Here’s some more of the same episode 45 of Carl Squared involving the Zombie Aliens From Outer Space.  This time, I designed half graves, half flying saucers (as per the script).  I know, it’s beyond weird, but that’s what the Writer wrote it to be.  Any ways, it was fun.

Grey-Shaded Zombie Fighter

Toon-Shaded Zombie Fighter

The Zombie Fighters as they appeared in the show in the actual shot

Here’s a design I came up with a couple of years ago for Episode No.45 of the television series “Carl Squared”.

Grey-shaded version

Toon-shaded version

Here’s one of the shots it was used in:

I had been asked to design and produce a few shots in 3D for a video game that the main characters were playing.  It was called “Zombie Aliens from Outer Space” or something like that.  If you know the show, it’s completely done in 2D using Flash.  Of course the challenge for me was trying to match the style of the other 2D elements of the show.

The 2D style for Carl Squared

I used Maya 7 and rendered using the built-in vector renderer.  The lines on the surfaces of the stone in the model that were to depict individual bricks were achieved by sub-dividing the surface to create a grid.  Then I selected the edges where I wanted vector lines to appear and made them hard edges.  As hardened edges, the vector renderer treats them as if the were any other edge along an angled surface.  This also allowed me to keep these lines as true vector stroked lines that could be inported into Flash and further edited.

Here are some concept sketches alogn with the final cleaned-up B&W and Colour design …

Zombie Alien Mothership - version 1

Zombie Alien Mothership - version 2

Zombie Alien Fleet

Zombie Alien Fleet - Coloured

Unfortunately, they never called for any other 3D elements in the show.  Too bad, because I thought there were many opportunities to model elements in 3D and leverage the ability to rotate things smoothly.

PIP Animation was responsible for some of the scripts in the final season, and all storyboards, designs, animation, straight through to final cut.  Portfolio Entertainment produced the show and it was broadcast in Canada on Teletoon.

It was a fun show to work on.  At least now I can say some of my 3D work made it to the small screen.

I just came across this little Maya oddity and solution.  I thought I would share it.

When you first launch Maya, you see the following message in the feedback box at the bottom of your workspace…

Error: Warning: Not all preferences were saved. See Script Editor for details.

Description of problem:

Maya doesn’t retain any changes you have made to your workspace, such as which shelf you last had open, which panel set you were last using, or any other customizations to the interface in general.

Solution (Windows XP Pro, SP 2):

UPDATE: This works for WIndow 7 environments too (thanks to luka3rd for confirming this)

Create a System Variable called MAYA_APP_DIR and enter the path to the maya folder as it is in your “My Documents” target folder.

Here’s how:

1.Right click on ‘My Computer’ and choose ‘Properties’
2. Select the ‘Advanced’ tab, and click on ‘Environment Varibales’

3. Under ‘System Variables’ click on ‘New’ and name it: MAYA_APP_DIR. Set the value to the location you wish to use, e.g. D:/maya

4. Click OK until all dialogs are closed.

5. Restart Maya if you have it open.

Why does this happen?

If you change the target folder for your “My Documents” folder to something different since you installed Maya, this problem will occur.

In the coming months I will be collaborating with a 2D character/animator to create a character who they have designed and animated in 2D, I will model and rig it and they will take back to animate.  As a matter of fact, the character has already been animated so we know where we’re headed.  We are attempting to reproduce some of the 2D animation, but plan on leveraging the possibilities afforded by going 3D.  For me, it’s a chance to do some work that rewards me by getting into a character that I know will work.  It also has the potential to get the attention of clients who might employ us to keep going.  Second only to having fun making stuff in 3D, making money at it is the goal.

So, as soon as we reveal our work to the potential client, I will begin posting our work.

The three weekend workshops have come to an end and I wish to thank all who signed up to show their support of the project in the beginning, and I especially want to thank those who were able to make it out to the workshops.

So now that almost twenty people have had a brief introduction to 3D modeling and animation, what’s next?

