BatteryTutorial

1.) Open up Autodesk Maya
2.) Go to polygons and click on the cylinder
3.) Create a cylinder
4.) After creating the first cylinder repeat steps 2 and 3 but this time make sure the battery is 1/3 the height of the first battery or you could duplicate the first cylinder and scale so that it is 1/3 of the height of the other battery.
5.) Use the move tool to place the second cylinder directly above the first cylinder.
6.) Put different shaders on each cylinder(does not matter which ones)
7.)Select both cylinders
8.) Go to mesh, combine
9.) Duplicate the new cylinder and and scale it so that it is in the center of the cylinder.

10.) repeat step 8

Final commerial project

John
I put all the files together, created 3d batteries, created a camera path, and added some audio to the commercial. I did not run into much difficulty with the commerial project. I also had to go back and fix any flaws that were seen in t he project. There were some problems such as shader were not showing up in the commerial. So I had to render the frames again in maya and put it into after a ffects. I put togother fight sceene which is the last part of the commerial. There were problem that could not be fixed such as the robot's head was distorted and I could not rotate it's body to face forward.

Alex
I had created a 3d model of a robot character for a previous project. The model needed more improvement, so I took a few days to improve it. After, I started to prepare the model for rigging, by hollowing it. Hollowing it was very time consuming, because I had created the 3d model from most basic shapes. Adding a skeleton, and naming all of the joints was the next step. Since the group decided to use motion capture data from the website "carnigiemelonhead.com", each skeleton had to have a set amount of joints with specific names. Combining the data with the skeleton was very tedious and difficult, I had to go back and re-do alot of the model several times. I even used the program "Motion Builder" to render the flv files(which were the motion capture files), to make them work for Maya. When the two combined, certain parts of the 3d model would de-form. After several attempts, I realized that there was no way to stop the deformities, so we had the camera move away during the times that the model deformed. The data that I used was for a jump into back flip, my model was able to backflip, however the jumping sequence could use some improvement.

Kali
I made a 3D model for my previous project as well, and I used that model for the commercial project we worked on. My robot is the one glowing blue and resembles a "monkey". The modeling part wasn't hard, and I used Maya to make the model. But animating it was a different story. The animation process was fairly hard and very time consuming. I had to use a different program called Motionbuilder. The program was hard, but not that hard, just very time consuming. I didn't get to finish tweaking with the animation to the way I want it to be.

Group Experience

I learn how important communication is in a group and the importance of time organize. My job was to organize all the files and produce a finished product. I also had to fix any flaws the were seen in the first commercial.

Commercial Project

Power to the Core
For the Commercial project John, Kali, and I decided to form a group. I had created my 3d model with the intenion of using it in the commercial project, and Kali had decided to do the same. For the project I decided to improve my 3d character model. For the majority of the project I was working on my character, and after I had created a model that I liked. After I was finished with the character I decided to work on a title sequence portion. I finished the character in MAYA, and started the title sequence in photoshop by making seporate layers of everything, and then I imported it into After Effects. The title sequence has the name of the company which is "Power to the Core" The product is "Twin Cobalt Batteries"

Kali's part was to animate his robot that he made for his previous project and he made the lab that houses the batteries. He rigged the robot, but he was not able to animate the robot correctly (As you may notice in the video). The programs he used where Maya and Motionbuilder. Kali was new at Motionbuilder and apparently had a lot of trouble animating.

John's part was to create 3d batteries in maya to act as the product being advertised in the commercial. He set the camera path and put the files together on one file. He also worked on the commercial in after effects creating scatter effects, sound effect, as well as making the robot eyes glow.

reactor

Commercial

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nw9diPj3qXI

3D Model

For my 3d model I decided to do a model of a grim reaper drawing that I copied from a show I watched. First I created a sphere in maya, then grabbed faces on the sphere and extrude them until the sphere looked like a skull. After creating the skull, I created a plane to be the cloth for the grim reaper. I grabbed the vertex points on the plane to make a reaper cloth and shaped it around the skull. I assigned the cloth and skull to different lambert so I would be able to change the color. In the end I did not like how my grim reaper turn out so I combined my maya city model with my grim reaper.