The Prof. Snape Finale

Prof. Snape's Office 1

Prof. Snape's Office 2

Here are the two finished renders of Prof. Snape's office. The final phase of this project that was done in Maya was the Lighting, and it was the most fun that I've had since starting construction of this room. That is clearly evident when you look at my grade for that assignment, it was the first B that I had gotten in a project that was done in Maya. I have to phrase it that way because I got As in my drawing and writing assignments in the Digital Form, Space, and Lighting class.

However, before I could get started with the lighting I had to fix some of the textures and models. You'll notice that the floor and desk textures are different as is the shelves and candle plaque. I re-designed and re-textured the chair too, but I am not too sure that I am happy with it. I also added two new objects. I added the Slytherin Hourglass, and I would have liked to have included sand in it, but I am not too sure how to create it. I am guessing that it is a NURB. When I had decided to create Prof. Snape's environment I knew that I wanted to show off his love for Lily Potter, and so there's a picture of Lily in a glass ball hidden in one of the inset panels of the desk as well as images of a doe in the rug. It was originally intended that the torn up letter from Lily that Snape took from Sirius Black's room would be hidden in the other inset panel of the desk, but I felt from that angle it couldn't be seen. As Prof. Maloney would say, if it can't seen by the camera, don't create it. Well, I changed my mind and created it. And actually it can be seen a little. You just can't tell what it is other than a glass prism. There is something in that prism, I can sure you of that.

I knew from the very beginning how I wanted the office lit. It was going to be dark to match Snape's personality. The only light source were going to be the candles, and there are a lot of them in that room even though only one is on camera. However, on the day we were working on our lighting Kim White from Pixar stopped by our class. Her main job with Pixar is Lighting, and so she went around to look at all of our work to give us some pointers. I was thinking that the Pensieve would a Point Light just like the only candle that is on camera, but she suggested it should be a Spotlight because of how prominent the Pensieve is in that first shot. Since it would be a spotlight, the light had to match the color emanating from the Pensieve. I did as she suggested, and the room looks a whole lot creepier than I had imagined in the beginning. I absolutely love it. It was definitely the best work that I had done in the class. Now if I can only perfect my modeling and texturing.

First 3D Character

The Farmer_Front View

The Farmer_Profile View

After we completed our environment we had to create our first 3D character, but we weren't rigging the character. Rigging is kind of tough to explain, but the easiest way would be to say that it is creating a skeleton and attaching it to your model to be animated. It makes animating the character easier. I hear that rigging is not a fun process though. I guess, since the rig is the skeleton  that must be why our models had to be hollow. By the way, it is so fun to maneuver the camera through the character's body unless you're looking for something in particular.

I learned a lot from creating the hourglass for Snape's office because it helped me a great deal here. Overall, I had a fun time creating this character until I got to the clean up process, which was a bear. At the end, we needed to get rid of any five or more sided faces and manifolds. I had to create a lot of triangles, which aren't great for models, but they are better than five or more sided faces. As for manifolds, they can crash Maya if they aren't dealt with. I went through a lot for that clean up process.

Prof. Maloney gave seven of us in the class an extension on this project because we went to see Rumblefish at the DMC for Thursday Night at the Movies. That meant that we had 48 hours to finish our character. I didn't have Maya 2011 on my computer yet, and so I had to go to the school on Friday, June 1st to work on it. I wanted to finish that day, but security kicked me out at 10 PM because they were closing. So I came back the next day to finish. This time security wasn't going to let me in because it was on lock down for graduation, and so I explained the situation to them. However, they were still not going to let me in until I told them who my professor was. Apparently Prof. Maloney scares the security too. They let me in, and I was able to finish the clean up.

To add more to this whacked out story I almost got a zero for this project. I slept in on June 3rd, and I didn't get up until close to 5 PM. That's how exhausted I was during those final days of the quarter. I wasn't going to turn on my cell phone since I wasn't going out anywhere, but for some reason, I decided to do so. My phone nearly vibrated off the table. I had received two voice mail messages. The first was from Prof. Maloney, which can never be good. He told me that he was grading the projects, and he can't find my character in the drop box. The only thing that's there is the environment. What?! How could that be? I know that I had put it in there. I even double checked it. He said that I needed to email him the .MB file by that evening or I would get a zero. I was in a panic, and it was tempting to ignore the second voicemail and just email the file to him right away since I did have the copy on my flash drive. The second message was also Prof. Maloney, but this time he told me to ignore the first message since he had found the file. Please don't scare me like that, professor. I finally let myself breath.

Throughout Digital Form, Space, and Lighting it seemed like I couldn't do anything right except for Lighting and my drawings. So I was expecting to get a C for the class, because that's what I was getting in practically everything concerning Maya except for the Lighting. Instead, however, I got a B for the class thanks to the Lighting, the drawings, the writing assignment, participation, and the post test. I was stunned. I was going to get a 3.0 for the quarter anyway because the A in the Fiction Writing class would have cancelled out the C, but I pulled out a miracle. This tops 2D Design where I came back from the C in midterms to end with a B in my first quarter. At least then I never gave up, but here I felt that Digital Form, Space, and Lighting was a lost cause. It shows how much I knew.

ANIJAM 2012: Storyboarding

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I had mentioned in the last post that I was joining several others from the Animation Department at SCAD Atlanta to create a film called an ANIJAM. The object that we'll all be working with is a cardboard box. My cartoon features a dog interacting with the box. The first set of storyboards had the dog walking into the frame, and he picks up the box, looks around before opening it. Then a blue beam shoots out of the box, and he is blown backwards out of the frame. However, Prof. Ingham wanted me to do more with the idea. Go crazy. I finished the final storyboards for my section of the film several hours ago. It is a lot more hilarious than the original.

Final Thoughts

I am hoping to get started on thumbnailing the second installment to the Vampire Mouse comic on Monday while I have a break from the animation project.

This weekend is the Heroes Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, and it will be the third one that I've attended. It's going to be huge.

I'll try to get into some other projects that have been waiting for the longest time such as The Captains of Heroism.

Until next time, this is Billy Wright wishing you all a good night. So long, everybody.