Color

Hey here's the modeling for the for Eric.


-Blake

Total3D training example

http://www.3dtotal.com/index_tutorial_detailed.php?roPos=1&catDisplay=6&id=261#.USvUOt0SF38

New Prop List

Hello hello. Hope you guys are able to get out and make snow lamps or something!

I made a revised prop list based on Yasemin's sketch of the house.

Fireplace section
1. Wood stove/fireplace
2. Two comfy chairs (a little asymmetrical to fit the space)
3. Two oddly shaped end tables for tiffany and old man

Entryway section
1. Trunk with blankets bursting out
2. Portmanteau with coats and scarves hanging
3. Shoes, mittens, etc. spilling out

Kitchen section
1. Kitchen counter+stove+sink
2. Two dining chairs
3. Place settings
4. Shelf or cabinets with food rations

Bed section
1. Bed with mattress, blankets
2. Another oddly shaped end table with the lava lamp on top

General
1. A lot of picture frames with portraits, or just quick sketches and/or screen caps of lamps in them
2. A large, round area rug
3. Make sure the door is hinged and opens
4. Consider what the ceiling is shaped like. Are there rafters are some support structure up there?
5. Old fashioned radio or record player
6. Old fashioned phone

On second thought I think we should only have one of kind of chair, to make it clear that our lamp lady lives alone and she's a hermit. Maybe the end table can fill up that space next to the fire, or an ottoman.

So I think Blake is going to model the interior of the house, because he's been working on the outside and it looks awesome. Then we can start to fill it up with props and characters - maybe starting out with some cubes or whatever as standins until we model things.

Katie, would you be interested in storyboarding the opening sequence with the 2d->3d transition? I feel like you had the clearest mental pictures of how that went and it would be great to get Kelsey started on the background paintings, now that we know what the hut looks like.

Also, start brainstorming titles! And don't forget we need to stick a title shot in the opening sequence somewhere.

Snow day snow day snow day! See y'all on Tuesday if we're not buried in snow.

Hey gang,

Happy snow day! Its snowing on our hut, too. not finalized, but the exterior is coming along!

-Blake

For lamp cords:

Make a NURBS circle and a CV curve that is the length of the cord. Be sure to add enough CV;s to make it pliable.

Select the circle, then shift select the path for the cord. 

Under the Surfaces sub-menu, choose Surfaces - Extrude = Options. It should look like this:

You must choose Polygons or you can't make it an nDynamic object. Here I've set the Number of V Spans to be 12 - this is how many spans will go along the path. The U spans go around the cord object. You could do this

after the fact in the advanced tessellation folder using the attribute editor if these numbers don't work for you.

Hide the curves and delete the history on the cord.

Switch to nDynamics sub-menu.

Choose nMesh - Create nCloth.

In the Attribute Editor, you can select Presets for the cloth. They are under Presets at the top right of the dialog.

I used Burlap which was pretty good.

Create a polygon plane that intersects with the floor.

Select it and choose nMesh - Create Passive Collider.

Give yourself a few hundred games to test with.

Hit play and see if the ford falls on to the floor and collides with it.

If it does, rewind it first - then grab the lamp base and drag it over to the cord end.

Select the end of the cord's vertices in vertex mode. Shift select the base in Object mode. 

Choose nConstraint - Transform.

The cord is now constrained to the movement of the base of the lamp, but not interactively. You have to animate it. So, select the base, set a key at frame one (type S). 

Move to another frame in the timeline - Try frame 35. Ignore any odd behavior. 

Move the lamp and if Autokey is on, you're good. Otherwise, type an S. 

Continue animating the base of the lamp.

Rewind, hit play.

The cord should follow the base.

To plug it in to a wall, Rewind and move it over close enough to the wall to attach the other end to it.

Select the vertices at the other end of the cord and Shift select the wall.

Choose nConstraint - Transform. The other end of the cord should now be stuck to the wall.

Hit play.

Iv've added a working version from Maya in Courses - Adv Anim - Jon - Maya_scenes, It's called cord one.

The paper lamp in a few poses

I'm not too awesome with lights and the background's just something from photoshop, but it seems to move alright. And the legs can move too.

Updated Floor Plans (or the day I gained a lot of respect for interior designers)

Hi again!

Here is the updated floor-plan. I've noticed that I really like the funky furniture shapes. I think they hint that they morphed and sort of accommodated the house's shape, and that's a cool little detail that we can try. This would mean open edged end tables and kitchen counters, and seating arrangements. Sort of resembling the the pentagonal house shape. What do you think?

Otherwise, here is the plan, its annotated again, let me know if there is any confusion as to what is what and if I'm missing any major characters. I really like the idea of the lady owning a lava lamp, so I included it in the plans but I'm not married to the idea. I'll recover if we choose to nix it. Hopefully. I don't know I might cry. A little bit. Just kidding.

Toodles,
Yasemin

a tentative floor plan

Hi everyone!

So, please let me know if the plans changed drastically while I was gone, but here is a quick sketch of a floor-plan, with tentative spacing of the initial pose of the characters sans clap-lamp. I also annotated where the general striking of most props would be. So let me know if you have any changes, otherwise, I can get into more detailed environmental drawings.

Note about annotation: I put the character names in the boxes, so the names in boxes are where the respective lamps are.

Okay bye bye now,

Yasemin

Excellent Kim! I love the way they work as a group consistently - very humorous grouping! Also funny frustration the pin-leg lamp shows with the balloon. Good framing overall. I wonder, should the old lamp have a different way of jumping up on the desk (since he's old) rather than just shooting off from the ground? Maybe slowly climbing? Or maybe that's totally unimportant. Nice to see it have some timing and movement - can't wait to do a shot or three...

