Friday 27 May 2011

domino effect: Toy room machine

For this assignment we were given the task of making a domino effect animation in Maya using are own idea.
For this assignment I first looked at different types of domino effects on then internet, some of the had multiple objects that would carry on the effect while some were fairly simple using only dominos them self’s

References:

Slinky effects going down the stairs in 3d and real reference videos:

Real reference slinky
Cardboard slinky
Slinky toy animation
Slinky 3ds Max
Better slinky animation
Spring toy



once I had my understanding of  what to do I then mind mapped out what I could use in the animation from this I chose to do a domino effect based on some kids toys. The idea was simple to make and from it I planned out the room area, what would be in the scenes how many scenes and cameras there would and what would happen.

(the layout)
From the References I watched I liked the idea of having a little goal at the end and so for my storyboard I made put the whole idea together. the storyboard was simply designed to get a base idea of what I would do and also that it could be changed if any problem would happen.




















along side making the storyboard and planning out the model room i also draw out references of the objets that would be in most of the scenes to have an understanding about what i would make and how it would look. 


When it came to modelling out the room and area I had a fair bit to do, through out the modelling I had to make changes that would make it easier to render once done so some of the object like the bed and small objects had to be removed to make the animation render faster. 

here are some pictures of the models with in the animation:













While I began to animate the objects in the scene I found a problem in my idea, in my storyboard I used a slinky as one of the objects to carry on the domino effect but found compactions in rigging the object to look convening so instead of using it I changed it for a bouncy ball that would go down the stairs and hit the button instead.
Another edit that I did to my animation was changing the dominos to a book hitting a ball which moved along a laid out track, the reason I had to change the idea was due to a problem with the dominos falling over using a dynamic called “gravity” 



over all this assignment was difficult to start of with but over a while my understanding on the software became easier to use. i had a lot of problem through out animating and texturing but i enjoyed learning about maya and will use what i have learnt to improve and make better 3d animations later on in the course

tutorials: vtc, youtube and internet
ideas: youtube and internet