Avatar Opening

The goal of this project was to create a short video using SFX, green screen, and maya. We worked in groups and started out by coming up with the idea to kind of recreate the avatar intro, then we made a storyboard for it. After that we filmed each of our actions in front of a green screen and recorded the voice over for it. Then we edited our own parts in AffterEffects.

I edited the green screen by using color keys and a simple choker to get rid of the it and put in an image. I made myself a silhouette by making the brightness and contrast 0 on the video, which is something new I learned. I also learned about collaboration and how it can make a big project a lot easier. 

After I had all the green screen and silhouette work done I added in some dust SFXs for the air. I think it looks pretty good but I would have tried to do better on the movement of the wind, if I did it again, because it looks a little off. But overall I liked how it turned out and would keep pretty much everything else the same because it looks good.

I think this project helped me work on my green screen skills and learn how to make a silhouette. And even though I won't be in animation next year this project helped me learn about collaboration which will be helpful. Overall I liked this project and had fun doing it and if I did it again I would work on the movement of the wind but keep everything else the same.

Maya Tools

  After I created the polything I lighted it by going to rendering and adding 4 lights, 3 directional and 1 point light. I put 1 directional light in front which was my key light, 2 in the back which were my back lights, and 1 in the middle of the polything which was my fill light/point light. My key light is very bright and uses cast shadows. My fill light is less bright and doesn't cast shadows like my back lights which are the brightest.

  To make the hammer I used polygons then distorted them. For the hammer head I used the cut faces tool to make the claw and the extrude tool to make the head of the hammer. To make the handle I just went to control vertexes and moved the vertexes. Then I made the nail with 2 cylinders and pointed the bottom of one using vertexes.

  When making the ice cream I used a bump map called cloud. Then I edited it to make it look more like ice cream by changing various settings in cloud attributes. After I finished making everything I made a looped animation by setting a start key frame, turning it 360 degrees then setting another key frame. To make it a movie I rendered it out in Maya, changing the render settings a bit before hand, then rendered it out again in After Effects.

    To animate the balls I made I started by filling out a table with which key frames each ball started, ended, touched the ground, and when into the air by watching the videos we had made earlier. Once I had all the frames recorded I started animating in Maya. I went to each frame I had recorded an set a keyframe there while also moving whichever ball I was animating to about where it is in the video of the ball. To make sure the balls weren't bouncing in a really weird way I went to the graph editor which is in Window - Animation Editors and made all of the bottom points linear instead of curved.



   When making the cups I used NURBS, curve and revolve tool. NURBS create curves and surfaces in a shape. To create a cup I used the CV curve tool in the bottom left perspective and made half of an outline of a cup. Then I used the revolve tool to make it a surface.

In order to make the salt shaker I made a circle from the curves tab and went to control vertex to move the four corner points in. Then I duplicated it several times and moved them up and shrunk the top one a bit. I went to the surfaces tab and hit loft which made the body of my salt shaker.