Constraints

Creating Contraints,

This makes models be affected be affected by transformations of other transformations.

I have played with all the Create-Constrain tools to see how they affect each other. For example the aim constraint that makes a model constantly face another model, no matter its position. Other tools do things such as:
Model rotated at the same degree difference as another model constrained to it.
Model is fixed perfectly between two other models no matter where they are translated.
Model has its scale changed dependant on another models scale.


of all these constraint tools my favourite was Point. This made it so a model is fixed perfectly translated between two others. I used six spheres to create an almost slug model. This used with Aim could work really well to create an animation about a snake or any long bodied animal.

Rigging and Skinning

Rigging and Skinning is a way to almost add a bone structure to a model and manipulating the structure so the right parts move in the correct way when adjusted.

The hand below started spread without the blue wires you can see below within the hand.
To create the Rig (blue spines) got to animation mode and then Ridding>Skeleton>Create Joints Tool,
While creating the joints you may notice they are all in one flat plane. This will be because they do not know where to auto fix. So once all rigs have been created just adjust the translation to fit accordingly to how you want it. In the exercise we had to create multiple joints from a single branch. This meant using the Oueliner from the windows tab and selecting where to add an extra rig from.



Once the Rigging has been completed it is time to Skin. Like i said previously the skinning is to allow proper manipulation of the model as desired by the creator. To access this select rig and then the model and proceed to select Skin>Interactive Bind Skin.

At this point you can select different parts of the rig to see a heat map and adjust it to your liking. Your able to adjust how much the rig can be manipulated and the area .

Red = Heavily manipulated
Orange = Very manipulated
Yellow = Slightly manipulated
Green = Hardly manipulated
Blue = Not manipulated

Once completed I wanted to show my skills and make a hand with a thumbs up. Unfortunately the model hand could not support this as it is a very old example.

Camera Angles and Cinematography

While using a camera to create shots you often have to think of perspective and a hierarchy of how the character of scene shot works. With this comes many rules and multiple types of camera shots to learn and how they can be used effectively. Whether it's the low angle from a giant to a smaller character or a reverse tracking shot on a subject to exaggerate the expanse of their surroundings.

This image to the left really helps to give a simple understanding of the key terminology.

• Pan - Moving the camera along the X axis.
• Tilt - (Imagining the camera is on a fixed stand such as a tripod) Rotating the camera up and down from a fixed point.
• Dolly - Moving the camera as an object without zooming.
• Tracking -  Moving the camera left or right, like it was attached to a track.
• Crane - Having the camera attached to something off of the ground. 

Below is a link to show all the different camera shots available.

http://www.empireonline.com/movies/features/film-studies-101-camera-shots-styles/

Bouncing Ball Tutorial

I was given the task of following the grid below. It shows frame by frame of how to animate a bouncing ball. 

The idea was to make a key frame as every numbered point where there was a filled black circle. But there were issues in animating it regarding rotation to to polish the animation I also added a single frame before and after the ball makes contact with the floor (frames 6, 8, 16, 18, 24, 26 and 30).

Following the tutorial was really easy and simple but helped me get around how the key frames worked. Issue I had was that on occasion I would manipulate the sphere to fit in with the next key frame and I would have forgotten initially to select the frame I wanted use.

I also added flat cube surface as a floor so when viewing to was easier to see the points of bounce.

Here is the graph editor of the bouncing ball example.

You can see the bouncing ball follows the green line that curves up and down. After finishing the last key frame I had improved this line so it followed the path to a higher quality.

Handles

Handles allow the manipulation of objects to become a lot easier. Using grouping in the Outliner, I have made the cone and sphere a child of the 2D circle found in 'curves/surfaces'. Now if I select the cone or sphere an manipulate either it will happen separately, but if i manipulate the circle both the cone and sphere will be manipulated along with it.

1. Create 2 separate objects.
2. Create the 2D circle.
3. Open the outliner, select both 3D objects created in the first step and drag to the 2D circle in the outliner using the middle mouse button.

Houston, we have a problem.

Upon inspection of my models, I wanted to make final tweaks here and there to perfect each one. When I opened up Maya 2016 for mt TIE-Fighter I saw this mess in the engine area. For an odd reason once I had saved everything it had messed with my edges and vertices to create this mess. I have edited it since to clean it up. But this is a noteworthy issue.

Multiple Extrudes

Extruding Multiple Faces

While creating my models I had acquired a love for the extruding tool as it made it very easy and simple to manipulate simple objects into more complicated ones. Previous to this example I was not completely sure how to create the 2 extruding faces equally. But using the connect tool between the above and below edges I could cut a perfect middle edge to separate the faces. Once I had done that I extruded a smaller face into both faces and used the vertices to make them equal. Once equal I highlighted both faces I wanted to extrude and performed the extrusion.