characters have cloth, and it's been tricky figuring out the right combination to make t-shirts look like t-shirts and denim look like denim. It still needs some tweaking, but it's look a lot better.

I wish I had a render of the cloth explosion I've seen!

Next, dynamic hair!

Comments always appreciated.
Ciao!
Monica

Main Character

Here is the main character.

She is suppose to be rather plain, compared to the other characters on the carousel.

CC always welcome!

one render

Here is a test render with minimal lighting. I used mental ray, so that's why the character does not have hair. Her hair will have to be comped later.

comments welcomed!

Super Model

The super model is complete!
I still want to play with her hair color and give her some shoes. Her sash needs a little attention too.

Comments appreciated!

Business Woman

The Business Woman

She represents women trying to break through the glass roof. Did you know women who wear pants with their suits are considered casual? A formal business outfit has to be a skirt.

Skirts, are they a symbol to women that no matter how much work and qualifications you have, you are always a woman.

On a designer note, I'm not too convince with her hair. I might update it later.

Critiques welcome!

Cleaning Lady

A new woman for the carousel has been completed.
She represents the women's role of keep a house clean and tidy. Almost all commercials of cleaning products portray women cleaning. If men are involved, they usually burn the shirts they were ironing and make men look like imbeciles.

Comments always appreciated.

Pregnant Elizabeth

One of the characters in my thesis is Pregnant Elizabeth. She symbolizes the typical reproductive duty of women.

As you can see, she is missing some shoes. Therefore, the saying "barefoot and pregnant" fits.

This is a basic mental ray render with camera light. That is why the hair doesn't have any shadows!

Animatic v2

I've uploaded a new animatic for your review.



It is dramatically different from the first, but I feel the first was much too complicated. This is a simple animatic (just over a minute!), and the basic message is still there.

What do you think? Does it make sense? What is your opinion? I would love to hear it.

Animatic v1

Below you will find the first draft of the animatic for my thesis. This is to give you an example of what the story is going to be. It is a work in progress.



Things to note:
1) The eyes didn't render, so I painted them in.
2) These are screen captures. I plan to paint the color pallet on them.
3) Every frame is 3 seconds so timing is not accurate.
4) I created this to see if people understood what was going on.

My next step is to create a 3d animatic, with transitions in mind.
Any suggestions/ideas/comments, are always appreciated!

Hair Dynamics - test

One of the tricky parts about hair is the way it moves. Maya dynamics is great, but sometimes it can act a little finicky.

After some tests, I decided to add 2 hair elements. In the example below, you can see two different color hairs reacting differently. I wanted to test and see if changing attributes made the hair more dynamic and realistic.

The example also shows hair that is in a bun, and then falls, which is part of my thesis animation.



Comments always appreciated.

Composite: Bride

Here is a composite of the bride. The renders are in 3 render layers: beauty, hair, shadow. Still needs some tweaks but the idea is there.
Comments always appreciated!

Hair

Hair is an essential part of a 3D model. It can tell you so much of the character's personality, wealth, culture, so on. This is also a very tricky and I know very little about creating hair in Maya.


This is the final with some tweaking still needed, but the essential color/form is demonstrated.

In this blog I will demonstrate my errors and success in creating hair.

This render is an example of polygon hair. I played with it for a while, and realized that it was going to hurt my piece more than help it.



Therefore I did research on Maya Hair, did some tutorials, and voila. Much more convincing hair, though it looks very much like 3D instead of beautiful hair.





I added more hair to give the character a lot more volume. This is for the bride. I didn't want her hair to be blonde and I don't like straight hair, since it just looks too perfect.




I finally tweaked the hair parameters, and received this effect, which I am pleased with.

The next hurtle will be Dynamics, as well as tweaking the shadows.

wedding dress DONE

The wedding dress is finally complete. I used a phong with the 90* spec to produce a lovely shimmer to the wedding dress.




Next: Hair!

water test 1

Part of my thesis involves particle simulation. This will be used to create the blood that will flow on the character.

I am using the program RealFlow. I created this scene as practice.



I see a lot of issues! One is render time. This scene took about 30 minutes to render in RealFlow. It is only 40 frames.
Also, the poly count is very large. (this small amount of liquid has over 5000 polys).
Furthermore, I am not sure how a moving character will import in RealFlow, so more research in involved.

Nonetheless, RealFlow is a powerful program and I look forward to working on it further.

Wedding Dress Con't

I am continuing to work on the wedding dress, and due to some happy accidents, I've discovered how to create lace. I worked on it through color, bump, spec to no avail. Finally I removed all color and just used Bump, which gave the render the subtle details lace creates.
(please click on image for a larger render)



The dress isn't done yet! I still need to make the specularity more interesting.



I added strong spec on the flowery parts of dress, to bring them out more, and make the dress more interesting.

In this render I was using phong as spec to try to get the 90* effect it has. Didn't work quite as well. I need to continue working on it.



I added the spec to the glow, and got some crazy results. This effect doesn't work on my project, but it is an interesting 'angelic' look. Maybe for something else.

That's it so far! Next more spec and after that, the hair!