Category: 3D Modelling and Animation
Modelling Project: Dynamics Simulation and Key Frame Animation
December 7, 2014

Problem: Make an awesome animation lasting 10-30 seconds. Solution: For my final project, I decided to play around with dynamics and use all other techniques learnt throughout the semester. The video mainly showcases dynamics, key-frame animation and 2D texturing.

Class Exercise: Exploring HuamnIK
November 25, 2014

Problem: Explore a new rigging technique in Maya Solution: Since, I am thinking about building a rig for the body for my 4th Project it would be good to explore the HumanIK tool. This gave me a fairly good idea of how the controls are set and how each joint behaves.

Class Exercise: Joints and Skinning
November 18, 2014

Problem: Rig your own hand model and skin it Solution: I tried rigging my own model but unfortunately the paints just won’t work right and I was getting some points that would move with another joint but were not paint at all.

Modelling Project: Proud Ken
November 11, 2014

Problem: Rig the character mesh provided and animate it using controllers. Solution: For this project, I crated a custom skeleton for the character mesh provided and then built a custom control rig to go with it. I followed the tutorial “Introduction to Character Rigging in Maya” on Digital Tutors to build the control rig.

Class Exercise: Block man walk cycle
November 4, 2014

Problem: Build a skeleton and animate a walk cycle for the provided block man model. Solution: I started off by building the skeleton for the model by using the joint tool. This was pretty simple as the block man’s body parts were separately created. The only tricky part was parenting the right part to the […]

Class Exercise: Block man – Sneaky walk cycle
November 4, 2014

Problem: Create an alternate walk cycle for the Block Man Solution: I used sneaky walk cycle frames provided here to build an alternate walk cycle for the block man model. Simply following the frames provided gave me the desired result and then I just copied them for another loop on the time line.

Modelling Project: Juni Blaze
October 26, 2014

Problem: Using Lighting, Rendering, Texturing and Shading create a 10-20 second animation for the Unicycle provided. Solution: For this project, I decided to have unicycle warm up in the beginning, do a stunt and then celebrate at the end of the movie.

Class Exercise: Identify 3 animation principles from your selected movie
October 21, 2014

Problem: Watch the animated movie selected by you and identify 3 animation principles from it. Solution: The 3 animation principles identified are as follows: 1. Appeal: Mogli’s head and eyes are much bigger in comparison to his body to make him likable.

Class Exercise: Three-point lighting and moving camera
October 14, 2014

Problem: Create shaders for the still life model using three-point lighting and use a moving camera to render the scene. Solution: I used separate materials to color the objects in the scene and then used 3 spot lights to create the three-point lighting. Then I used an EP curve to create a spiral around and […]

Modelling Project: Model a Pixar character
October 5, 2014

Problem: Using all the techniques learned so far, model a Pixar character. Solution: I decided to model the Little Green Men from Toy Story, originally taken from the Buzz Lightyear cartoon series. These seemed really simple because of the shape of their body but they had a lot of really small detailed and it was […]

Class Exercise: Egghead
September 30, 2014

Problem: Model an Egghead using the Sculpt Geometry tool Solution: As demonstrated in class, I started off with a NURBS sphere and modified the scale to get the basic shape of an egg. Next, The Sculpt Geometry tool was used to pull and push on the surface of the egg to make it look like […]

Class Exercise: Utah Teapot
September 30, 2014

Problem: Model a Utah Teapot using NURBS and other modeling tools learnt so far. Solution: I started off with a single NURBS cylinder and then used soft select and resizing to get the basic shpae of the teapot. Then used curves, NURBS circles and the surface extrude command to make the handle and spout.

Modelling Project: Create a model of your own hand using polygon modelling
September 21, 2014

Problem: Analyze youe hand as a modelling object, take pictures of it. model your hand using polygon modelling. Solution: I started off by building the palm using 4 curves and lofting around them. Each curve was setup to have 12 points and there were 6 spans between 2 curves. Then I used cylinders and curves […]

Class Exercise: Chair
September 16, 2014

Problem: Model a chair using the reference image provided. Solution: To model the chair as close to the reference image provided I started off with a cube and used the bevel tool to round the edges. Next, I extensively used the interactive split tool and others like insert loop to get extra geometry wherever necessary […]

Class Exercise: Computer Monitor
September 9, 2014

Problem: Model a computer monitor using the polygon modeling tools. Solution: To model a computer monitor I used an iMac as reference and started off with a polygon cube. The extrude tool was used to make the stand on the back of the monitor and also to extend all the faces on the edge of […]

Class Exercise: Solar System
September 2, 2014

Problem: Model the solar system and animate the planets and moons to revolve and rotate. Solution: To complete the above mentioned exercise I used different primitives (not just spheres) as planets so their rotation about the axis is easy to make out. Each planet has at most 2 moon revolving around them. The animation is […]

Class Exercise: Table and Lamp
August 26, 2014

Problem: Build a table and a lamp, only based on primitives (by scaling,translating, rotating). Solution: The primitives used for this model include Cube, Cylinder, Pipe, Cone ad Sphere. The model showcases a simple table built using only cubes. The lamp is more complex in comparision to the table.