Underwater Lighting Study (3D animation)

This is a lighting study project I put together while working on my MS Visualization Sciences degree at Texas A&M University. Software used: Autodesk Maya, Mudbox, Mental Ray, Adobe Photoshop, After Effects. The crab character was modeled, rigged, and animated by Mr. Adan Pena.

Reference Video

A bit of reference footage for my squirrel footage. (Educational purposes ony, of course.)

Squirrel Motion

This was an exercise in seeing primary & secondary movement while taking note of timing. The idea was to capture the natural movement of an animal without having to explicitly detail the entire animal. So the general forms serve as a way to track the motion of the animal, and hopefully, they describe it well enough to communicate what animal it is. (without the source video, of course).

P99 Turn Table Sequence

I haven't got the wire frame pass ready yet, but here's what I do have. I think in the future I will slow the rotation to about 8 or 9 seconds per revolution instead of the current 7 seconds. Just seems a bit fast.

Rigging Assignment

Bobby Huebel and I worked on this rigging assignment together. The object was for each of us to rig a character for animation and then have the two character interact in some way. Our interaction: Knee to the groin. Classic. Bobby modeled and animated the green character and I did the poor silver fellow.

Light bulb squash and stretch

Rotation- Final Render

Squash 'n stretch

Rotation Assignment Update