Unit 11 : FX Animation

In this unit, we're exploring the FX area of animation using Maya's built-in tools. I find this quite fascinating and beneficial, as it's a feature I haven't explored much and haven't particularly thought about when creating or enhancing my animations to achieve a greater sense of realism. The built-in features really help make a quick and effective animation to use in backgrounds or sets of a scene. I think this can also help to scene look livelier, even if the main focus is on a character, but also showcases my ability to use multiple features of Maya to create limitless narratives. 

We first explored how to create waving grass. This involved using Maya's Content Browser, which we have been introduced to before in the Butterfly tutorial. However, the grass tutorial explores the whole feature and how to create the grass moving from start to end, and have a complete finished look. I began by setting up a scene and navigating my way to the content browser and locating which grass form to use. I then made some strokes across the viewport. The next step was to animate the grass by simply applying wind turbulence in the attribute editor and adjusting the different settings accordingly. I then converted the paint brush stroke to polygons. Next, I exported the cache file and imported it back into the scene, deleted the original stroke and grass, to then finally be left with waving grass, which, as a result, doesn't slow down the real-time playback speed and allows for it to be rendered. It was a fairly simple tutorial and process that creates an easy way to add more to a scene. There was one challenge of Maya not executing the tools the first time applying them, so I had to close Maya and reload the scene for it to work. To present my work, I created a ground and sky, added in some lighting and a camera with depth of field applied.

To create a flag flying in Maya, there were a few more steps than the grass tutorial, but easy to follow and understand. I created a polygon with the suggested dimensions of a flag and then applied a texture of a flag to the mesh. I made some small scaling adjustment in the UV editor and the flag model was complete. I then applied the nCloth tool, which I have briefly explored this tool prior to this course but don't fully know how to use it. I selected the first row of vertex on the left hand side of the flag, and applied the nConstraint tool. This allow that section of the mesh to remain in place and the rest of the mesh transform with the effects of the nCloth tool. Next, the flag needed to "fly" rather than fall down from the added gravity in the scene. I located the wind speed in the attribute editor and made adjustments to get the sense of the flag moving in the wind. I found a flag pole model from TurboSquid and placed it so it matched the position of the flag. I then added a background, lighting and a camera to the scene to make it more presentable. This process was simple and effective with a great outcome. It's useful when needing to animate that type of material to create a natural flow to it, and even though it's Maya's own feature that created it, it's still beneficial to use and have as a part of my skillset. 

I'm really happy with the results of these animations using Maya's built-in features. They are extremely helpful and can be incorporated into my past and future projects and explores the FX range of 3D animation.