Dimensions

Dimensions overview

“This project is designed to introduce you to Maya’s 3d environment through the creation of a convincing ‘Diorama’ within a 100x100x100 cube. This project is about form, scale and light. You will be required to create a 30 second animation exploring the 3-dimensional environment of your scene viewed from a first person perspective. Using time and motion, and the nature of the environment to successfully communicate the concept behind your ‘Diorama’ to the viewer.

Consider the core characteristics and restrictions of the medium and experiment with those restrictions.”

Introduction to Maya

First day using Maya we looked at basic modelling and lights.

Textures and coloured lighting testing.

First time trying to animate by rotating, expanding and saving frames.

Inspiration

Spectra Coachella

“NEWSUBSTANCE has created an art installation you enter to experience: a seven-story spectrum of color with an observation deck offering 360-degree views of Coachella and beyond. From the outside, Spectra appears as an impressive architectural entity. Inside, it’s less about itself and more about your experience: Light, color, and perspective change with every step you take.

“As people venture into our pavilion, they will find peace and serenity,” says creative director Patrick O’Mahony. “It takes down the sound of the festival a few notches and provides a space for reflection.”

Spectra explores the relationship between light and landscape, the shifting environment it creates, and how it influences those who journey through it. It also captures the beautiful explosions of color as the iconic sunrises and sunsets roll across the landscape. The installation features 31 custom cast colored panels and more than 6,000 feet of LED lights, which at night illuminates the site and bathes you in a magnificent spectra of colors.”

-https://www.coachella.com/art-directory/spectra/

The tower clearly links to light, form and scale which is why it’s a great starting point and inspiration to my animation. The shape of the horizontal tower lines instantly reminded me of a helix, it almost looks as though the tower is about to start moving and spinning.

30 April 2018

After having problems with batch rendering for the past week and downloading and re-downloading Maya I finally found a solution that works. I managed to sequence render and put the test tower animation in after effects.

This animation shows the camera rotating on an arc around the tower showing all the different coloured lights from a rotating perspective. Finally a successful render!

I decided not to focus on replicating the building, instead I’m looking to explore the shapes and parts of it In a more abstract and playful way. I started with the replica I created and went on to manipulate and duplicate the shapes creating something strange but fascinating.

I managed to render around 10 seconds of my final when the renderer stopped working properly this meant that my animation had to be rendered on a lower quality and from a different perspective than I had originally planned. Overall there’s many things that have went wrong and didn’t work for me during this project however I have tried my best to create something.

1st try exporting the video is showed as black and white.

Changed some settings and managed to export the video in full colour.

The animation in Maya view (this was the animation and camera angles that I wanted to render out, however since it was crashing and taking too much time I had to go back and do the final with lower quality and different camera angles)

Concept revised

The overall idea of this project was to consider how the mind quickly analyses situations and surroundings and then tries to come to conclusions however if we stop trying to control the mind I imagine it would work like this. The images glitch and grow however at the end they appear to be polished and finalised. This explains how the mind needs time to analyse things before it can see them clearly and resolve them. This touches on anxiety and stress and how this makes it hard to put things in the right perspective.

Final Animation

Reflection

Overall working with Maya had many positive and negative parts. I think it’s a program I will go back to and use again, the possibilities are endless and it was quite difficult to find an inspiration good enough to stick with since I wanted to make everything that had come across my mind. The inspiration of Spectra helped me create the order of the sequence and analyse my concept deeper through the imagery. The spirals played a big part in my animation and I believe I will probably use them again in my future 3D work.

Finally, if I had the chance, I think this would be a great project to experience in a real 3D environment maybe through a VR headset. This really stuck with me after hearing the responses during my presentation. My animation was supposed to show a lot more than ended up rendering I really wanted the viewer to get a look at the moving structure from underneath, inside and above and if this was shown in a real 3D space the user could be uncharge of the perspective.

I really liked the rendered images and screenshots I had taken during the process experimenting with the lights and camera angles/perspectives was very fun and this is the first time I have worked in a 3D space.

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