End of Sem 2.2!!!
Finally, its the end of the semester!!! And the final thing I need to do is to make a animation according to a certain sound file!!!!
Here’s the dialogue for the sound:
Han Solo: “Hey Your Worship! I’m only trying to help!”
Princess Leia: “Would you please stop calling me that?!”
Han Solo: “Sure Leia.”
Princess Leia: “*sigh* You make it so difficult sometimes…”
Han Solo: “I do, I really do.”
– Star Wars
Here’s the Scenario that me and my partner (this project is done in pairs) came up with using this sound file:
Having just moved her house, Leia is unpacking her stuff in her new room. However, Han Solo came in and started to mess her things up, even though it was not intentional. Leia, fed up with his antics, slap his hand away….(then the sound file will begin)
So, after coming up with a scenario, we need to have a storyboard, to know the key poses for the rigs/animation, and here they are:
AND THEN….We start animating!!!!
Here’s what I have done:
and here’s the combination for both my partner and I have done:
Not Bad Right!!! ^_^ (Inner me: But very bad!, me: OI!)
Whew!!!
And that’s all for this project!!! It was fun trying to come up with poses for the animation, I think that I have earn a reputation called falling girl, with all the poses I am trying to do…on my person. Yes, I kept on acting out on the way I fall -__-”’.
Also, texturing should is a torture yet it is fun. Why do I say this? Cause, while I was doing texturing, I had lots of fun doing it, making all the items more “WOW”. Yet, when we tried to test it on other computer/laptops, all the textures DISAPPEAR!!! Do you have any idea how low my heart have fallen at that time? I think my heart took a permanent residence on my feet. Luckily,(after lots of burning and using thumbdrive to test on other computers) thanks to the help of some friends, we managed to solve it, by placing the pictures in the scene folder of the whole project file. (Before you ask, yes I did set the project). But I was a bit confused, as to why we should place it there? Shouldn’t it be able to find the image as long as we place it inside the main project folder? ?_? I really need to go and figure this out…
And so, that is all folks!!! I can finally enjoy my holiday! ^_^ Sayonara!!!
Questions yet again!!!!
Sooooo, I really seems to like using “Soooo”, don’t I? Anyways, After so much scripting, questions are bound to come sooner or later haha, and here they are!!!
1st Question –
Imagine you are creating a scene where a car drives along a straight road, but swerves around at random as if the driver is drunk. Do you think it would be useful to know how to program using MEL when creating this scene? Explain.
Well, of course it would important!!! Do you even know how hard it do keep on doing key frame by key frame?? It would drive you nuts thats for sure @_@. Programming in Maya using MEL will surely help in this part of the aspects. We do not actually have to make key poses and frames (Me: Merlin Forbid, I could die with all this work), we simply need to program it so that it will move in a way we wanted and scrub through the timeline to view the results without any key frames. This is similar to the zombie file I did in the previous posts.
2nd Question –
For the drunken car scene, give TWO advantages and disadvantages (pros and cons) of using scripting to create the swerving car animation.
The two advantages would be that, I will not have to make key frames by frames as I have stated earlier, and that if you wanted to change the attributes, like making the car go faster, it will be easily done. On the other hand, while it is easily used, the outcome might not be as good as if you have done frame by frame, Maya will only be able to do the basic. Also, because of the script as well as the moment the timeline is scrubbed through, the animation will keep on playing it, continuing from where it stop, we might not be able to spot the mistakes and we are also unable to change the animation to how we wanted as it was programmed to continue on, which could be very frustrating as Maya will do its own programming, without caring what you want. The animation also can’t be changed easily due to the fact that there are no key frames.
3rd Question –
You might think that programming using MEL is similar to using ALICE (in Year 1). It is actually very different. Explain TWO of the main differences, as far as you can tell.
Mama Mia!!! I had totally forgotten that Alice existed!!! Errr…….well, as far as I can remember, I was told that Alice is actually for beginners, using only “For Loops” and “While Loops”, calculating the distance and all that stuff, also, the characters are not able to move as freely as it did in Maya. Ya…..I think thats about it?……Don’t look at me like that alright? Its not I could remember all those stuff, I even tried to search it!!! But it kept on giving me results on Alice in Wonderland!!!!!
Sooooo,(here we go again), after all these exercises on Scripting in Maya, I have learnt that even Maya have Scripting!(DUH!) As I only though that Maya is only used for animation. I also believe that scripting in Maya is also quite similar to flash scripting!!! (which is probably why we had to learn flash first). Thats is the POWER of Scripting haha.
And this is me over and out haha see you soon!!!
Using Other MEL Scripts!!!
I had download a file From here:
http://www.comet-cartoons.com/maya.html (cometScript.zip)
From here, I was able to use the script in this .zip file and use it in my Maya!!!
Like this:
These are mostly used for rigging I believe.
Here’s a little story I made up with all these symbols:
It goes like this: (each time a new “-” appears, it means it is the next symbol)
– I was bored with nothing else to do,
– Then I decided to follow an arrow symbol for fun,
– And came across a sphere like room, after getting inside the room,
– I saw a cross-shaped platform with a box in the middle.
