Digital 3D Visual Effects (Intro to Maya)

Group Project - Fender Commercial

In a team of 4-5 people, decide on a product and create a final video promoting or selling that product. Our video promoted a Fender bass guitar.



Final Video

Overview

I worked in a team of four other people to create this commercial for a Fender Bass. My main task was in animation and I assisted in modeling wherever possible and whenever needed. Unfortunately, I got sick the last week of this three week project, so I couldn't help with the project, much, if at all since I was in bed with a high fever. Luckily, the main task I was assigned was done early in the production - I had to animate the stings moving to the music. I had a video that Garry shot of one of his friends playing bass and I used that video to animate the strings. I went frame by frame through that video to get the correct animations for each of the strings. I animated both the fret positions and the strumming and vibrations of the strings. We didn't have enough time to do a motion blur render so I animated in a bit of reverberation into the strings. I learned how to use a String Deformer and that was the tool that I used to animate the strings as quickly and efficiently as I could.

Review

What I Learned/Challenges

- This was my first team project so I learned a lot about working in a team dynamic and a lot of the advantages and struggles that went along with that.
- I learned about the String Deformer and how to use it for animating a string.
- I continued to learn about workflow efficiencies and working dynamics of file management in a team environment.

Future Improvements

- I would've liked more time to refine the string animations - due to the time table and how things worked out, I didn't have quite as much time as was originally planned to get the animations done.
- Dropping the front lead up scene of the bar would've helped (and the team then went on to do so in the final project) because it didn't really have much of a connection to the Fender commercial.
- Building an environment for the guitar to be displayed in during the "beauty shots" of it would've helped to better sell the bass (which the team went on to create in their final project).