I was done with my Satisfying animation and added some sound effects. Nick gave feedback saying that the water didn’t have depth and he said that the motion of the water didn’t quite appear natural. t
I fixed the depth problem by changing the scale of the Ocean attribute. To loop the video Nick told me to dissolve the two motions together with video editing software.
This is how it looks.
Today, I had to complete the texturing of the whole Satisfying animation. I wanted to go with something with a marble and earthy texture. I used Unsplash for the texture, I tried Poly Haven but they didn’t offer many options. I used Adobe Colour to get complementary colours so that the environment looks satisfying.
I went with the Pink marble for the slide and gave it shine. For the ground, I gave a cream and white marble, which is a complementary colour for pink. For the wheels, I went with steel and brown marble. I don’t know why the render colours look flat, it might be because it’s raw.
I still didn’t like the texture, so I thought I’ll change it. I went with white marble and changed the wheel which was steel blue and white. While I was changing the texture of the wheel, I realized that the UV is still not right and I needed to fix that again. I added a blue background to fill it up with empty space.
Nick told me that the background looks too plain and I need to add something. He suggested that I could add water, so I started to work on that. To create the water simulation, I used the Ocean shader and then gave it Ocean texture in the Standard Surface to make the water look more realistic. The problem faced with water was that it is hard to loop the simulation, so I had to try different things to get it to work. I was also told that the side texture of the slide would be better if I changed it. The whole animation was also missing imperfections, so I added a bump map.
Another problem I faced was the water simulation was that it wouldn’t render with Arnold and I had to render it with Maya Viewpoint 2.0 and later comp them in another software.
I started the day by tidying up the animation, I felt that the wheels were too close to each other, so I moved them apart to give space for the animation to look more satisfying.
Next was to make the environment, I started off with the slide on which the wheel will move. To create this, I selected the inner faces of the wheel and the same EP curve which was set to a path for the wheel, and then extrude on it.
I was unhappy with the slide I made, so I started working on it again. This time I used a Pipe and then extruded on the EP curve. To make the slide stand, I extruded the Pipe in the centre.
I didn’t know, what to do with the environment, so I just added walls and thought to texture it and I made a small path for the wheels to roll.
Next, I start working on the UV and I didn’t know that it would take me the whole day to work on only the slide. I had to do this again for the other side as well.
After I got done with the side I started working on the wheels, which was way easier than the slide any day, but the problem was that I had to unripe the UV for 6 wheels and it took some time.
This week I was planning to texture the steps and the environment. To do this I had to learn how to use Substance Painter and export want work to substance. When I was doing this Nick told me that the animation that I was working on was simple and easy to do, so I started looking for more ideas to build something new.
To create the animation, first I need to plan what will I use mash or keyframe animation, after looking at what I wanted to do I went with keyframe animation. To start off I needed to make the wheel, I used a Pipe and then added an edge ring to make it smooth. Later duplicated it and deleted half of both the wheels and filled the hole with Face Fill. Then I created the path by EP curve, so one half of the wheel will be moving on it. To move the wheel I used the Attach to Motion Path.
Next was to make it roll to the other side so that the other half of the wheel goes up to do this, I had to copy and paste the EP curve and the half of the wheel. Then I had to give it Attach to Motion Path but reverse it and I could do this in Graph Editor.
For the other half of the wheel, I just keyed in a way that it looks like the wheel is rolling in and rolling out of the frame, and the loop was ready. now I need to figure out how to fill the gaps to make it look like it is a continuous chain of wheels. To achieve this I grouped the first loop and then pasted it. Then I changed the keys so it looks like the wheel are rolling in one after the other. After looking at it for a while I felt that I needed to add one loop to make it look like a chain of wheels.
This week we are going to start a new project called oddly satisfying videos, Nick like to call it some new every week, but I will go with this. We have to complete this work in 4 weeks we can use any tools we want and we can make it however long we want but the only thing it should have is that it should loop and satisfy Nikc :D. The first thing Nick showed us was how to use Mash in Maya, and some of the tools on it were really cool.