Well, there may be no more 4 hour long workshops on the weekend, but I intend to continue on with shorter sessions. In the months to come, I plan to offer several 2 hour demos of various 3D techniques. They could include topics like more specific modeling and animation projects, or in-depth topics like texturing, lighting, rendering and some dynamics and special effects. I will prepare a detailed list of topics and post them soon.

After I give each demo, I will later post it here, in the form of a screencast on the blog for everyone else to benefit from.

Thanks again everyone and have a great summer.

- Modeling lesson – “Adding a door to the dungeon”

On Saturday, we had another full house. All eight seats were taken and the night was packed with “3D goodness”. This time I wasn’t surprised when the final hour rolled around and we hadn’t started talking about animation yet. Having learned from the first workshop back at the beginning of May, I decided to split up the topics a little so that we weren’t just talking about the UI most of the night, but instead coming back to it again and again as we delved into the other topics, modeling and animation.

There were some people we got stuck here and there and that was to be expected. Expecting to understand everything in just under four hours, even the basics, is a tall order. So if any of you that were there are reading this now, go easy on yourselves, you did well, considering. Still, I believe that the original goal of the workshop was met, that is, I wanted to introduce Maya to people who have never really sat done and tried to make something with it. And to those that have attempted to make sense of it, the workshops were meant to help them break through to the next level where they became truly capable of solving there own problems.

Having a tool whereby you can bring to reality (at least on screen) anything your imagination can conceive is truly a gift to behold.

The workshops being, far from perfect, I will still continue on to the final installment in two weeks time and strive to hone the lesson plan even further with the hopes that they can deliver on its promises.

As with most things that are done in our “spare time”, work on another 3D project has come along and taken over all of my time. Not to worry though, I will get back to the helmet soon. In the meantime, enjoy this wireframe shaded view of Helmet No.1 with the rigged visor in both the up and down positions.

The first 3D workshop has come and gone.  We had a full house of eight people.  We ran out of time when it came to the Animation half of the workshop.  After I descried a typical 3D pipeline, spent a solid hour just on Maya’s interface, most of the time was spent on modeling (where I continued on mentioning even more elements of the user interface).  Animation was squeezed into the last 40 minutes.

Here’s a brief breakdown of how things went:

User Interface (UI)

This took more time than I originally scheduled for. Unfortunately, it’s one of the more difficult aspects of Maya for new-comers.  If I explain it in too short a time, I’m afraid people will have a hard time accomplishing the modeling and animation goals of the workshop.

Modeling

We covered polygonal modeling using a box-modeling style of a head.  Of that, I only covered using the “Inputs” section of the Channel Box (Also known as the object’s “Construction History”) to change an object after it has already been created in the scene.  Then I moved on to talk about  extruding faces out from the original surface of a polygon object, splitting some of the polygons into smaller polygons, and added entire “Edge Loops” of detail around the entire shape.

Animation

Animation suffered from a huge lack of time.  I covered the keyframing of a bouncing ball.  At the same time we used the “Graph Editor” to edit the curves that detailed the inbetweening of the animation.

The Dinner Break

Because we were so strapped for time, some people stepped out for dinner and brought food back and ate as I continued the workshop.  There wasn’t any one-on-one attention unfortunately, but I tried to move at a speed that most everyone could follow along to, and, for the most part, I think everyone did well.

For Next Time

I hope to make some minor changes to the lesson plan to better fit the material into the time frame better so the next workshop runs much smoother.  For the next workshop on the 31st of this month, I plan to start promptly at 4:00pm and hand out a printed version of the 3D pipeline description. I will also add a brief outline of the workshop to the “3D Training” page of this blog.  People can download it and have it as a guide during and even after the workshop’s over. I also have a short-cut card people can download and print out for reference that I will also put up on that same page.
So that’s it for now, but I want to thank everyone who came. I look forward to doing it again at the end of the month. See you there!

I added the two ear cups, head cover liner, chin strap snaps and leather base for snaps. I’m getting down to the detail work now and I might have to ask Jeff to borrow his helmet back because my photo reference just isn’t gonna cut it.

I completed the visor and grip knob assembly.  I quickly whipped up some nice beveled rivets.  I will later texture these to look like Phillips-type screw-heads, complete with bump map.