Maya and HD

Maya isn't accepting the HD videos- even we're sure we've encoded using codecs that worked before. We'll keep working on it.

YES! HD VIDEOS ARE DONE!!!!

Ok, it took a day and we missed showing Mike our Nick ideas with the class but we finally got the High Definition video backgrounds done. They do look sweet. Here are some shots from the videos. It took a day to get the HD videos from the camera onto the computer as it seemed only the tech engineers knew how to setup the one (and only) HD tape deck in the uni- post production students had no idea how to use it!

Anyways, the videos are encoded in Windows Media Video HD making it easy for me to encode it again and change them for editing etc. There are 7 HD videos each around 30 seconds and around 15-30 MB each.

HD

Filmed all the backgrounds we need. Including a shot where water randomly moves- so we can animate a charter moving it. To use the HD footage I need a HD tape deck which only 1 exists in the entire uni. I've got it for a day tomorrow :).

Mouth

The mouth is now moving. This was done by using a skeleton on the mouth as well and weighting it properly. The mouth opens the same way an which arm is extended. This method works well and is easy to animate with.

Bananna Man

Here's the rigged bananna man. I'ld say i'm getting better at rigging now- finally :).

Characters

Here's some characters. Their names could still change though.

Future Research

I should have looked into this earlier but a lot of people in the industry don't seem to use Adove After Effects; they use Autodesk Fire/Combustion.

It's like Maya but more around compositing images and videos.

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=5562722


http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=5562397

So far, I think Autodesk Combustion is for PC and 'Fire' is for OS x and Linux.