Ruffles - 3d animated short done with Maya HD 1280 x 720

This is our Final Project for University of Kent 2008.
Collaboration of MSc 3d Computer Animation course and Msc VFx Visual Effects course.

We used Autodesk Maya 8.5 , Adobe After Effects , Adobe Premiere and Adobe Photoshop.

We started this Project in the beginning of June 2008. In the 3 month we had to come up with a script, animatic, set design , character design , model everything with Maya , rig the characters, texture everything and of course animate it.

Unfortunately the render farm at our uni was totally unefficient, either because it didnt work or due to a lack of Maya licenses.

We rendered the animation over a period of 3 weeks on about 4 - 5 computers. We used 6 different render passes, a background pass, character pass, shadow pass, occlusion, depth of field and a motion blur pass.
The occlusion pass was the slowest to render, wherever a character is closeup to the camera the computers took around 10 hours per frame to render.

The story takes place somewhere in England during Victorian times around 1848. Thats all I can think about at the moment.

Hope you enjoy our animation :)

HD version: http://vimeo.com/1627365

http://animationandmore.com/

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• 3d
• animated
• animation
• maya
• adobe
• after
• effects
• ruffles
• victorian
• cat
• rabbit
• policeman
• police
• magpie
• victoria
• vfx
• special
• visual
• HD
• 720
• 1290
• 1280

[fisher4930]

This is amazing, im trying to work on a project in maya but my tutorial crapped out on me while i was making a wolf character, how did you model the heads of the characters, or what tutorial did you use cause thats the part im stuck on

[tomlaut1980]

@fisher4930  thank you :) well you need some good reference, like front view and side view photos or concept drawings. Then you first concentrate on the side and then the front and try to match the vertices. With a little practice its not difficult.

Good tutorials are by Digital tutors or the Gnomon workshop

[TrotySama]

That's really awesome! Great work! And the hell with WMG! What is the song you used so I can play it while I watch your movie :)

PS : really, how long does it takes to build a city scene like this? so many buildings!

[tomlaut1980]

thank you :) We used the theme from apollo 13 and the end credits we played eric clapton.

Just check my blog I think there is a vimeo link that still got the sound in it.

[tomlaut1980]

Well the city was finished in 3 weeks. Not sure how many hours I worked on it in total . I mean I didnt work on it day and night, so its hard to tell :)

[mastermb123]

hey guys what computer did you render this with?

[mastermb123]

hey guys....just starting 3d work and wondering will my mac be able to render these kind of animations...just wondering what computer did you render this with? like i have a mac book pro intel core duo

[fisher4930]

@tomlaut1980 I know about the references the problem is that my official autodesk animation academy tutorial for anatomy leaves alot of gaps for the head. it sayd to use CV curves and make an outline then fillit in with varying polygons and magically for the tutorial the polygos are perfect without any explanation on how to make them surfaces that fit (creating a square surface doesnt work) thanks though for the other tutorials

[nogie8]

pretty good animation

[mrbanana101]

The modeling and rigging were great, and the lighting and rendering were absolutely impressive! The only visual part that didn't convince me that this was a truly professional short film was the animation... It was a bit lifeless at times and some of the animation just didn't suit up (not to sound harsh or anything). Otherwise, awesome job!