To create a mash first you need an object then go to menu setup and change to animation, in the toolbar there will be Mash. If you click on the tools setting you will find more options if you want the duplicate to be in what order. So creating Mash will help to design and the Mash editor will help to see what nodes have been added.
In the Attribute editor, there are a lot of options to choose from, whenever clicked on any one of the options there will be a new node added to the Mash editor and in the attribute editor you will see a new attribute which can be changed in regards to the option you chose.
So the first object you make will be the father, so if you change the shape of the father, it will be effecting all the other objects, in the blow image you can the centre object is the father. To make the objects be a path or move around in a prequel path can be done easily in MASh just need to give the object the curve tool and drop the path in “input Cures”. Distribute is a default node this will help to males the bases change like the number of pinots, rotation, the distance between objects and more all of the attributes can be keyed in MASH.
For my satisfying video, I thought to combine these two videos. The plan is to make a ball go down the satire and where ever it hits the ground the sense will change.
So first I got a box and then gave it belve and then moved the anchor point by pressing D then pressed X to anap to the corner then copied the box to make stairs. I moved the stairs down and gave it the keys then went to the graph editor and did some changes in there.
Later I made a sphere, and then gave it the movement of going up and down and keyed them. In the graph editor, I gave it a linear tangent to the ends and this is how it looks.
This week was the last day of the Rube Goldberg Machine and we had to render and texture the machine. We didn’t do anything much in learning, Nick was helping everyone with their projects because many students had problems with the bullet.
No one could fix the problem I had with my gear and even though Nick tried, we couldn’t fix it. I just made the ball go into the basket in the end. I am not happy with the ending but this is where we’re at, at the moment.
Texturing was fun, I used adobe substance 3d painter. Daniel showed me how to use it and it was easy. On the top, the helix, ball, beanbag, and then plinko board were textured in Maya and others in substance.
Doing this Rube Goldberg Machine, was fun and painful at the same time. I am not that happy with the outcome as there is no real ‘wow’ factor. The bullet was a pain it didn’t work the way I wanted it to. The positives were that I likedtexturing it and I got to learn new software.
This week, Nick couldn’t come in because he was sick, but he sent us a video of how to make the animation. I couldn’t do any of this because I needed help with my machine, I had asked a lot of people for help and tried to fix the bullet many times but still, it didn’t work. So, I started focusing more on building an environment for the Machine. As I mentioned before, I want the machine to have a kid’s toys theme, an environment inspired by a child’s mind.
The stage is made out of a pen as the pole and the book as the platform. I made the books by referring to a video on YouTube.
I also added a tv and a beanbag to create the ambience of a kid’s room.
On the other storey, I have added and few cards and a box of cards with dominoes.
Next week I needed to fix the machine and added textures to it. I hope Nick feels better and comes in next week and helps me with my problem :’D.
This week’s class was different, we had to work on our Rube Goldberg Machine. I sketched out a rough outline of what my machine should look like.
I started off by making a spiral path for a ball to start from. To mark this I had to use a helix and make the inner one small. Getting the right speed and weight of the ball was very important so that the ball didn’t fly off the path. It took me a couple of attempts to get it right. The only issue with this is it takes a long time to go around the spiral path.
Making the seesaw was fairly easy, but making it move was very hard. I had to give it a rigid body constraint. When we give an object a rigid body constraint it is important to make sure that the object is not touching any other object We must make sure that the constraint is on the right axis.
The Plinko board was not a part of my original sketch, but I added it later. To make this board I took a box and removed the faces and added cylinders. I wanted the ball to fall in one hole but that did not work out and I ended up making a slide.
Making the dominoes was fun. I just needed a box and I gave it an Active Rigid Body and lined them up such that they all fall down in a row, one after the other.
I remember playing with gear-based toys, which, if I recall correctly used to be given for free along with some Nestle products. I thought of adding them to the machine and tried to give it a Rigid Body Constraint but it was not working out. I tried to delete it and added it again but I was still unable to make it work. So now I am going to wait till Monday so Nick can help me with it.
I like how my Rube Goldberg Machine is coming together but it is not going quite as exactly as I had planned in my sketch. I am happy that it’s starting to look good but I need to to add more elements to make it look better.