Experimental Scripting for Animation in Maya
Arts Col 694, 5 credits
 
Professor Alan Price
aprice@accad.osu.edu

 

The Assignment due for Nov. 7 is a combination of Assignment #4 and #5
It is your option to place a focus on one or the other.
If you do not use dynamics, then the project should be a creative application for persistance user interface control.
If your project uses dynamics in depth, a UI is not necessary.
It is also acceptable to create a project that experiments with a little bit of both. (The book's particle gun tutorial is a nice example.)


Save your script(s) to an external file ("your_user_name_project5.mel") and put a copy in "Y:\Courses\AC694_Price_Fall_2005\project_5"

Assignment #4 - Create a GUI for persistent control over elements in a scene.

In this project, the objective is to design a UI that remains open for the user to continuously adjust controls that affect the scene as it runs.This exercise follows the previous one, in which a UI was designed to execute a script as a "one shot" event.

Possibilities are:

  • Using the results your previous UI created, build a UI for persistant control of those results, e.g., one that adjusts and/or sets key frames on a character rig created by the previous UI script.
  • Create a UI that serves both functions: Creation of objects and generation of their controls "on the fly".
  • Create a new script (does not necessarily have to use a UI) that sets up objects and relationships, then design a UI that opens to control those relationships.
  • Consider other possibilities in which you create a UI that continuously controls elements in your scene.

 

Assignment #5 - Create a script that generates and creates custom connections with dynamic properties or particles with expressions

Based on the examples from the book, design a variation on controlling dynamics with expressions, and setting up the initial conditions with a script. A GUI for this project is not required, but you might consider creating one to select options for creation or continuous control over the scene.

Keep the project simple. The main idea here is to experiment with solid body or particle dynamics and see if you might be interested in using ideas that come out of it for your final project. If not, chalk it up to experience and design your final project using previous techniques.

Possibilities are

  • Control a particle system with expressions on influence fields or on a per-particle basis, or both. Can you make the particles take on a specific pattern that changes over time?
  • Create an effect using per-particle goals, changing weights between multiple goal objects.
  • Set up individual particles with the particle tool, or on a grid, and influence the motion of particles with velocity or goal weights.
  • Using solid-body dynamics, control the motion of active rigid objects with the impulse attributes and/or create expressions that control the magnitude of forces in the world.
  • Experiment with procedures that can be called upon by a collision event.

 

Evaluation will be based on:
-- Successful completion.
Does the script do what it is supposed to do without errors?
-- Creative application. Was attention given to a creative approach for user control of the event?
-- Structure. Is the script properly structured using procedures and methods for passing values between them?