Week 1
Maya Dynamics - Rigid Bodies
We started the semester with looking at Maya Dynamics and Rigid Bodies. You can create Rigid Bodies under the FX Menu --> select object --> Field/Solvers --> Create Active/Passive Rigid Bodies.
You also need to create Gravity in the same menu to make it work. After creating gravity you just shift select gravity and all the objects and click 'Assign to selected'.
For the ground plate in the video to work, it needs to be a passive rigid body. I didn't assign the ring in the video to the gravity, so it just kinda flotes in space.
In this video, I played around with some of the settings in the Channel Box like the bounciness.
The next task was to create a wall out of 'bricks' and push a ball into it to see how Maya simulates the collapse. All the bricks and the ball are active rigid bodies and the floor plane is a passive rigid body. You can give the ball momentum by changing the 'Initial Velocity' of the right axis in the Channel Box.
In this video, I increased the Mass of the ball to 50.
This was an additional task to practice with rigid bodies.
To keep the objects in their original position until something hits it you can do that at Field/Solver --> Initial State --> Set for Selected
If you want to render the scene you need to turn the simulation into keyframes. Go to Edit --> keys --> bake simulation properties and check the framerate.
Then go to windows --> node editor --> delete rigid bodies
30.01.2018
Week 2
Bullet
In week two we looked at the Bullet Plugin. Bullet is capable of handling more objects per simulation than Mayas standard dynamics system.
To load it you need to activate the plug in at Window --> Settings/Preferences --> Plug-in Manager and select the bullet.bundle. Now there is a Bullet option in the FX Menu next to Mash.
Now you can create Active Rigid Bodies and Passive Active Rigid Bodies.
In this video, I had a go at collapsing a tower of boxes.
Shatter
Next, we looked at the Shatter Effect to create shattered objects. Go to FX Tab go to Effects --> Shatter to get the menu. In the Solid Shatter tab, you can choose the settings. Shard count is how many pieces the object will shatter to, Edge jagginess is to create a more random crack.
Here you can see a shattered object created with edge jagginess (right) and one without (left).
To create a simulation you can select the shattered object and make it a Rigid Body Set. After that, it needs adjusting in the node setting. In the outliner click on the bulletSolver and navigate to RigidSetInitialState. There you need to change the Collison Shape Type to hull and set the Collison Shape Margin to 0.
To hold the shapes together you can use Glue Shapes. Go to Attribute Editor --> bulletRigidSetInitalState -->Initial Conditions and tick Glue Shapes on. There you can also change the glue settings. In this example you can see that the fractured pieces hold together.
Cloth
As the second part of the Assignment is to demonstrate movement of fabric via looked at the cloth systems in Maya. You can find it in the FX Tab at nCloth --> Create nCloth. In this video I made the table a passive collider.
To fix a cloth onto a object you need to select all the vertesies jo want to fix to the object, shift select the object and got to the FX tab --> nConstraints --> Point to Surface Constraint.
06.02.2018
Week 3
We took a look at lightning and rendering this week. Above you can see the scene with no textures and no lights added.
The image below shows the setup of the scene. I added 3 Arial Lights and 1 additional light which only affects the back wall because otherwise, it would look pretty dark with that material. The intensity is set to 30 for 2 of the lights and to 50 for the third. Most of the textures are either presets of an Arnold material (glass, chrome,...) or provided images (barrel, wall,...).
This is the final render of my scene. I'm happy with everything besides the flames, they just didn't turn out the same way even though they had the exact same settings. I tried changing some settings and deleting one and coping the other but in the rendered image the never turned out to look the same.
13.02.2018
Week 4
Part 1 - Destruction
Week 4 was a workshop class where we focused on working on our first assignment which is to create a destruction animation and a cloth animation. For my destruction part, I chose to do a collapsing Jenga tower. As I didn't have any good clips from the first week where we had a Jenga in class I filmed a new clip at home. At some point, I realised that I filmed this in portrait mode which isn't ideal for the final video but it was too late to start a new animation and render it.