– It was them an idea pop up into my head.
– I then stood on top of box and jump off it, again and again, in different directions!
Me: This was made purely for fun, it has no meaning whatsoever haha.
Scripting again!!!
This time I am following this:
http://www.youtube.com/user/MayaHowTos
And learn what is going on in there of course!
While doing this whole exercise, I came upon this problem:
When I came across this problem, I was very confused, because I typed exactly the same as what the tutorial said. Then I actually went and look around my keyboard, searching for any other symbol that could replace this:
and it happen to be this:
Haha
Soooo, after looking at all the six videos, I need to create a random number of zombies and create a number of zombie.
Here’s the code for the whole thing:
if (`window -ex zacp_win`) deleteUI zacp_win; //deleting the window if it exist
window -wh 400 100 -t “Zombie Apocalypse Control Panel” zacp_win;
columnLayout -adj true;
intSliderGrp -l “Number of Zombies” -f true -v 5 -min 1 -max 10 slider_zombies;
button -l “Create” -c “create_zombies()”; // creating a button called create
button -l “Random” -c “create_random()”; // creating a button called random
showWindow zacp_win; //show the window
proc create_zombies(){
string $all_characters[] = `ls -tr “human*” “zombie*”`;
if(size($all_characters)) delete $all_characters;//deleting the existing zombie
int $num_zombies = `intSliderGrp -q -v slider_zombies`;
for ($i = 0; $i < $num_zombies; $i++)
{
string $new_zombie[] = `duplicate -rr -un -n “zombie_GRP#” original_zombie_GRP`;
//creating a new zombie at the humans place and grouping together with zombie GRP
setAttr ($new_zombie[0] + “.v”)true;
float $randx = rand(-1120,0);
float $randz = rand(-1120,0);
move $randx 0 $randz $new_zombie[0];
}
}
proc create_random(){
string $all_characters[] = `ls -tr “human*” “zombie*”`;
if(size($all_characters)) delete $all_characters;
float $random = rand(1,10); //the random number zombie
for ($i = 0; $i < $random; $i++)
{
string $new_zombie[] = `duplicate -rr -un -n “zombie_GRP#” original_zombie_GRP`;
setAttr ($new_zombie[0] + “.v”)true;
float $randx = rand(-1120,0);
float $randz = rand(-1120,0);
move $randx 0 $randz $new_zombie[0];
}
}
And here’s the result:
Here’s what happen once I pressed the create button:
and here’s what happen once I pressed random:
Relatively speaking it is quite easy to do this haha. Also, I just notice that I was suppose to create the window with the title “Zombiemaker” ,I had totally forgotten about it haha. To create this, I simply need to change this:
window -wh 400 100 -t “Zombie Apocalypse Control Panel” zacp_win;
To this:
window -wh 400 100 -t “Zombiemaker” zacp_win;
Scripting In Maya!!!
Alright! This time is Scripting!!!!! Kind of hard to believe that there is actually programming in Maya 0_0”
Ok ok…So, this is the website of where I will learn scripting in Maya:
http://download.autodesk.com/us/maya/Maya2012_Getting_Started/index.html
From there, I have done from lesson one to lesson four.
So….here’s from the Second lesson: (the first is just an introduction)
For this lesson, I am suppose to create lights by scripting!!! Here’s the result!
And below are a few screenshots of me playing with the lights:
From the above exercise, I am suppose to apply it to a cone, the script in Maya allow us to be able to save it on the shelf in Maya,
And so, here’s the result!!!
Before:
After:
This allow us create the same lightings without needing to write in the script editor again!
For the next exercise, I have created this:
This exercise actually caused me a lot time due to the fact that it kept on giving me this error:
I was almost to the point of giving up *_* as I kept on redoing and redoing. However thanks to Lyo, one of my classmates, I manage to solve the problem!!!
It was during when I am duplicating the barrels to form the top row, and the tutorial told us to delete the extra barrels:(highlighted ones)
But for some reason, even when I deleted the extra from the top rows, there was another row of barrels at the top. This is where the problem start, I simply delete the yet another extras of barrels, without checking if there are any more extra barrels. So, this actually causes the top barrel, instead of one barrel, have two barrels.
For the Last lesson,
I have to create a UI window to affect whatever I want to affect.(Does that even make sense?)
Firstly ,this tutorial teaches me to create this and to move it along the plane:
From this, I created the UI to be able to influence this:
and so, here’s a playblast of it working!!:
Block, Blocked, Blocking Part 2 with sound this time!!!
Now that I have a video (from previous post), that shows me acting from a scene, lets see how will I do with sound then?
Soooo, Please watch this video first –
(me and my stupid face -_-)
Just a video of me saying this sentence:
You dare use my own spell against me, Potter? – Severus Snape, Harry Potter.
And here’s the version of it in Maya form!!!
(I just loveeeeee his voice!!!!!!!)
This exercise really takes a lot on my eyes, haha. I had to kept on referring to the video of me saying it and back to Maya and do the exact same thing. *_* Also, I had to make sure that both the action must to compatible to the words being said, which is really easier said then done @_@.
intro3d 