Character Rig setup

Geo character was rigged using skeletons and bind skin and paint skin weight and controls added using constraints and attributes to it. Mirror joint and IK / FK switching also used. 

Rigging the legs. IK handles added and knee controls were also added.

Attributes were added for the toe, ankle, toe roll for the leg control.

Arms and fingers were also rigged and extra arm controls were added to it. 

Controls for each fingers added as well as for the arms.

Controls added to bend the spine using rotation axis. The hip control twist and hip control provides various movement of the hip and other FK controls for the upper spine.

Blendshape was used for the facial expression. Controls were seperately addded for the movement of the eyes and the eyebrows and as well for the mouth to open and close in various ways.

Complete setup of the character using IK and FK to control. 

Layer Passes and Render passes

Decomposing the render into various components at the material level for render passes.

All objects were set on different layers. Render Layers

MasterBeauty, Diffuse, Beauty, Refraction, Shadow and Reflection were mainly attribued to several passes. Final Gather was enabled and ambien occlusion was also given.

After rendering was done in Maya 2014. all the respective files were imported into Adobe After Effects where they were composed and blended accordingly for suitable arrangement.

Final Output

Mental Ray Materials and Textures

Using Mental Ray materials (x_passes), various materials and textures were composed using Maya 2014 where lots of adjustments and tweaking done for the color, specular, reflection, roughness, texture, refraction, irradiance and sub surface scattering before getting the appropriate output. Patience and determination sure are one of the keys. A3 size done. Click to zoom.

Mushroom cloud using Dynamics

Using dynamics and entering various values in the emitter settings in order to obtain an appropriate simulation of the Mushroom cloud in Maya 2014

Window lightfog with particles

Using 3 different batch files namely one with Ambient occlusion, one for the fog and one for the lighting, they were composed in Adobe after effects where dust particles were added on the lightfog and color correction and brightness and contrast (curves) was adjusted. Luma Matte was used in order for the particles to appear only in the fog area.

Reflective caustics of Metallic flower

Reflective caustics done by adjusting the values of caustics to get a fine reflective shadow.

Refractive caustics for crytal

Using caustics in Maya is a fast way to enable lighting and refraction using mental ray.

Animation: Dynamic action

Dynamic action of a kung fu gesture done in Maya 2014

Done from the video reference below:

Rigging a catepillar track

Using blendshape and wire deformer ( curve for controlling vertices) to create a motion path for the catepillar track and formula provided for the speed.

Final Gather

Using the Final gather settings in the Mental Ray options and without lights, just using planes with ambient colors on i was able to provide fast result for these objects. Reflection of the light colour can be seen on the objects as well on the floor.

Global illumination

Using one spot light on rooftop of the room, and enabling mental ray and using global illumination i was able to provide colour bleeding of these objects. Photon intensity and number of photons and exponent values were played with before getting the proper accurate result. Photon intensity played a big role in ensuring the colour bleeding.

Simple room lighting

Using area lights and enabling mental ray in Maya 2014, i places several lights trying on objects and walls to reproduce accurate daylight in a room. Ambient occlusion was used as material and blackbody was used on the light to provide temperature from the light coming through the window.

Run cycle

Run cycle done in stepped mode and after finishing with all poses, graph editor was used to ensure smooth transition of body mechanics as they move.

Toon Tree rigging

Rigging a toon tree in Maya 2014 by adding IK and FK controls. Dynamics also applied to the leaves and separate controls to enable or disable the dynamic simulation effects. Tree can also be stretched and squashed and world control has been given. All done in Maya 2014. Proper grouping is very important for proper animation and control of the tree.

Enjoy!

Book rigging

Rigging a book on Maya. Using set driven keys to enable controls and skeleton binded to the book and the cover. Blendshapes have also been used on the loose pages as they turn and the book cover and its pages itself are blended as they open and close the transition happens. 

Dynamic character poses

Using various rigged characters and references of my own imagery i manipulated various part of the body using controls while trying to keep proper anatomy. 5 different dynamic poses were done in Maya 2014.

Walk cycle assignment - ultimate walker

Walk cycle of the ultimate walker character done in Maya 2014. For this assignment the contact pose and other keyposes were framed and infinity loop was set on in the Graph Editor. The curves were first set to stepped mode and to finish it was set to linear and curves were carefully smoothed where appropriate to provide a smooth walk of the character. Stretch and Squash were also slightly provided to the upper portion.