Mission Mars

The American Nightmare

Animation Project for COSC 3P98

Introduction

The purpose of this animation project is to apply the theory that we learned in our COSC 3P98 course and to gain some exposure using powerful animation tools like Maya. Overall it was exciting to work with such a big and powerful animation tool, which is being used in commercial movie making processes. While working with this project we learned a lot about how animations are being made for commercial purposes and really how hard is to make one. In general, it was an opportunity for us to understand and to be familiar with some of the core techniques used in computer animation.

Story

We came up with so many different ideas for our animation and in fact we spend most of our holidays here at school trying to learn Maya and at the same time to decide what to do for our project. First we thought of creating an animation using rigid body mechanisms available with Maya, however since we both have zero artistic knowledge and less time, we decided to do something simple. So, we started exploring the tutorials and some reference books on Maya and finally came up with this idea of an American traveling to Mars. Here is the full story, our hero Mr. American goes to Mars with a hope that he is going to be the first man to land on Mars. After reaching the red planet, he explores for a while and suddenly saw the Canadian flag and our picture along with a sign saying Tim Horton’s is in 2 km. What else, since it was unexpected for him, our hero fainted and fell on the red sand. One may think that the goal of this animation is to criticize Americans. False, we just thought of making this animation to be funny and to show the world that Canadian astronauts and entrepreneurs like us could also make it to Mars, even before Americans. The whole story must be assumed as such that the Canadians have already sent a mission to Mars before Americans, however Americans being unaware of it, set out a mission to the Mars. And when the American astronaut land on mars, he sees an unexpected Canadian landmark that becomes his worst nightmare. Like it?

Models used in our Animation

Solar System

The entire solar system is modeled very closely according to the real solar system. It was designed using the NURBS Primitives (spheres) tool available in Maya. The sources and design of the planet structure were modeled based on the data provided by CSA. Some textures used in planets modeling were downloaded from the web (for example, earth) and others were created using Corel Painter 6.0, Paint Shop Pro and by changing the color values of the default textures provided in Maya.

Space Ship

The ship was created using the Polygon Primitives (cube) tool available in Maya. The default shape of the polygon cube were extruded and the face of the polygon was scaled enough to make the body & wing of the space ship. To give it a better and realistic look, usual graphics techniques like softening and blurring was applied. And the fire at the thruster was simply a spot light with a 3d texture. The landing part of the ship was little bit tricky to design. This ship, unlike other space ships uses its legs to land. And the ship was also built with a sliding door. The door was designed by a couple of square boxes by applying Curve Editing (Curve Fillet & Attach Curve commands). The functionality of door was achieved by using mechanisms such as freeze transformation & parenting on cylinder (hinge).

American

Our American was modeled using NURBS and Polygon Primitives. Each part of body was attached together by using joints and IK joint tool to give him the elastic behavior to move his body parts. Body parts were attached together using binding methods and tools available in Maya. We faced great difficulties while designing this model and this is where we understood how hard is to make character animation in general. Considering the time that we had, we minimized our efforts to make this guy as real as possible. He turned out all right, didn’t he?

Flags, Landmark, Timmy signboard

These three were the easiest models in our animation. The landmark was simply a cube with its top face squeezed. The Timmy signboard and flags were simply cylinders and planes attached together.

Scenes

Cruising the Solar System (Scene 1)

The idea of this scene is to provide a spectacular view of the solar system. Cruising through the solar system was done using camera movements. A two-node camera was used to accomplish this task. One node following the path towards earth and the other node looking at each planet of the solar system. The scene ends by focusing the camera at earth.

American takes off (Scene 2)

This scene shows the space ship coming out of earth with its mission in mind, and travels it way towards mars. A clear view of earth in space and our Americans space ship with its thrusters burning at full speed can be seen. Key frames did the animation of the ship and earth. No camera movements were involved in creating this scene.

Approaching Mars (Scene 3)

This scene was the continuation of the previous scene in space. The ship flies through space towards mars. And a clear view of mars and space ship can be seen in space. Using key frames we did the animation.

Landing on Mars (Scene 4)

There you go, after millions of miles our hero had arrived in mars. In this scene you can see the ship landing with its legs popping out on the sky. Once it landed, we can see the doors opening for our hero to get out. There were no camera movements used in this scene. All the animations were done by using key frames.

American on Mars (Scene 5)

Excited hero gets out of the ship and happily walking around mars. After few steps, suddenly he saw something, which ruined his ecstasy. What was it? The animation on this scene was also done by using key frames.

Canadian Landmark (American’s worst nightmare) (Scene 6)

Oh… now we know what ruined our hero’s ecstasy? This scene basically explains what was the reason behind the sadness of our hero. The entire animation on this scene was done by using camera movements. The camera shows the landmark with the Canadian flag on it and our photographs pasted on the landmark. The Timmy signboard can also be seen. You may ask, why Tim Horton’s signboard? It is just to insist that Canadians were already here in mars and they have established one of their famous coffee store chains. And also because we like Tim Horton’s very much.

Credits (Scene 7)

This is our last scene. This scene just shows our names. The animation was done by camera movements. Our names were textured on a plane, and this scene was done in such a way that both camera movements and object scaling was done at the same time.

Lightings and Textures

Various lighting effects available in Maya were used in our animation including ambient, directional and spotlights. As per the requirement three textures were created using Corel Painter 6.0 and the rest of the textures used were just predefined textures from Maya.

Sound effects

No movie production will be entirely satisfactory without any music. Our movie uses two sound files. Theme music from feature films X-files and Mission-Impossible were used.

Conclusion

What can we say? In the beginning, it was such a pain. But once we were progressing towards the end, we really enjoyed the whole project. We had the opportunity to learn and use powerful software of its kind. Now we understand to certain extent how movies are being made and how computers and computer graphics are playing a bigger role in the movie making process. Working with Maya was a wonderful experience and we are very happy that we had an opportunity to create an animation using Maya. When you play our animation please don’t get scared of those two sad faces that you see on the landmark, it’s because of those sleepless nights spent on creating this production.

Animation by

Sanjeev Balakrishnan & Kalpesh Patel

Best viewed @ Netscape 4.0 or higher

Comments

sb97ah@sandcastle.cosc.brocku.ca & kp98ae@sandcastle.cosc.brocku.ca

22/Jan/2001 Ó Balakrishnan & Patel