Visual effects in Maya is a vast domain of many possibilities, but rigid bodies seems like a great place to start. Active ridged bodies act on each other and react based on many different conditions (mass, gravity, inertia, etc). They are also being dynamically simulated every time you hit play. So even though it may not look like it, they act differently every time, at least until you bake the simulation. Passive rigid bodies do not react as much as active ridged bodies, but they can serve more as walls and containers while still affecting active rigid bodies. They can also accept any keys you have placed on them which active rigid bodies do not do.
Another big part of visual effects that not only relates to ridged bodies is fields. Fields come in many different forms, like gravity, turbulence, newton, and others. A big one that helped in this project was the gravity field because I was trying to simulate the effect of a real life rube goldburg machine with parts that react as they do in the real world.
In addition to rigid bodies and fields, constraints were another big part of bringing this project to life. Constraints hold back geometry to a place of your choosing. The constraint that helped me the most was the hinge constraint. How it works is just like a door does, wherever you put the constraint, the geometry will rotate around that axis, just like a door, all while dynamically reacting to your rigid bodies. You can see these in action on the hammer right at the beginning or any of the doors in the scene.
I also learned a few new things and refreshed some old skills not directly related to dynamics by doing this project.
1) Visibility swaps are your friend. This goes hand in hand with only worry about the camera. What both of these basically mean is that if the audience can't see it, it's fair game. Many things go wrong in simulation but as long as it can be hidden or covered, its A-ok.
2) UVing and Texturing. Though it didn't progress the simulation at all, giving some color to the scene can really help bring it to life, and I think everyone is tired of seeing the default lambert at some point.
3) Moving Textures. This made me so happy because now I just want to use them everywhere. Like having a scene where someone is watching tv but the screen material is a moving texture and no longer needs to be added in compositing. Makes me happy!
Why PowerPuff Girls?
To be honest it was an on the spot idea. I knew PPG had a lot of heros and villains to choose from and I wanted to make something unique for every piece of the rube goldburg machine. I also wanted to tell a story which the sound really helped with. It's like a journey through an episode. Plus I just really like the show. Really hyped for the revival in 2016! Who's with me? One thing you may have noticed was the emergency phone towards the end of the clip. That was just a quick model I made in about thirty minutes using the basic tools as well as a lattice on the chord to curve it a bit. The texture was one that I found online but touched it up for what I needed.
After rendering in Maya, I took the frames to after effects to add the sound and get the single movie file.
Overall a really fun first step into visual effects and something I would encourage everyone to try if it sounds interesting to you! Oh and don't forget to bake your simulation, you'll thank me later :)
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