VEF1: Rigid Bodies Project - Finished!

After a lot of work (and having personal conflicts over texture appearances), my first project for Visual Effects is finally complete. I wanted to go with a deadmau5 theme, using the photo I took at one of his recent shows as the main background and color inspiration for the rest of the scene.

The simulation was accomplished using multiple Passive and Active rigid bodies, different types of constraints such as Nail, Hinge, and Spring constraints (which I had to research further through Maya's documentation to get them to function correctly), and Gravity fields. I baked out the simulation in multiple parts, and then animated a camera to follow the movement of the machine.

After trying (and failing) to render using Maya's default rendering options, I chose to use Mental Ray. I'm glad I did; the end result definitely looked so much better than what I was getting before. I just wish I had remembered to stick a light behind the roulette wheel at the end, to show the winking deadmau5 head I had there. Still, it turned out really nice regardless.

Rendering took longer than expected. I started it a bit later in the day, and within an hour, it had only rendered around 100-300 frames of my 2,000 frame animation! There was no way I could stay up so late to keep an eye on the process, so I made sure my computer wouldn't fall asleep by adjusting some settings and chose to go to bed. Luckily, I woke up and the batch render went off without a hitch. I put all the frames together using Adobe After Effects and then took the compiled video to iMovie to add some nice tunes and simple credits.

All in all, I'm really proud of the end result! I hope my instructor and classmates will as well.