Here's an animatic made from the storyboard I just posted. Sorry for spamming your inboxes on a Friday night - I hope you are out doing fun things anyway!

Storyboards: Ideas for Lamps Trying to Clap

Hey lovelies. Here are the storyboards I was working on last class: a couple of ideas for how our lamp family discovers that the new guy is a clap lamp and how they try to make a double clapping sound. 

(On second thought, I actually think the long necked lamp should knock over the box, because I haven't had him do anything yet and it could be funny to have him lean over and knock over the box without moving his base.)

These are just ideas of what the basic shots would be: we should probs come up with more interesting angles and compositions. After I did these I realized I should probably be storyboarding in shades of black and white, because the light from the lamps is going to be almost more of a compositional element than the shapes of the lamps themselves.

Might turn this into an animatic for practice and to see how timing would work.

Arc Lamp with Fog (mental Ray)

This will render a lot better in a room with stuff in it.

box guy walk

Main lamp jump

Notes from Tuesday & Modeling Signup

Happy Valentine's Day, adv anim!

 Here's a quick rundown of the decisions we made on Tuesday.

• Last class we talked about the layout of the cabin and decided on a hexagonal hut with the new lamp's box in the center, like an arena. I'll add a picture of the layout once we get a final one.
• The outside of the cabin will be 2d and the inside will be 3d. The 2d shadow of the delivery man cast from the door into the 3d cabin will make the transition between 2d and 3d.

So I wanted to make a list of everything we want to model and who's making each thing. If you'd like to claim a character or prop, or if you start to work on it, just add your name. I went ahead and added a couple people who are


Lamp Modeling Signup
Primary Lamps

• New lamp
• Tiffany lamp - Michael
• Stiff elderly lamp
• Spider lamp - Michael
• Octo lamp - Elana
• Long-necked lamp

Background Lamps

• Lava lamp
• Night light - Elana
• Two-headed lamp?
• Little War of the Worlds lamp?
• Outside lantern?

Prop Modeling Signup

• Lamp box
• Circular rug
• Picture frames on walls or tables
• Kitchen stove, counter, sink
• Cabinets or kitchen shelf
• Dresser
• Clothesline and hanging mittens
• Pile of blankets
• Bed
• Rocking chair
• Radio, cassette player, or record player
• Old-fashioned telephone
• Fireplace or old-fashioned wood stove
• Logs (for fire)

Anything I'm missing?

I wonder if I should make a spreadsheet. Then we could have a column to check off when objects are finished. Or just a table would work. Stay tuned for that!

                                               Night light with a new cover! Thoughts?

Lamp Lineup

Here's a really quick lineup of the characters we talked about working with. Mainly I wanted to figure out their relative sizes and see if they make a good group or whether we're missing anymore or if anyone is redundant. Thoughts on that?

The way I've drawn these isn't exactly right so refer to the original drawings. Later on I'll post a few notes for each one about their personalities and ways they could move.

• Do we have enough diversity? 
• Are we missing any lamps? 
• How should we design that two-headed one?

I think the one that's missing from our group might be a little curious one with a round head and thin pole, like Jon's War of the Worlds lamp.

Do we need another one that reads as female?

Looks like you guys are making awesome things in Maya. Can't wait to see the updates to the story!

Team Meeting Notes 2/5

Yay, good work making decisions, everyone!  We rock! It looks like we are modeling things now.

• Main lamp (tall cylinder with a thin pole and flat round base)
• Octolamp
• Paper spider spiral lamp!
• Stained glass lamp (real close already)
• Stiff gentleman lamp, husband of Tiffany lamp
• Two-headed lamp made of two normal lamps on one base
• And possibly a tall lamp that's stationary but swings in from the top of the frame, like a long-necked animal

We also talked about a couple things that will go in 2D art that's integrated into the 3D parts.

• The house is going to be vaguely lamp-shaped, with a steep roof and a ton of snow on top.
• There's a lantern hanging outside the doorway that periodically swings into place
• Yasemin's going to make some art for the walls
• Lamp Lady with a lava lamp from the 70s
• Little girl with lamps instead of dolls
• Spinning lamp that turns into a zoetrope. Just kidding???

I want to do a lineup of the characters so we can see how big they need to be next to each other and make sure they're different enough. And try to learn Maya. 

Story meeting next time?

We're watching Over the Hedge. The characters are amazing! Both in the way they move and in their voices.

Stained glass lamp version 2:

LET'S MAKE CHARACTERS.

Howdy, vis dev team. Seeing as how we need to solidify character designs today, I made a general list of all the characters.


1 main lamp, 4 supporting lamps, plus a few extras. The modern lamp needs the most expressive range. Lamps #1-4 need a pretty full range of motion to at least look curious or laugh, and #5-8 only need to be able to turn on impressively, because I'm envisioning putting them in quick shots. The delivery guy should be extra simple but somehow communicate delivery.

0. modern lamp
1. lamp with one bulb
2. lamp with two bulbs
3. lamp with three settings
4. octolamp

Fancy lamps. Like 3 to 4 fancy lamps. Such as:
5. Christmas lights
6. Stained glass (Michael's model is really awesome)
7. Lava lamp
8. Something that moves, like a rotating disco ball or projector lamp

9. delivery guy


After all the lamps turn on at the same time, we could have that shot outside the house where it's ridiculously bright through the windows and the disco lights are going around, like National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation.

See y'all in a minute!