In October 2016 my class was given our first 3-D modelling assignment for the second year of my course at Nescot College. It was a small project to create a 3-D modelled tentacle in Maya which had to be in by the end of the year. For our creations to be 100% successful our Tentacles had to have/do all of the following things. While most of my class went with an easier and more traditional way of creating a tentacle with a natural look to it including things such as suckers at the bottom of it, I decided to create a Robotic Tentacle with A Gripper at the end of it which would be able to spin round and grab.
Joint Structure – This was a huge part of our tentacles that was a must have if we wanted to allow our tentacle to be able to move in certain positions that we had planned for them to do. The yellow balls and lines in some of the pictures above show off some of the joints that I had to create in order for my Robotic Tentacle + Gripper to move in the way I wanted them to.
Textured – Like all of my models that had come before, our tentacles needed to be textured. This time I decided to texture my tentacle differently to how I did with my previous models meaning that I didn’t use the software Mudbox this time. Instead, I used Maya and learnt more than I previously knew about texturing using Lamberts. This meant I could add things like lighting effects for my model so that it had the Robotic feel I wanted to bring across when creating it. As seen above in the final picture you can tell that I was successful in creating a red light for the eye of the gripper.
Animating – Finally came the animating part. To animate our Tentacles we used what is known as the “Timeline” in Maya. The Timeline is at the bottom of every new Maya file that is started with a list of numbers starting from 0. Using the Timeline is very simple, all I had to do was start the timeline from 0 and have the tentacle lay down flat at 0 seconds. Then I would drag the timeline to about 5 seconds in and move the position of the tentacle so that it would have a sort of S shape curve as seen above from the images. Then I proceeded to drag the timeline to 10 seconds and After that, I changed the grippers position so that it looked sideways, spun round and made a gripping movement twice. This meant that whenever I played the timeline from start to finish it would complete all of these movements from 0-10 seconds. After I completed the animation my Robotic Tentacle was finished.
What did I learn? – While creating the tentacle I had noticed how many new things that I had learnt. For starters, I never knew how to create Joints for my models which allowed me to help animate my tentacle in the way I wanted it to move. Another part I had gained more knowledge on was texturing with Maya, though I had briefly touched on texturing within Maya once before in the first year, I hadn’t learnt new techniques on how to create various things for my models such as lighting effects and different metal textures like I did this year which really helped to make my Robotic Tentacle stand out. Just like creating joints for my tentacle, I had no experience with animating my 3-D models at all meaning that by using the Timeline I had learnt how to do basic animation with my models for the first time.
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