Adapting with Animation


Adapt and overcome is the mantra of perseverance and survival. For a long time now, I've been putting off the task of learning how to use the 3D software package known as Maya. Sure, I've taken frustrating little cracks at it here and there over the years, but never the solid effort it deserves, given that Maya has become pretty much the global industry standard for many of the creative jobs I would like to try at some point in my life. The following video represents my first 3 or so days of really dedicating concerted effort to understanding Maya 2012.


This video is basically a work-in-progress animation exercise that shows some of the results of teaching myself how to use the animation, rendering and IK rigging features in Maya. The first 4 seconds of the Ninja Turtle's animation are performance capture, recorded with a dual Microsoft Kinect setup. All of the rest of the animation seen here is hand keyed.
  
Disclaimer: I did NOT model either of these characters. The Spider-Man and Raphael models used in this animation are modified versions of models created by Ice-boy and Joequick (respectively) from the Daz/Poser community. Both characters are owned/copyright/trademark by their respective media corperations, no copyright infringement is intended.

Comments

Nate Kiernan said…
Pretty good, especially for how short you'd been working with the software. I know nothing about animation, but I think it's really cool you could use two Kinects for motion capture! Keep up the great work:)
March 7, 2013 at 7:39 PM
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