Attached Link: http://www.acidplanet.com/artist.asp?videos=321632&T=9985

Here is the final project from Maya 1 inline, a class I took this summer from the Academy of Art in San Francisco called "Israel Vs. the Phantom Battle Tank".

Windows medis version

http://www.acidplanet.com/artist.asp?videos=321632&T=9985

Quicktime version, go to cartoons and animations

http://ajvelez.com/

Adam

Hey there. For my taste that music video was a little too repetitive, however that other video was interesting. Was that your first Maya course? Nice work. I wish my coworkers could make models at least half as nice as the guy. That would make my life a lot easier :p My conly complain would be the lack of sound effects and also I feel that the music doesn't fit the action on-screen. Just my two cents :) In the meantime, when will you give us the sketchboys number 6 :D

I think my Poser days are over, and sadly the Sketch Boys as well. This summer was my first semester at the Academy and Maya 1 was my first class. The soundtrack was not a requirement of the project so I just threw that in last minute to add some interest. Also that music video was just the old talking head style relying totally on Mimic. I didn't even pose the rapper dude! He was just standing there Leonardo! I want to get a lot more creative with Maya so maybe I'll actually get some character animation in there next time.

Adam

I certainly look forward the character animation :)

Out of curiosity... Are you finding it easier to animate the characters in Maya than in Poser?

Honestly, I don't think I ever did much animating in Poser. A few walk cycles and that's it! Most of my work was done with a close up on the actor's face in the default position. I only moved the character when absolutely necessary.

As for the animation tools in Maya, there is this xyz axis lock that make it way easier to move your character around the screen and know where he is. This wasn't available in Poser. There are some helpful tools like playblast that let you preview your animation real time.

Right now for my own enjoyment I am studying dynamics. I used to play with a plugin called Metaform which generated particles in Poser. The tools in Maya go way beyond emitting flames, like making hurricane simulations or 3d starfields. I'm interested in making a crowd simulation where little animated characters are mapped to the particles and then just move around the screen un-keyframed.

The thing that gets me is now I have to model and rig my own character instead of just downloading Michael. So, before I put all that effort into it I need to spend a lot of time planning. Then you can set the IK and joint limits for the kind of animation you are doing. In that sense it is easier because you have a custom puppet for a specific purpose instead of one size fits all. So if I want him to walk with a gimp I can rig it that way instead of keyframe it.

My big mistake with this character is that I built him way to muscle-ly. I had a lot of deformation problems in the shoulder and latissimus area and I learned a good lesson from that. As a result, I had to rig his arms and legs so they wouldn't move too far.

Another thing is that I made the head skeleton too skimpy, so that when he turned his head a lot the eyes would drift.

I think Poser is a great tool and I would like to go farther with it, especially since Mimic does 70% percent of my animation work for me. But I was discouraged at the lack of documentation, one thing I am very happy about Maya. Also, when I signed up for class this is what they gave me, so I didn't have a choice. It was either split my time between Poser or just focus on Maya.

I can study Maya for a long time and never get to the end. I just got back from SIGGRAPH in LA where I took about 7 Maya master classes. That was a very cool experience because the presenters are people working at Weta, Sony Imageworks and TBS.

This semester coming up I have Final Cut Pro, Visual Effects (mostly keying live footage w/After Effects and Motion) and, ahem, Aesthetics and the Rennaisance.

One more thing. Maya Unlimited 6.5 for student pricing cost me about 360. Retail off the shelf is 6,999. I would recommend that anyone interested go down to the local community college and sign up for an art class, then go buy Maya at a deep discount!

Adam

Hmm. I wonder what that XYZ axis lock is? it sounds interesting. I asked because I've avoided character animation within my other 3D app (Lightwave). I've avoided it because a). I love the Poser Dials for exact control over my character and b). I'm more interested in the storytelling than the character development. If I had to design, model and then rig characters it would take me sooooooooooooooo much longer to do anything that I don't think I'd ever do anything. The people I show my animations to don't care what software I use. I've always figured I'd take the hit and let the full-fledged hardcore character animators mock me for using Poser. It's been worth it because of the fact that my ultimate audience has enjoyed what I've created. I'm glad you're enjoying Maya and it's interesting to talk to someone who is making the transition from Poser to something else.

"My big mistake with this character is that I built him way to muscle-ly. I had a lot of deformation problems in the shoulder and latissimus area and I learned a good lesson from that. As a result, I had to rig his arms and legs so they wouldn't move too far." Would you be interested in knowing more about my 6-bone arm setup? It even has IK/FK blending :p I don't think I will be using poser for animating till they finally rework the graph editor. I just want to be able to edit tangents, is that too much to ask? :(

Sure! is that like a reverse skeleton? I've seen that used on the heel bone. Also, in the video "The Making of Ryan" there is a technique where they build two skeletons, one has a lot more control actions like for the wrist and then they animate the control skeleton to move the puppet. Way to advanced for me, Chris Landreth won an Oscar for best animated short on that one. Adam

No reverse skeleton. Just a chain with a few connections and nodes and expressions ;) I haven't seen the Ryan rig. I just saw some of the render stuff last year during SIGGRAPH. Very impressive. Hopefuly I will also be winning an Oscar one of these years. I will be the first salvadorean to win one ;) Anyway, I will work on that tut about the arm and I will post it in the Maya forum so everybody else can see it too.

can't wait to see it! Adam

http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=12409&Form.ShowMessage=2386006

"Are you finding it easier to animate the characters in Maya than in Poser?"

Bob, I can't speak for Maya, but I've been rigging Poser human figures with CharacterStudio Biped skeletons in 3dsmax 7 recently for animation purposes, and find it MUCH easier than working in Poser, with better results. The Quaternion-based function curves mean no more "overshoot" or gimbal lock to worry about, so there's not as much tweaking required when you keyframe motion, or edit a motion file. Poser does have Quaternion-based function curve option as well, but it doesn't seem to work as cleanly as this. The non-linear animation mixer in CS makes for really complex motions in no time; motion sequences that would have taken me perhaps a couple days to perfect in Poser, I can do now in hours or less. Also, the "footstep" mode in CS is just a pleasure to use, compared to "walk designer" in Poser. ;-)

On the other hand, Poser is still much easier for some things due to the vast amount of pre-fab content you can build from, and Poser's simplified curves graph and dope sheet, although perhaps not as powerful, is much more convenient to work with.

Message edited on: 08/29/2005 22:20

I am not very fond of character studio because of the lack of Euler curves support (at least that was on MAX 6, I haven't used 7 or 8 yet). This made me very difficult to edit the fcurves in the graph editor. Are you even able to edit the tangents of the fcurves using handles? I can't find a way to do it.

It's basically the same in 7 (I think both 6 and 7 are using CS v4). You can set tangents, adjust ease-in, etc., but I can't find a way to edit them using handles either. I'm hoping to see an improvement in this area and some other things in the next release. I also want to try out CAT (Character Animation Technologies) plugin for Max as well. It has some major advantages over CS Biped... the big one being that the parametric rig is far more customizable and deformable. However, I still love CS for it's ease-of-use when rigging a humanoid, and it's MotionFlow Mode (which is basically flow-chart, or "node" based, motion construction). It seems very intuitive for blending together multiple animated sequences. I'm not sure CAT has this, but it might. :-)