Night at the Museum Final Render + "Cheated" Whiteboard Animation

After a few weeks of lazy vacation time, I finally got around to re-rendering my 3D Fundamentals final. I'm quite proud of the results, and will be creating more tests as I build an Animation Reel. I learned A TON from creating this scene from scratch, a lot more than simply going through Digital Tutors tutorials (though, very informative and helpful). All the elements of animation production: modeling, rigging, lighting, texturing, animation, staging, rendering, forged themselves into a scene once a story was done and simplified. Keeping everything as simple as possible kept headache time pretty low.  Click to view it, in all it's foreign film glory:

Night at the Museum - Animation Final from Jesse Soto on Vimeo.


(For specifics, please go to the Vimeo page)

Over the break, I also created this Mickey Mouse Whiteboard Animation test. This one is "cheated" since there isn't a true whiteboard drawing. Instead, the drawing was handled on Flash. And, the hand was added while compositing in After Effects.

Whiteboard Animation Test - Christmas Mickey from Jesse Soto on Vimeo.

Night at the Museum - Breakdown Pass

Things have been busy busy the last few weeks. I've taken up learning CGI Animation @ Santa Monica College in their Academy for Entertainment and Technology. The teaching there has been fantastic, easing any inhibitions of not being able to learn or continuing to self-educate about Maya. There's been a strong emphasis on storytelling that simplifies your projects and the clarity in instruction lets you hit the ground running.

I'm taking ET24 - 3D Fundamentals with Chris Fria. It's a pretty fast paced class....one week it's modeling polygons/nurbs, the next animation, and finally culminating nicely into rendering while coming to the ends of our final projects.

Here's a sample of the textures that are going into be assigned to the characters. More to come!