Final Animation

This is my final animation. In the end I had a total of seven different cameras set up (using camera and aim) so I could render the animation in separate scenes rather than all at once to lower the risk of computer crashes. It turned out a little shorter than I planned back when I did my animatic, but by the time I'd realised this it was too late to plan, model, and animate any new content, so I decided to focus on animating what I had planned as well as I could.

Overall I think it turned out quite well, though unfortunately I couldn't animate everything to the level of detail I'd have liked because I ran out of time due to how long it took me to get the hang on the program and model everything. If I had had more time I would have animated the trowels so they move independently of the coat hangers while the the mobile spins, to make them look less stiff. But since they're heavy objects and the mobile only spins very slowly, I don't think they would have moved very much... So hopefully they don't look too bad since the camera doesn't focus on them long.

However I do feel that I've learnt a lot this module, even if it is only the basics. Considering that I knew absolutely nothing about Maya or CG modeling and animating before this project, I've found it both a challenge and a great learning experience which I hope to expand upon in the future to help me improve.

Bucket Swing Test

I had a lot of difficultly animating the bucket to make the ball roll out after the block is catapulted into it, mostly because I discovered that my original bucket model was far too deep to allow this to happen. I couldn't justify the bucket tipping far enough to make the ball roll out with such a little block of wood, but I couldn't make the block any bigger otherwise it wouldn't fly and fit in the bucket. So in the end I made the bucket much shallower so it could tip enough to let the ball roll out without looking weird and unrealistic. I also had trouble getting the right amount of follow-through animation after the ball had fallen out, since I needed both the bucket and the rope suspending it to swing back and forth a little before they came to a stop. This took a while to get right and was done mostly through trail and error with key framing. In the end I had to move and rotate the bucket and rope slightly and key frame each of them for every single frame, because if I left Maya to he in-betweening it was impossible to get the timing right and they moved separately from each other. In the end I'm quite pleased with the result though, as I think I managed to get the movement convincing enough to make the bucket look like it has appropriate weight.

Finished Set

Here's my finished set with all my models imported and placed for animating. I added directional lights to stop the final render from being too dark since I'll have a ceiling on as well (I made the ceiling layer invisible for this shot so everything can be seen clearly), and a spotlight for when the light bulb switches on at the end. For this I created a new, Surface Shader material for the bulb so it looks white and lit up when rendered rather than dull and semi-transparent. I followed the last few parts (Step 35 onwards) of this tutorial to create the bulb material and set the lights, since I wasn't sure how to do so before:

http://www.tutorialized.com/view/tutorial/Modeling-a-table-lamp-Tutorial-for-beginners/33940

Falling Block Test

I wanted to make a tall, thin-ish block of wood fall of the edge of a shelf to knock into the trowel-coat hanger mobile to make it spin round a little, but I wasn't sure how the wood should fall to make it look realistic. To find out I tipped a book off the edge of my desk several times to get a feel for the timing and the movement, which is how I discovered the book/wood should spin/flip on its way down due to its unbalanced weight. When animating the block I started it falling a little slowly as it was losing its balance, then faster once it had cleared the edge of the shelf and had nothing blocking its path anymore. I rotated the block at certain points and key framed them to see how they would spin. At first it didn't look right because it didn't fall fast enough due to me trying to add more rotations, so I cut out some key frame which made it flip less but fall faster. I think this makes it look more natural and like it has weight. Overall I'm pleased with how this test turned out, and I plan to use it in my final animation.

SeeSaw Model

I needed a seesaw to catapult a block of wood into my bucket, so I decided to model a simple child's toy version. Since all the references I can find seem to be of full sized adult ones, I changed and simplified the design a little but kept the same principle structure. I used Booleans-difference to cut out the top and middle of the base, added a long, blinn material pin through the centre to keep it all together, and added a bevel to make the edges smooth.

Light Bulb Model

The bulb was made by revolving a curve path that I made beforehand, then adjusting the vertex to get the correct shape. I added a white blinn material and raised the transparency to make it appear more glass-like. The base is simply a polygon cylinder with the top faces extruded and scaled several times to meet the bulb. I added a phong material to make it look plastic.

Reference Image (I know its not a real light bulb, but its has a good base shape):

Trowel Model

For the spade of the trowel I created a long, flat cuboid and used 'Subdiv Proxy' again to edit it into the correct shape, but this time I inserted more edge loops as well as adding more sub-divides to the proxy box to help me edit its vertex. Overall I think the result was much better this time, as I was able to get the middle to dip and the edge to curve upwards, and well and make the tip of the trowel into a point. The twisted chord through the handle was made in the same way as the springs/coils I made previously, except I scaled the circle down much smaller and rotated the extruded surface a lot more to get the tightly twisted rope effect. I then just adjusted the vertex of the original line path to get the correct shape and created two small torus' for to tie the cord together that the top.

Reference Image: