Metroid: Mouse Trap

This is a video I did for my Visual Effects course @ Full Sail. The idea of the project was to create a "Mouse trap" like scenario with perpetual motion using Maya dynamics. Think Mouse Trap the board game or the Incredible Machine.

AKA: This was done with physics simulation NOT traditional keyframe animation (although once a simulation worked, we baked it into keyframes on every frame since there's no garuntee a simulation will work the same everytime).

The whole thing was done in 1 week, so some of the shaders (textures), models, and lighting could be better, and it wasn't rendered at optimal settings to conserve time. We plan on re-doing of a few of the afore mentioned things sometime soon, but as it stood we had a deadline to meet.

(As it was we rendered 2300 frames at 30+ seconds per frame on 17 seperate PCs. This doesn't include the inital level intro, the opening and credits, and then the render from Final Cut after it was all spliced together. The render process alone took easily over 3 hours.

Team mates were:
Doug Arley
Casy Kovach
Denny Maliakal
Joseph Chambers

Music credits go to:
-Intro, Samus / Item Fanfares from Metroid Prime / Fusion OST
-(Full of Life) 'Brinstar 1' by Ari 'Protricity' Asulin for Relics of the Chozo - http://smproject.ocremix.org
-Metroid Prime Intro/Menu by Stemage for Metroid Metal - http://metroidmetal.com

Opening artwork by:
Ivan 'tranfuse' Flores - http://transfuse.deviantart.com

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• metroid
• maya
• dynamics
• rigid
• hard
• bodies
• physics
• 3d
• animation
• protricity
• sgtrama
• metal
• samus
• aran
• nintendo

[Samus0pwns]

nice! what softwear did u use?

[sgtrama]

Maya for the simulation. Final Cut Pro for the editting, and photoshop for the lawl texturing.

I'm PRETTY sure it was Maya 8.5

[kirbyhero256]

The objects and environments themselves looked pretty good, but unfortunately, the camera was almost always moving, which is a problem I notice in a lot of student CG works. Perhaps it's just another effect of the time crunch, but I would have suggested finding camera positions that allowed for more subtle movement.

[sgtrama]

Yea, we got a lot of crap for the camera. It WAS the last thing we did. By the time we got everything working correctly, and the scene set up, we had literally a matter of hours to get the camera set up and the shots rendered (between 4AM and 8:30AM). On our second project we put a lot more thought into the camera shots.

[javon133]

yes i spy the companion cube

[WalynStudios]

Weighted Companion Cube at 1:34. Yay cameos!

[Zoonyboyz]

1:37 COMPANION CUBE!!!!

[metroidp2]

this is like metroid prime pinball

[VsxFedora]

sweet. NICE animation!!!!! But try to get Samus out of Morph Ball to help entertain audience.

[zackolot]

lol yea thats what i thought

[I514]

OMG COMPANION CUBE :D

[zackolot]

whats that cube on 1:36?

[TobiMcgoodboy]

I like how you used arcterra gateway for the area.