I started with modelling two brick rows and duplicate it until I reached the same number as in the reference video. Then, I applied bullet and started tweaking the settings until the simulation looked close enough to the original video.
This is one of the frist attempts where I mainly tried to get the angle and the hight at which the ball starts and hits the tower right.
To get a better understanding of bullet and all its possibilities, I researched at the Autodesk Knowledge Network what all the menus are actually doing.
This is the final render. As bullet took 150 Frames to simulate that, I had to make the video faster to match the reference footage.
I put the frame number in the video to see how long it takes the tower to collapse and adjusted my animation accordingly.
This is the final video for part 1 of the first assignment, showing the original footage and my attempt to copy it.
Part 2 - Cloth
For the nCloth animation, I decided to recreate a curtain that's being shut. This is the reference footage I filmed to recreate.
To get the timing right for my animation I inserted the frame numbers into the footage with AfterEffects.
After that, I started to build my scene. I used a few wood textures, but mostly the basic Arnold material. I took a picture out of the window to use as my background. The normal image plane wasn't visible in the rendered image so I had to create a camera and in the camera attributes under Environment --> Image Plane you can create an Image Plane which is visible in the Arnold renderer.
As this isn't a modelling Assignment I didn't model everything that's visible in the reference video.
The next step was to create the actual nCloth. I modelled the curtain out of a curve and made holes in the top to 'hang' it on the rod. To simulate the movement I put a box in where my hand would be and created a Point to Surface Constraint. In the nConstraint attributes, there is an option to enable or disable the constraint which you can keyframe, so I keyframed it to get the 'letting go of the curtain' part.
I played around with the nCloth settings get the animation closer to the reference. I also tried to disable the nCloth until it's getting pulled (like the initialState sleep in the bullet system) but after keyframing it and trying to play the animation or playblast, Maya kept crashing every time. After trying that, I gave up and moved to lighting but Maya kept crashing frequently, one time after just adding a third light and multiple times when I tried to Render the current frame.
This is the final Render. It's not perfect, but I think for the given time (rendering took 6 hours) and the fact that at a certain point Maya just kept on crashing it's alright.
This is the final video for part 2 of the first Assignment, showing the original footage and my attempt to copy it.
20.02.2018
Week 5
Displacement Map
After finishing our first assignment we continued working on our lighting & rendering scene. We started with a displacement map which creates adding surface detail that would take far too long using regular modeling methods. Displacement mapping differs from bump mapping in that it actually alters the geometry, and therefore will have a correct silhouette, and self-shadowing effects.
If you look at the barrel and compare it with the render from last week (right top corner) you can see how the metal rings are standing out now.
Here you can see the layout in the Hypershader
These are the options for the displacement map. You should increase the Iterations and the Adaptive Error.
In this video, you can see how to add the displacement map in the hypershader and conect it correctly.
Render Layers
Ambient Occlusion
Next thing we looked at was Render Layers. Open the Render Setup and click Add Layer. Give the layer a name to make it easier for yourself if you create more layers. Right-click on the layer --> Create Collection. Name the Collection and drag and drop all of the geometry in. The easiest way to do that is to open the Outliner and middle mouse drag all your objects over to the Property Editor. The last step is to right-click on the Collection --> Create Material Override and choose aiAmbientOcclusion.
Ambient Occlusion is a shader effect which simulates light and dark areas (or shading) giving objects details derived from the geometry. It can add a sense of ‘weight’ via soft shadows in your scene and is lighting independent.
This is the Ambien Occlusion Render, but as you can see the Displacement Map isn't showing. To fix this we need to create a separate Collection for the Barrel in the same Layer and add the Displacement Map again in the Hypershade as shown below.
Here you can see the final result of the Ambien Occlusion with the Displacement Map.
