Introduction to Maya 2011: Part C

The last part of the tutorial taught me how to light a scene with directional lights, create an image plane to hold a matte background, create a dome to bounce reflections, and batch render.

The images below show before and after in my lighting process. The last image with the desert background is from Digital Tutor's tutorial as a comparison.

I'm pretty satisfied with the lighting results that I got. I definitely chose a harder background to work with than the tutorial came with. My background has harder directional shadows plus some beautiful blue shadows and pink highlights and it was important for me to learn how to simulate this.

You can view my final render here. Almost thrilled with the results but a couple things that bug me are outside of my knowledge base: the cast shadows on the ground are the wrong color and the smoke doesn't cast a shadow.

Introduction to Maya 2011: Part B

In the next section of the Intro project I learned how to organize the files into groups and parented structures as well as some simple rigging using nurbs circles as parents for main objects. The most complex thing was creating a joint-chain that connects the cables from the racer to the engines. I did the chain backwards and had to start over (which was frustrating but a good lesson), however the result of a rope-like effect was worth it.

I also learned how to write some expressions to create a random movement in the engines as well as creating a couple new attributes that would make animation simpler. (I love CG movement, as evidenced in my devotion to the "wiggle" expression in AfterEffects!)


Next I learned how to keyframe animation and create animation that follows a path. You can see my basic animation here.

The next part was learning about dynamics which I've toyed with rather extensively in AfterEffects, so the concept was not new. It was, however, very exciting to play with particles in 3D for the first time. We used "Fire", "Lightning" and a generic particle system for the Smoke. I'm not happy with my Smoke result - somehow the instructor's project (done with the same variable input) turned out much more realistic. I messed around with this for a few hours and decided to let it rest as is!
We haven't actually gotten around to lighting, rendering, or cameras YET, but I wanted some instant satisfaction so I rendered out this spectacular composition. So excited to do this with my own ideas...!