Completed Maya Tutorials of M&M unit

I would have liked to have posted these, as and when I did them, but in all honesty, aside form the Model,dynamics week 1 & 2, and the matchmoving scene, I've only completed what I've done these past few days. It's been a hectic few weeks, but over the summer I hope to get all the creases ironed out of a few few things, and get back to working. I found a lot on Ebay selling 20 Gnomon DVD's, placed a bid for £57.50 and won! despite only having real use for about 5 or 6 of them, I'd like to try and get through at least one a week over the summer period, to keep on top of my Maya game.

Anyway, Back to the point, here are the Maya tutorials I managed to complete over the space of the 1st week of the project and the past few days.






Here we have the hi-res version of the Igor anatomical model. I don't if it's common or not, but I had less of a hard time modelling this hi-res version of the, by far, than modelling the lower detail game version. Maybe I know his face too well? Either way, above you can see the modeled head from a few different angles.





Here is the model of the rest of the body, again, despite having to put in more detail etc. I found this body easier to work with than the game version. Perhaps it's the fact that there's a bit more wiggle room, there is no super precise amount of polys needed etc. and allows for slight more personal flavour/error rather than technical.

Moving on, I decided to complete the remaining dyamics and Ncloth tutorials. I think I got the most difficult one out of the way early on during the first week as it didn't take me too long to finish these ones. Put it this way - I will be sleeping tonight.



This is the first weeks tutorials. Mostly quite straight forward, didn't really run into any problems apart from the pendulum 'dealy' but just started from scratch and was fine.



Here we have the second weeks. A familiar face again, with regards to the chubby necked gentleman. these again were pretty straight forward and I only really had trouble with the bubbles video, but rectified that problem shortly enough.



Week 3's tutorials are above. Again, as always, one trouble maker, this time in the form of a rope bridge. Just had a few issues with it not wanting to collide, but after restarting maya from a previous incremental save, I was saved!



Man, the render times were a 'female dog' for a lot of these. Maybe my computer just hates Ncloth, it sure gave a fierce enough 'huff' everytime I started a render on one of them. The M&M's back took 28mins! just for 5 seconds of animation. That aside, these were pretty fun tutorials and the first time i've ever used Ncloth.


Finally, here are some of the matchmoving tutorials that I completed.



Above is the modelled Maya version of set which is seen in the example photograph. This took up so much more time than I had anticipated, and in all honesty I didn't really enjoy this (or any of the matchmoving tutorials for that matter). It worries me now that a lot of our guest speakers talk about matchmoving as an entry level job. Please tell me they're joking? jokes aside, I'm sure after some more practice I would be fine with something like this.



Here we can see the final composition of the matchmoving static shot. I have to admit, despite not caring too much for the process, the end result and the way things can be done are quite interesting to say the least.



Above is the motion tracking video using the car example. I jumped straight onto this one, as have always wondered how things like this were done for years, and now I know. This wasn't so bad, and would like to do some of my own experiments when I get some time. I would have liked to have gotten the rest done, and will be looking at them tomorrow.