Fire, Maya, and Junestuff te Admire

June

Advanced Animation

Fire: Week 1

With the Cloth and Hair Sim Reports behind me, Fire Simulating was next. We began by utilising the fire effects in Maya, and created a simple log burning.

After that, we played a little, amping the fire up...

And then, for added awesomesauce, I played with the colours, which made for a pretty damn purdy fire.

Fire: Week 2

Instead of using the Maya Fire (try saying that fast over and over), we began using some basic FumeFX. I had a few problems in the fact that sometimes FumeFX just doesn't want to work, or during times where Maya may crash.

Ah, programs crashing, how I miss ye not~

Anyhoo, my initial file crashed and I lost data. No matter, it was only basic set-up stuff, which has been engraved into my brain and smells like fresh toast and kippers.

What I can show for you today is some of the effects that occurred by me playing with the settings, which have gotten some interesting reactions:

We also created collision objects, so that the fire itself would actually interact with the fire. It created a bit of a fire vortex, if you don't imagine the collision object being there.

Vortex is such a cool word, it's like combining the words vore and texting, culminating in the definition of "to eat one through text message."
It could possibly also be interpreted, tex being referred to as the state of Texas (USA), where the geographical land of the state itself is devouring it's citizens.
Houston, you have a problem.
...Houston? Hello...?

Anyhoo, I'm sure it's not important. But check out this cool playblasts, which I kept the collision object in one, but not the other (creating said vortexy-effectamajig):

Fire: Week 3

We played with lattice deformers, which is supposed to make fire follow a set path. I'm not sure if mine had the exact effect it was supposed to have, however it did have an effect, regardless:

Following that, we played with smoke. Colliding smoke, to be more precise - many virtually fine smoke particles died in the ensuing collision, and their smoke corpses were flung about to the wind.

It was beautiful~
I had also changed the colour of the two different smokes (two different smoke sources, to illustrate the mixing of the smoke during collision), and had it rendered out.

Fire: Week 4

We created two FumeFX boxes, where one was the master box, so to speak, and the other was the slave box.

All hail the superior box race.

Anyhoo, by making one box the master grid, and using N-Sims, the effects of the master box... oh wait, my notes happen to state clearly they are parent and child, not master and slave. Aww maaan...

As such, the Fume effects from the parent FumeFX box translated to the child FumeFX box, provided the child and parent overlapped.

For my second trick, we created an effector in order to influence the fire and smoke. I created a fairly flattened ellipse, and in order for this to work, the Fuel, Smoke, etc., had to have the option "Master Effector" switched on, and the effector itself effectively attached to be effective to have any kind of effect.

Get yourself a coffee.

And finally, this is the playblast:

Fire: Week 5

Relatively straightforward, I began building a set for my Fire Report. I decided on a barn, which went relatively quickly... it was a simple design, and for the most part, most of it was completed in the span of a single day. The rest of the assets (including the barn) were completed in a short time, on another day.

I shall thus leave you with something that will eventually blow up.

Game Cinematic

With our assortment of various body parts (in bone form), we began constructing various structures out of these bones for the cimematic's bone ship.
What a morbid crew we have...
We began with buttresses. Aside from the fact they contain the word "butt" in the word, they are not butts you can sleep on at all, which is probably very good, since it would probably make for a smelly bed.
My buttress in itself became famous for crashing the machine, as the polygon count would skyrocket, and Maya would freeze. Just turning the objects around in view proved frustrating.

I also built a tower which initially would attach to the end of the above buttress, in which some of the assets I created initially for the buttress (such as the "bone path", which also served as the side), made for excellent tower walls, and could be used for the roof as well.

After the tower, I turned my attention to the front of the ship. I decided to create a series of arches to form a more secondary central spire, essentially imitating the basic layout from the bone ship orthographic we had as a reference.
The single arch:

Put together with multiple duplicates, rotated at slight angles, eventually gave me an enclosed structure of arches:

By duplicating the above structure and adjusting the size of the duplicates, I was able to quickly put together a more or less bone-classy series of arches to form a tower.

Of course, each level of such a structure would have a floor/ceiling, so I modelled a simple piece of geometry to fit the structure and apply it to each level.
The final result (with added directional lighting):

3rd Year Personal Project

I hadn't worked on much during the month of June for my own personal project, given the amount of dedication needed for the other projects.
I had, however, attempted a start with my protagonist, starting with a basic formation of the head.
If I had to be modest, it was beautiful...

As you can see, the initial basic shape looked okay...

...well, okay, maybe doesn't look entirely like a fox... more like... a piggy...

Okay, I take it back. It's terrifying as f*#k.