Tim Schweizer's Development Blog

Just another myblog.arts site
Categories
Design for Animation

Week 1: Design for Animation

We spent most of the lesson going over the technicalities we had to follow for the class’s 1500 word critical report. Discussing what referencing format we had to use which was the Harvard Referencing system. This was a new system to me as in Canada the standard was MLA. I will have to learn this system.

We also broached the subject of coming up with topics though I found this difficult as I am unsure as to what the class itself is meant to teach us. As we only went over the technicalities of the critical report I’m lost as to what else the class will be spend discussing and learning. With some groupmates we did come up with some topics in loose relation to VFX. These topics were:

  • How advances in VFX technology through the Harry Potter franchise affected its language
  • Development of AI and its threat to creative development and copyright
  • How changes in technology lead to changes in the reimagining of older films. IE the original Nightmare on Elmstreet Vs the remake
  • VFX’s effects on beauty standards, creation of unrealistic beauty standards
  • VR Game Immersion: Stylized Vs Realistic graphics and its effects on player immersion
  • Risk of Deepfake on privacy and employability
  • Metaverse data collection on children and their habits online with a focus on how this info collection endangers the children
  • In Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness is a lack of readability in scenes a useful tool for conveying the confusing nature of a reality gone wrong or is it a hinderance that leads to confused readings and detracts from the experience.

Categories
Nuke

Week 1: Nuke Development

For this week we did not actually begin learning the Nuke program itself. Instead, what we began to work on was the class’s development of Film language. Specifically we spoke about shot composition, camera angles, lighting and touched on lenses. As I have a BA in Film Studies I was already well versed in most of the topic but the more technical speaking on lenses and how lighting in a scene works from a technical standpoint like greenscreen spill was very interesting for me.

We also had some homework assigned to us to produce a series of pictures with the theme of ‘Time’. For my entry I took several pictures of my living room over the course of a day from, as much as possible, the same position. I then used photoshop to alter the lighting to what I believed each to represent. The day starting very blue as day breaks and gradually getting warmer as the day progress before reintroducing the blue.

Categories
Maya

Week 1: Maya Development

This first week our professor Nick Savy introduced us to Maya and got us familiar with the UI. As part of our practice to familiarize ourselves with Maya’s tools and shortcuts he had us produce a model of a Tesla Cybertruck. We worked our way through modeling, texturing and some compositing work.

My Cybertruck in Arnold’s render preview
My Cybertruck in Maya

Later in the week I also produced in my off time a model for a chair with a wicker seat. I chose this is a chair’s rectangular frame would be simple enough with polygon cubes to create and let me further familiarize myself with Maya’s UI and shortcuts with the wicker seat adding a new challenge in creating the crisscrossed pattern and the open face of the chair.

The chair in Maya, with no wicker yet.
The chair rendered without texture
With wicker in Maya

To create the open face of the chair I had the idea to make a standard cube as the chair’s seat, then using the insert edges function I mapped out the interior of the seat making it a separate face from the rest of the cube and simply deleted it. While this had the affect of creating the hole it left the edges open without a face. A friend told me about the bridge tool so using that I simply bridged those edges and closed the faces creating the hollow cube that I then placed the wicker inside of which I created by smoothing multiple thing rectangles that I then merged into a single object.

Chair textured
Added an object I created during our first time playing with Maya’s sculpting tools. I call him spike face.

I added an object to it and using the soft pull feature of Maya I bent the wicker giving it the illusion of having the weight of the object on it.

Lastly on Friday with the aid of a tutorial I modeled a vase with the help of a YouTube tutorial that got me familiar with the Curves and Surfaces tools such as EP Curve tool and Revolve.

Top Down
Render
Example and Maya view
Categories
Uncategorised

Hello world!

Welcome to myblog.arts. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!