Extra Credit

Back in March I went to the Women In Animation Event featuring Jenny Lerew, Lorelay Bove, Brenda Chapman, and Claire Keane. The event was held at Lucasfilm/ILM Premier Theater and was hosted by The Walt Disney Family Museum. It was a great event and had some very fun information!

A group of us at ILM

An image of my ticket

Creating Stereoscopic 3D Images

(Green/Magenta)

(Green/Magenta)

(Green/Magenta)

This was such a fun assignment! It's so cool being able to create these stereoscopic images! I made quite a number of them, but these are the three that I thought turned out the best. The last one by far was the most difficult to make work. I was playing with trying to make that fountain in the far back at the left feel quite far away, like you have to refocus to look back there. Getting that to work without making the image difficult to look at overall was tricky, but I did my best!

Recreating Cameras and Lights in Maya

For this assignment we had to recreate an image given to us as well as we could in maya. It was very tricky, but also very fun!

Original Photo

Maya Render

Extra Credit: Lighting a Scene in Maya

One-Point Lighting

Two-Point Lighting

Three-Point Lighting

Building a Scene in Maya

Special Effects in Animation and Live-Action

My first two term paper scores were 95 and 90; I will not be writing a third term paper. Thanks!

Outline for the Third Term Paper

Special Effects in Animation and Live-Action

Special Effect: Explosions

Games: "The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker" and "Battlefield 4"

The Legend of Zelda:

Wind Waker: Extremely stylized. There are little plumes that are designed, then combined, overlaid, and animated to create a animated explosion. Not a lot of variation from explosion to explosion. Works very well because of the stylization of the game. (Overlaying of graphic plumes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zG5gHLCp7g, explosion examples: http://youtu.be/Ob-yWsolAzw?t=13m56s)

Battlefield 4:

Realistic explosions that are simulated using a virtual physics engine. Requires much more processing power than the explosions in Wind Waker. Attempts to simulate realistic chaos in an explosion, while making it feasible to compute. Very successful because it is able to balance what is designed and what is calculated by the computer, and the result looks quite realistic. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2vOu8QkPd0)

Outline:

I. Intro:

Thesis: Explosions can add a lot to the epic feeling of a video game, and can be done right in multiple ways.

II. Body:

The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker

• ·         Explosions are extremely stylized to fit in with the stylized world.
• ·         All of the explosions for a bomb are really basically the same explosion, but it isn't distracting due to the extreme stylization. When the explosions go off, the camera shakes a bit (as well as the world) to add to the impact.
• ·         Works very successfully for the game as the explosions look visually appealing and add to the feeling of action in the world.

Battlefield 4

• ·         Explosions are far more realistic and use more of a physics engine to simulate them.
• ·         There is a large variety in the explosions, and depending on what weapon you use, what you are exploding, and where you hit what is exploding the explosion will look different.
• ·         Works successfully because the play station has enough processing power to calculate the complex explosions that the creators have set up. Things blow up in an way that is done as realistically as any game ever has.
•  

Conclusion:

Whether simple and designed or more chaotic and physically accurate, explosions can add a lot to a game.