2020 Reel

Monmouth University Animation Reel 2020 from Monmouth University Animation on Vimeo.

Escargore

We watched this student animation in class today:

Escargore from Media Design School on Vimeo.

The group was slightly larger than what we are used to (22 students). Here is a making of:

Escargore - Behind the Scenes from Media Design School on Vimeo.

2016 Reel & Log

Monmouth Animation Reel 2016 from Monmouth University Animation on Vimeo.

I did not credit them properly in the reel for lack of space but here is the complete group animation:

Gary's Log from Monmouth University Animation on Vimeo.

Jiggle It

Maya / Mental Ray not batch rendering blendShapes

There seems to be a bug in the currently installed version of Maya 2015 (SP2) that causes Mental Ray to ignore blendShapes when batch rendering (or even mess them up?). But there is a workaround!

• Select the object that has blendshape animation on it
• From the animation menu, choose

  Geometry Cache → Create New Cache

• The default settings should work is you have your entire animation visible on your timeline, if you only use blendShapes for a small part of your animation you may explore the options
• Repeat for each mesh with blendShapes

How does this fix things? It creates files in your project directory (yes, you do need to set your project!) with the correct vertex (=point) positions of the deformed mesh. These vertex positions are then directly used for rendering, ignoring all deformers.

Welcome!

This blog will function as the digital workbook for 3D animation classes I teach at Monmouth University