503 #13 Evaluation

 This project was very ambitious, especially since two of the three team members had little to no experience in the realm of 3D. Thomas ended up carrying most of the 3D work, especially in pre and post production.

In particular, I had to create, rig, and animate a 3D model (and animate another 3D model). I had some very light experience on 3D modelling experience, so I knew some basics of modelling in Maya that could cover creating a robotic character, since robots are more rigid and angular. Towards the beginning of the project, when we were planning everything out, I thought it wouldn’t be too difficult to learn the basics of rigging a model if the character was a robot, since there would be no need to consider muscle, fat, or skin affected by movement. I was very wrong. Creating the base rig wasn’t difficult, but painting weights was very difficult. I kept finding errors and bugs and spent hours attempting to fix them, to no avail. In the end, I needed to get Matt’s help to fix it. He was able to get the rig working.

I gave a copy of the model to Thomas so he could get the UVs and textures done while I got a copy of his working model to start animating my scenes. We previously split up the 3D animation between myself and Thomas, Thomas taking the first half since it was less action heavy and he had much more work with the UVs and texturing, and I took the second half. While I was working with Thomas’ Peace-Keeper model, I noticed the spine of the rig was broken and unusable.

I continued work while the model was being fixed, and then resumed the Peace-Keeper’s animation.

The animation was quite enjoyable to do and it is something I’d like to continue learning how to do and improve upon.

I did find my favourite shot was created by accident. Without even realising, when the Peace-Keeper hops to face Rusty at the end of the shot, his legs aren't in optimal positions to carry his weight, but getting them to the optimal places from the previous position stretched the joints in a way I wasn't happy with. In an experimental attempt, I had the Peace-Keeper hop again to get his legs in the best position for carrying his weight and preparing for a fight.

After keying these positions, I worked back through them to time them correctly and I found the end hop looked great. His weight was clear in the height of the jump and the follow through of the landing, while also showing he had the strength and energy to be a deadly opponent in a fight.

Overall, although this project was very ambitious, I really enjoyed working on it and I found being able to fully work with 3D gave me a much better idea of where I’d want to go further with it.