Wireframe
Render Layers can be used for different things. Here we used it to create a Wireframe render by following the same steps as above and using aiWireframe instead of aiAmbienOcclusion.
The result of the Wireframe render.
AOVs
AOVs render a specific aspect of the Arnold ai Surface shader so you can render attributes like reflection or specular. In this video, you can see how to import AOVs and how to view them in the render view.
This is the exported specular render
Week 6
Matte
We continued working on our lighting and rendering scene. Mattes are used to isolate different parts of the render. In this example, I isolated the back wall by assigning a white aiUtility as Material Override and black aiUtility for the rest of the scene.
This is the Matt render with the isolated back wall.
If you composite the AOVs and the matt together you can enhance the final render and change the background in this example.
nParticles
After looking at Matts we started to look at nParticles. You can get nParticles in the FX Menu under nParticles --> Create Emitter. Make sure you select 'Balls' in the Create Options. You can play around with the settings in the Attribute Editor such as the size, colour or stickiness of the particles. If you create an object and go to nParticles --> Fill Object you can create particles in the shape of that object and you can also use an object as an emitter if you go to nParticles --> Emit from Object. This video demonstrates a few of the above-mentioned techniques.
In this video I combined nParticles and nCloth.
Week 7
We continued working with nParticles in Week 7. To get back into it we built a scene where particles of different colour mix together.
You can constrain particles if you select all the particles and go to nConstraints --> Component to Component. The will break apart though if you don't change the settings. In the Attribute Editor go to dynamicConstraintShape --> Dynamic Constraint Attributes and change the Connection Method to Within Max Distance and increase Max Distance up to 0.6 or more.
This video is just another example where I played around with the particle constraints.
MASH
MASH is mainly used for motion graphics. Here is a short video to demonstrate what it's capable of.
You start off with creating an object that you want to work with (a cube in this example) and then go to MASH --> Create MASH Network. This will create a few more cubes and if you now click on MASH in the outliner you get the MASH menu in your Attribute Editor. There are so many different options and things you can do and change and even combine all the nodes together. You can get a cool looking animation really quickly.
The color node doesn't work with Arnold but there is a way around.
This is what I came up with after playing around for a little while.
Week 8
Week 8 was a workshop week where we could work on our second Assignment. The first step was to do some research for lighting and rendering in Maya with Arnold.
This is the scene we started with. It has no lights and no textures.
After taking a closer look at the scene I noticed a few modelling errors like the floor has gaps, overlapping objects and the wall/arches, cables that are placed inside the walls etc. I fixed the easiest ones but not everything as this is not a modelling assignment.
The first thing I did was to clean up the outline to make my life easier afterwards. I combined certain objects and UV mapped them so I could export them into Substance Painter to add material.
These are a few objects I created material for in Substance Painter. In hindsight, I realised that I spent a bit too much time creating textures because you can't properly see all of them in the scene anyway. I should have started with the lighting.
After I had all the materials I started adding lights and playing around with the settings to get a good look.
During my research, I came across light decay filters which is supposed to control the falloff of the light and give you more control over how much light fills the room. I liked the result in my scene so I kept the filters.
I rendered a few AOVs (Diffuse, Specular and Transmission) and put them together in Nuke.
This is my final daytime render.
For my night scene, I added a few extra interior lights and decreased the light from the windows. I also deleted all the light decay filters.
I also rendered a few AOVs (Diffuse, Specular and Transmission) and put them together in Nuke.
This is my final nighttime render.
Week 9 & 10
Week 9 & 10 were Course Based Activity weeks which means no class
Week 11
Fluids
Maya Fluid Effects is a technology for realistically simulating and rendering fluid motion. It lets you create a wide variety of 2D and 3D atmospheric, pyrotechnic, save, and liquid effects.
We started with creating smoke in a 2D container. You can get to the liquids in the FX tab --> Fluids -->.....
I modelled a simple cigarette and tried to create realistic looking smoke.
Week 12
Week 13
