My Crtical Analysis of 'Mongoose's Present'

One thing I felt pleased with in my animation was the movements of the snake model. I feel this turned out well because I made the rig and model very simple and this in turn made it easy to texture well and animate.

Reflecting on how the mongoose turned out, in my opinion, I would have liked the textures to have turned out as good as the snake's textures did. The eyelids turned out a lot better than I imagined as I had to learn quite a lot of new things in Maya to create them efficiently. The Blend Shapes I feel should have had more expression in them to give my mongoose more character. I also realised that the mongoose is modelled a bit wrong around the feet, which I couldn’t fix as I was too far into the animation project, but in future I would have to remember that animal legs work slightly different to human legs.

The scenery in my animation was made very quickly and although it looked the way I wanted it to (like a grassland in South Africa), I could have improved it to make it look better. The ground looks a bit plain towards where the horizon line is and the mountains are not really detailed enough. However the pain effects were quite effective, but it might have been better if I had created my own foliage to make the scene look more like how I wanted it to. I also could have improved the lighting of the scene, as it was a bit dark in some places.

For the animation itself I deviated from the storyboard and ended up with a better ending. Whilst I tried to convey lots of emotion from the mongoose, I think I partially succeeded. I could have definitely improved my animation in this area however, by adding more subtle movements to both the snake and the mongoose to convey their emotions a bit more. The animation as a whole also could have been slowed down as the camera and characters move a bit too fast. 

Technical Summary of 'Mongoose's Present'

First of when starting this animation project, I researched what mongooses look like and the kind of facial expressions that the mongoose will have for the animation. I researched the proud emotion the most as that was the emotion that was the main focus in the animation. I made the mongoose look tall by giving him a long body to reflect this. When I finished modelling, I made Blend Shapes so that I can change the mongoose’s facial expressions.

When the mongoose was fully rigged, I created the eyes. The eyelids were created from two NURB spheres and have driven keys set to them so that they can be opened and closed. These were then parented to the controls I created using the CV curve tool so I could change them using these controls. The eyes were then parented to the head joint so that the eyes would stay in place when the mongoose moves.

The snake has a simple rig and is actually two models, one before swallowing the box and one after. The box itself has a Blend Shape which determines if it is open or closed. For the scenery of the animation, the trees and grass were quite simply some paint effects already on Maya, and the ground was a plane with a bump map added to it. The sky and background were made from a sphere which was then textured.  Finally, I animated the characters just by key framing and using the controls I had made for the models. I used two cameras which were the main camera and the snake camera.  

For further detail of the technical side of things, check out earlier posts:

• Creating the snake
• Finishing the mongoose and the mongoose's Blend Shapes
• The scenery

The Finished Animation

Yup, I finally finished the animation. Here it is, enjoy! :D

 

Next I will be putting up the technical summary and the critical analysis (stuff I need to upload to be marked).

Scenery and Stress

Well today I realised that the mongoose is modelled a bit wrong around the feet. Can't really fix that now I'm so far into the animation, so I'll have to make do. I added sme IK handles to the legs to enable me to move them easier whilst animating. Also I have done the background setting for the animation. The trees and grass were quite simply some paint effects already on Maya, and the ground was a plane with a bump map added to it. If I have time at the end of the project, I will improve the background as it looks a bit plain towards where the horizon line is.

Finishing the mongoose and the mongoose's blend shapes!

I recently finished my mongoose model. Fully textured and rigged with some BlendShapes. What I didn't explain last time was how I did the eyelids and the eyes. The eyelids were created from two NURB spheres and have driven keys set to them so that they can be opened and closed. These were then parented to the controls I created using the CV curve tool so I could change them using these controls. They also have limits set on them so that I can't accidentally rotate or scale the eyelid or open the eyelid too wide. The eyeballs are also parented to controls so that they can be moved with one control, making my life easier.

The mongoose texture was some simple colouring in Adobe Photoshop with a filter added just like the snake. However, to get the furry looking texture of the mongoose I found a free fur texture online on this website: (http://seamlesstextures.org/2010/05/fur/).

The BlendShapes were made by duplicating the basic model of the mongoose, and then edited to have different facial expressions. These models would then be made BlendShapes of the main mongoose model and by clicking the BlendShapes in the Channel Box I can change the mongoose's expression to that of the BlendShape of my choosing. This means it will be a lot easier for me to give the mongoose different expressions once I had rigged the main model. The BlendShape models are also on a different layer so that they can be hidden whilst rendering.

Reflecting on how the model turned out, in my opinion, I would have liked the mongoose's textures to have turned out as good as the snake's textures did. The eyelids turned out a lot better than I imagined as I had no idea how I would do the eyelids when I had started on the model. The BlendShapes I feel are okay, but I need to make more facial expressions and make them more expressive to give my mongoose more character.

Creating the snake

I decided to do things in a slightly different order and actually I went and completely finished modelling, rigging and texturing the snake. I have also slightly changed the ending of my animation. What will happen is that the snake will lunge at the mongoose and eat the box it jumped out of.

The snake was a lot easier to do than the mongoose, perhaps because it was a much more simpler character. I didn't have to paint the skin weights nearly as much and the UVs for texturing the snake were easier to sort out. I  decided not to create a bump map for the snake's scales. However if I have time left after finishing the blend shapes and the animating, I may add a bump map to improve the snake's look.

Next time I should move back on to finishing the BlendShapes for the mongoose and explain how I did them. Also, I am currently in the process of re-texturing the mongoose, as the snake turned out much better and there's a bit of a quality difference so that's why I haven't shown the mongoose and it's texture this time.

Mongoose Rigged

I've rigged the mongoose! I've put in the joints and painted the skin weights so the joints work as they should. I have started to make the BlendShapes as well which will change the expressions of the mongoose. Next up when I've finished all the different facial expressions will be the creation of the snake model, the backdrop and then it will be texturing and then finally animating. Next time I'll go more into detail about the BlendShapes and stuff.