Fish

It all starts with a doodle…

My goal of my animation was to create a 3D swimming fish on the Maya Program.   

I had to start out simple. I made sure to draw a fish that had little plain features. After sketching out my fish I scanned it onto the computer and pulled it into the Maya Software. It was there that I began to shape out my fish. I started out with a cube and began to move the vertexs causing the figure to stretch out. I had to use tools that allowed me to extrude my shape, creating the parts of the body such as the lips, fins and tail. I cut my fish inhale with the slicer and used the symmetry tool to create two equal sides of the fish. I screen shouted a picture of the shape of my fish after completing it and dragged the picture in Photoshop because the next stage was coloring.

I wanted my fish to have contrasting colors, so I used the colors blue and yellow. There is also a hint of orange. I felt accomplished with my design I created. I feel that it is unique and resembles what looks like a real fish. You have to save your design as a png in order to wrap the design on the subject.

In Maya, you must add a phong texture and download your file with the design onto the fish. I had to make sure the design lined up with the body, otherwise, the finished project wouldn't come out right.

After attaching the textured design, you had to create eyes for your fish. What I did was take two spheres and put them where the indented sphere shape was on my fish.

The next step was a little tricky. I learned how to create bones for my sea creature. In Maya, the bones are joints and allow you to move your subject more effishiantly (You see what I did there?). All the bones should be connected and lead back to the main bone that will be used to move the entire body.

After lining up on the bones you your fish the next step is to color the bones. To color the bones you had to color the parts you wanted to move white for each bone, the other parts should have remained black. This sounds easy, however, it was very challenging for me. It is difficult because the white paint puts weights on the bone, if you put too much white on one bone then it could all concave on each other because it's too heavy. I know this from experience…

After I finished painting the bone, it was then time to make my fish swim. I used key points to plot where my fish would move too and what angle its tail would be "wagging" to.

My project came together pretty well. I wouldn't change a thing except maybe being more careful with the bones. I know that now. The process of making this animation was a great review for me and also taught me new technics. I can't wait to see what I will be creating next(: