Not entirely unexpected, the fourth and last assignment for the 3D modelling course was to make an animation in Maya. When we first read the requirements, all kinds of wild ideas came up in our minds, most of which were unrealizable in the two weeks we had available. Two weeks we had to use to think of the subject of the animation, to learn how to make animations in Maya, to write this report and of course, to render the final result. Since both of us never made an animation in Maya before, we decided to work through a few tutorials first, trying the examples described and getting used to the animation interface. When we were able to find and use the most basic items for developing animations, we started to work on our final result.

Our animation starts out with a simulation of the ”Matrix Effect”, which displays glowing green letters falling down on the screen. Next, the camera zooms out and displays a square filled with domino stones, guide rails and a ball. The ball will fall down onto the guide rails, roll further down and hit the first domino stone, which then starts the falling of the first row of stones. When the last stone of the first row falls down, it will hit the + shaped item, which will turn around, hitting over the large purple stone, which will then hit the large field of stones and set the final action in motion.

In this report, we will discuss how we used the several required features in our animation, some other methods we used and the problems we ran into while animating and rendering.

Download pdf DDM - Maya Animation