| The rendered video of my final animation. |
Proposal
My project is a fly-through of the solar system. The animation is set to the song "Prelude" by Pendulum.
Pre-Production/Planning
I had a general idea of how I wanted my story to be laid out, and this helped me with the first step of the process which was creating a storyboard. My storyboard can be seen in the previous blog post. The rest of the pre-production phase consisted of me doing extensive research in order to try and make my animation of the solar system as accurate as possible. Here is a list of the sources that I used when researching the solar system and what I used them for:
- To Determine the Shape of the Planets: http://tinyurl.com/k24s9wf
- To Determine the Shape of the Sun: http://tinyurl.com/l5hoo5e
- To Determine the Shape of the Moon: http://tinyurl.com/mhjgrct
- For the Distance of the Planets from the Sun: http://tinyurl.com/9c3zrlr
- For the Sizes of the Planets: http://tinyurl.com/86ka3fz
- To Determine which Planets Have Rings: http://tinyurl.com/k3emkfg
- For the Order of the Planets: http://tinyurl.com/ln7hkg6
- To Determine which Planets Have Clouds: http://tinyurl.com/l4ox3yp
- For the Angles of the Axis of Rotation of the Planets: http://tinyurl.com/lq8x5f3
- For Information About the Rotation of the Sun: http://tinyurl.com/mtn9xcf
- For Information About the Rotation of the Moon: http://tinyurl.com/my9stw
- For Additional Information on the Moon: http://tinyurl.com/yzkdzlg
Most of the texture maps that I used came from NASA (http://tinyurl.com/nyjdo6o). The only texture maps that did not come from NASA were the Sun (http://tinyurl.com/mt356sh), the Moon (http://tinyurl.com/9ty74kf), Mercury (http://tinyurl.com/mf49pn), Uranus (http://tinyurl.com/mfzld8d), Saturn's rings (http://tinyurl.com/2bjs5n5), and the stars (http://tinyurl.com/ldm9se3).
Production Log
The first thing I did was setup a scale. I decided to scale everything off of the Moon since, aside from Pluto, it would be the smallest object in my animation. In my original scale, the Moon would have a radius of 1 and everything would be scaled off that. However, this scale was too large so I divided it in half. The moon would now have a radius of 0.5 and everything would be scaled off of that (i.e. the Sun is 416 times the size of the moon so its radius was 208).
The first object that I created was the sun, since all of the distances in my animation would be from the Sun. The Sun, the Moon, and all of the planets were created from Polygon spheres. All of the planets are in line with the center of the Sun (they have the same Translate Y and Translate Z attributes). I scaled the distance of the planets from the sun using Astronomical Units (AU). I multiplied the actual AU distance of the planets from the Sun by 10 and added this to the formula that I used to calculate the Translate X attribute of each planet based on the Sun. The formula that I used to calculate the Translate X attribute of the planets was as follows Translate Xplanet = Translate XSun + RadiusSun + Scaled Distance from Sun. Using this information about planet size and distance from the sun I was able to create all of the planets in Maya.
After I had the Sun and all of the planets created, I applied Lambert shaders to all of them. I then mapped the texture files that I had into the color channels of all of them. I also used other attribute maps in addition to color maps. For the Sun, I also mapped the file into the incandescence channel. For Mercury, Mars, and Earth I used the texture files for Bump Mapping. For the gas giants (Jupitar, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune) I adjusted the transparency attribute of the Lambert shader to give them a more gaseous look. In order to make clouds on earth, I created another Polygon sphere that was slightly larger than the Earth around it and applied a Lambert shader to it. I mapped the cloud texture into the color channel of this Lambert shader and messed around with the textures attributes until I got it to look the way I wanted it to look. Saturn's rings were created using a Polygon torus that I flattened. I applied a Lambert shader to the torus. For Saturn's rings, I had two texture files. One was a color map and the other was a transparency map. I had to adjust the Rotate UV attribute of the 2D texture map to make the texture look right.
After I finished texturing the Sun and planets, I started animating their rotations. I grouped Saturn and its rings and the Earth and its clouds so they would rotate together. I used the Freeze Transformations commands to rotate the axes of rotations to the appropriate angle. For the Sun and each planet, I keyed the Rotate Y to get them rotate. I started with 0° at the first frame and ended with 4829.72° on the last frame. I'm not sure exactly why I chose 4829.72° (other than the fact that this made the Sun and planets spin enough times to last the whole animation) but this means they each rotate just over 13 times.
I then created the Moon and applied a Lambert shader to it with color and bump maps. I made the Moon rotate around the Earth by attaching it to a motion path. I used the Graph Editor to make sure all of the tangents of the animated attributes were linear.
I created the stars in the background using a Polygon sphere. The Sun, the Moon, and all of the planets are in this sphere. I applied a Lambert shader to this sphere and then mapped the star texture into the color channel of this Lambert shader.
The scene is captured using a camera that I created. I animated the position (translate) and rotation attributes of this camera to focus on the planets. The scene is lit using an ambient light. I wanted to use a point light in the Sun but this did not look good so I settled on using an ambient light on the overall scene.
The animation is 1450 frames long. I batch rendered the animation into a TIFF sequence. This took about 4 hours. I then imported the TIFF sequence into Premiere. In Premiere I added the titles, transitions, and music. I then rendered the final video and posted it on YouTube. The final product is 1 minute long.
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| A screenshot of my final animation in production. This shows an overview of the entire solar system. When all of the planets are in frame, the only objects that are big enough to see are the Sun, Jupiter, and Saturn. |
After I finished texturing the Sun and planets, I started animating their rotations. I grouped Saturn and its rings and the Earth and its clouds so they would rotate together. I used the Freeze Transformations commands to rotate the axes of rotations to the appropriate angle. For the Sun and each planet, I keyed the Rotate Y to get them rotate. I started with 0° at the first frame and ended with 4829.72° on the last frame. I'm not sure exactly why I chose 4829.72° (other than the fact that this made the Sun and planets spin enough times to last the whole animation) but this means they each rotate just over 13 times.
I then created the Moon and applied a Lambert shader to it with color and bump maps. I made the Moon rotate around the Earth by attaching it to a motion path. I used the Graph Editor to make sure all of the tangents of the animated attributes were linear.
I created the stars in the background using a Polygon sphere. The Sun, the Moon, and all of the planets are in this sphere. I applied a Lambert shader to this sphere and then mapped the star texture into the color channel of this Lambert shader.
The scene is captured using a camera that I created. I animated the position (translate) and rotation attributes of this camera to focus on the planets. The scene is lit using an ambient light. I wanted to use a point light in the Sun but this did not look good so I settled on using an ambient light on the overall scene.
The animation is 1450 frames long. I batch rendered the animation into a TIFF sequence. This took about 4 hours. I then imported the TIFF sequence into Premiere. In Premiere I added the titles, transitions, and music. I then rendered the final video and posted it on YouTube. The final product is 1 minute long.
Self-Evaluation
I've learned a lot about animation this semester. I came into this semester knowing nothing about animation except how to watch other people's animations. It was really cool to be able to learn about Maya and how to create my own animations. I learned that the entire process of animating – from modeling to rendering – is extremely time consuming. But, it is also extremely rewarding. If you are willing to put in the time and effort, you can create some really amazing things.
I am really happy with how my final project came out. I'm also glad that I was able to present it to the class. I now know that I have to leave a lot of time for rendering in order to get my projects done in time. This project also helped me get more comfortable with Polygon modeling which was nice. It also helped me become more familiar with cameras, lighting, rendering, and especially textures and shading. Overall, this class was very informative and I think everyone did a great job with their final projects!
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