Learning outcomes

Well where do i begin on the learning outcomes? A good start would be definatley in the software. Maya was something I used to be really uncomfortable with but now I find myself on it for fun creating and modelling anything I want to. Also in terms of the animating, Lighting, compositing and spacial awareness within it. I have learnt a lot more about churches also and more importantly the pleasure of working within a team. I enjoyed the project and wish that as a late edition that I could of done more for the group. Also I learnt the importance of group communication and problem solving. I would like to thank my group for taking me on and also to Jarred and Mike for allowing me back on the course. I am a lot more confident now and feel a lot better with working with people aswell as on my own.

Finishing project

Ok now we came to the stage of finishing. We had a the futuristic church scene rendered and looking great. We experienced problems with the rendering by losing time on it. This was due a problem with a team members software who didnt inform anyone else therefore causing us to lose a night of rendering and setting us back. We simply had a bit of a lack in terms of communication which had this knock on effect. With it being the last day it was now too late to begin rendering and therefore after speaking to our tutor we were advised to have the first scene of the old church as a playblast combined with the rendered scene of the futuristic church. This obviously made it not up to the set standard which we had hoped for but our intentions were clear. We had a deadline and had to stick to it. In my opinion the group worked well together to start with. I think that as the deadline drew closer and the pressure on certain members were not performing at their best and if we had a little more time then the project would have been better completed. However hindsight is a valuable thing and something to learn from. We all are in full agreement that next term we will not let ourselves relax and we will be on people cases if they arent performing as we ccan now see just how important it is that everyone does their job according and stick to the time limit as best they can. Also not to take on or hand out a job that is beyond peoples knowledge or capabilities. We will in future rely on people for their strong points and make sure that we all keep up a group consistancy. Also we have learnt the value of communication and just how important that is.

The flame effect

Ok so now its time to show you the flame effect in the render view. I was as satisfied with it as much as the rest of the group and was a main focus in the first scene following the storyboard.

Creating the flame

Hello now I will explain the flame effect. This was quite a complicated task but one which i learnt a lot from. I had to crete the flame as a fluid effect within the box which I the had to re-scale. I also arranged the colors and tweaked it to get a thicker flame with less smoke which was what we wanted. In the Maya view its not much to look at but when its fully rendered we can see that the effect is very realistic. When I had completed this task the group were pleased to include it in the first scene of out footage.

Problems with lighting

Ok so the lighting was taking its time and with it running out dramatically fast myself and Deepa decided to not light the church with anything other than the lights provided by the chandeliers and candles which were around the inside. This meant that we now had to focus on creatiing a flame effect and duplicating it around the church. Luckily I had found a great tutorial which helped me to both understand and perform this task.

Lighting continued

Well looking at the lighting it was definately better to use spot lights and low area lights as they got the effect we needed. We were struggling at this point in time and the time schedule was not running out quickly bearing in mind that we still had to rigg the scenes after the animation. The scene for the new church was done by this point so we had to focus our attention on the old church.

New task Lighting

Hello again. Well now that the modelling was completed and everybody was away and happily texturing it was time to help out with the lighting process of the old church. This to me was like learning a new language as I hadnt yet come across it. I looked at various online tutorials and books provided to me by deepa. We decided to do the lighting together as it was challenging to both of us. The original idea was to look at what kind of effect we wanted and play about with the different lights provided by maya until we get it as we want.