This final was a lot of trial and error for me. This picture is a still from my final animation.
Let's start from the beginning! This was my first attempt at making a corner of a room. At first I thought I would make three different planes and connect them to make a corner. As you can see, they were not even and they didn't add up the way I needed them to.
This is some of the screen shots I took during my process. After realizing that the three planes were not working for me, I decided to use a cube. I made it the size I needed and then deleted the three faces that I did not need. This way the were symmetrical and they for in the way I needed them to. Then, I started on the table. I again used a cube, then beveled the edges. For the legs I used the pencil curve tool and then the revolve tool to make it go all around. I played with the size for a little and then copied the leg three times for the other sides. After that I was able to group them together, so they could move as a whole. Then I created the lamp using cubes and cylinders. I used the revolve tool for the vase and lamp shade as well. I also created a window. In this one the window is just a very thing cube. I made curtains using the pencil curve tool, then copied it and moved it up a little then selected both curves and used the loft tool.
After that process was done I decided to add colors and textures to the room. I started with the walls, at first I chose a light purple using lambert to give it a matte color. Then the floors I used the wood texture. I played around with the grain colors and width to make the wood a little darker. I used the marble texture for the table top and phong setting for the table legs. I was also playing around with the ambient lights to create a light that made it look like the room was well lit.
Unfortunately, after all that Maya stopped responding and even though I had been saving, once I tried to open the file it said there was an error. Although I was upset that I had to start over, I took it as a learning curve. It was basically like I was practicing what I had learned one more time. And since I had already done it before, the second time was a little faster and better.
So the process for starting the second try was basically the same. I changed the lamp and used a cylinder for the pole and the bezier curve tool for the lamp shade and then the revolve tool. This time, I used the cloth option for the curtain to make it look smoother. Also, another thing I learned the second time was how to make the window better. I made a cube the size that I wanted and used the booleans tool to take away the area that I wanted to window to be. I had two ambient lights, that I placed a little further away so that the room wasn't too bright but still well lit. After I was satisfied with the colors and textures I moved on the the little fly. I did not want to design a small fly because in reality when you see or hear a fly buzzing around you don't actually see it up close. It's always like a little dot flying around. That's why I decided to create the fly using a tiny sphere. I used the pencil curve tool to create a path that I wanted to fly to follow. Then I clicked the "control vertex" option to make the flight path a little more interesting and have it go up and down, rather than at the same height the whole time. After that I selected both and used the option that allows the object to follow the path you want. I was having a hard time figuring out the frames. At first the fly was moving too fast. I kept switching the frames t make it go slower and it really wasn't working for me. Then when I finally made the frames 1000, the fly seemed to go the speed that I wanted it to. I wanted it to make it seem like the fly was wandering around the room. At the end was when I decided to add the sound to this since it was crucial. I first found the sound I wanted on youtube and converted it to mp3. Then, I imported it to maya and it worked perfectly.
Self- Evaluation:
Overall I am very proud of the work that I have been able to accomplish this semester. I went from not knowing anything in Maya, to being able to create a scene of a room! This process was very hard for me but it was worth it. If I could work on this again, there are a couple things that I would change or learn more of. First, I would change the frames. I know that there are too many frames, so maybe there is another way to slow down the speed at which the fly moves. Also, I would have liked to be able to incorporate a different camera view. Again, I think I was having a hard time with it because at the speed at which the camera was moving. It was going too fast and even though I would have loved for the camera to have been the flys point of view, it just wasn't working. Another reason I don't think it would have looked good is because the room setup was simple, so if you were to look through the flys point of view, the wall would just look like a big area of color and it wouldn't have been able to focus on anything. In the end I was very happy to have made it with the perspective view because I think it captured that feeling when you hear a buzzing noise but you don't know where it's coming from, and then you see a little "dot" flying through the room.
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