Building stop motion

Here I've made two stopmotion video of the building demolished:

Alpha Transparent map

I know how to do alpha maps in 3D Studio Max but Maya is new to me. But it's more easier than what I expected. Basically in photoshop you need to do a alpha channel in black & white.

For some reason the image is transparent and changed the colour to blue? I saved it in a tiff file because my version of photoshop doesn't have Targa file.

I need to sort out the shadow casting but I'm understanding of how maya's alpha channel works.

Character Rigging

I've gone back to my character model again, I've been having a hard time dealing with it. I just wish I had more time to deal with my character but it seems like it's not going to happen.

Anyway I've tried riggin the whole thing and I have to say I am pretty happy with it at the moment except for the paint weight bit.

Also I figured out how to attach the eyes to the body. You've got to parent the eyes to the bone, So now every is attach to the bone.

Flipbook Test 2

Here I used directional Light instead of ambient light and applied the mental ray shadow which gave the book a decent look. I also added a bump map and now it looks alot better now compared to the early stage.

The page flipping is abit slow but I will change it. To make the pages to flip realsitically, I used bend deformation and parented with the nurb plane.

Here is the new render version of the book:

Double sided Shader

Today I've played around with Maya, I've read that you can create a double faced plane. This would be so useful for the pages flipbook. In Baskerville I've created a cube to have two sided faces.

It's quite an annoying process. But in the end, it uses the same mathematic method as Flash actcion script.

If (condition)
{ outputColor=”A”
…..}
else
{
outColor=”B”
…..}

I haven't used hyper graph that much besides from bump mapping and texturing. But it was an experience to understand what you can do such as adding layer upon layer texture. You can only see the double face when you render it.

Flipbook

I've started modelling for my low res flipbook. I've also sorted our the uv setting for the book, I used the default setting for Automatic Mapping. I've decided the book texture would be cardboard material, though the texture is not finished, you get a clear idea how it's going to be. Also it needs a bit of bump mapping for the top surface.

The Book is now rigged and animated, after making Baskerville and Resketch video. I found that Maya's Rigging is so comfortable but the paint cluster weight is time consuming until you get the right settings:

The pages are done in nurbs/surface which I've never really touched and I have to say it was very nice to use compared to when I was making Baskerville ident. For Baskerville, the pages were individual polygon planes while in this, I've used nurbs plane and loft and deformation blend shape.

Textured Face review

Hi everybody, didn't have much time progressing my work because of the holidays and I have to work on my dissertation at the same time.

A quick textured face of my character. I'm getting the hang of UV Mapping for characters.