Friday, 23 December 2016

Goliath - Critical Review

This is great, straight out of the gate.
The cinematography and camera angles are brilliant...even a simple mid shot of the character smoking, is shot low....every detail has been thought about and the lighting is fantastic.
Timelapse too. Script is very real (I particularly like the 'yapper' female lawyer's retorts) and the edits are swift..
It has a hint of Dallas Buyers Club to it too....

Episode 2 tonight!


Friday, 16 December 2016

Pole Vector Constraints in Maya

A few screen shots of numerous attempts to apply a pole vector, without the joints moving themselves automatically out of line.

Check out these tutorials by Jennifer Conley, for simple help with troubleshooting the problem...

                                         

 I used the polygon tool to create a polygon plane between the three joints (shoulder, elbow and wrist) to create an exact point for my 'E' controller to snap too...in following the tutorial  I discovered that I had a rotation on my elbow joint....it meant recreating the arm joints but progress and no attibutes in the rotation channel box (bad juju - technical term)



Using the polygon tool to create a polygon between all three joints. Change from object to vertex mode (modelling toolkit) and extend out the vertex towards the 'E' elbow controller. Then snap the controller (select and 'V' key) and move and snap to vertex on polygon.

Put the kettle on and take a deep breath.




Saturday, 10 December 2016

Metling Man tests

Beginnings of testing 'melting man'
Mike Hermes tutorial below and then some Maya screen shots and a test playblast of a cushion melting.
The cushion timing needs adjusting, and I need to re-visit my melting man, as so far, the geometry isn't moving in the tests.

Time to refresh!






Thursday, 8 December 2016

Environment lighting tests - keeping it simple

Playing with simple image planes and lighting for the forest environment...
Good to see compared to an early concept Photoshop image for the storyboard...

I love 2D to 3D!




 Perspective view; I like the top shot view!

Node placement in Hypershader


Node placement in hypershader...reminds me of  placing nodes in Nuke....


FK/IK arm joints to Bind joint, using blend colours node in Maya Hypershader

Connecting FK/IK arm joints to Bind joint using Blend Colours Node in Hypershade...

Here goes!



Elbow and hand controllers - Maya Outliner hierachy

Loud Ceilidh music playing, whilst creating elbow (E) and hand (cube) controllers, constraining > pole vector and parenting to the 'spine_03' joint

Outliner on the right shows the hierarchy....