Production Process
This animation uses the model of the snake I made for my midterm project. Basically, this snake was made using a cylinder, applying a couple of deformation tools to it, and sculpting the head and various aspects of the body using CV manipulation. For more detailed info about how the snake was modeled, please see the midterm project documentation at http://garrettimm211.blogspot.com/2014/03/midterm-documentation.html .
Finding the Frog
I began by searching for a model of a small animal for the snake to 'eat' -- I wanted to focus on the actual animation part of this final rather than taking the time to create another detailed model of an animal, so I decided to look for a free one online. Originally, I started by looking for models of mice and rats, but I couldn't find one that was done in a realistic style like my snake, so eventually I settled on a frog. After applying a couple shaders to certain parts of the frog, I had this model to work with:
Setting the Stage
My next step was to expand the environment my animation would be taking place on. Although I was planning to loop the snake's slither animation a few times and shoot it from different angles in order to save space, I still needed enough room to make it seem as though he was approaching the frog from a distance, and to make it appear that he and the frog were actually in a field and not a mysteriously floating patch of grass. To that end, I turned the one patch of grass I had into nine patches, and then surrounded this new larger patch of grass with patches that I had used CV manipulation on to create small hills on. The result looks like this:
After that, I created a sky dome -- half a sphere with a sky texture applied to it. The reason I left it as a half-sphere was so that I could still zoom out and see the entire landscape. It occurred to me just now that I could have just put it back to a full sphere after I was done creating and animating everything, but instead what I actually did was set the dome to jump to the right position whenever the camera changed angle. I was worried this would effect the lighting, which was unchanged from the midterm, but it seemed to look just fine. This is what the scene looks like with the sky dome:
Finally, I created grass on all the new patches of land using the paint effects grass tool. At first, I wasn't sure how to get the grass to be painted on the hills properly, but I soon discovered that clicking the patch of land with the hills I wanted to put grass on and then clicking the 'make paintable' button under the pain effects tools would allow me to paint the grass directly onto the hills. I kept the grass' visibility off until it was time to render, because the grass slows maya down, but here is what the scene looks like with all the grass turned on:
Animating the Snake
Getting the snake to slither in a way that looked natural was what I feared would be the most difficult aspect of this animation, but in fact it turned out to be incredibly simple. Luckily, this I actually discovered how to do without wasting a bunch of time trying more complicated, less effective methods beforehand. When I first dragged the snake farther back to put some distance between him and the frog, I had forgotten to parent the deformers to him and he turned back into a cylinder. As I moved him back into position, I realized that the way the body followed the deformer looked exactly like how a snake actually moves when it slithers (which can be seen in one of the links I put in the research for my midterm documentation.) So I parented the flare deformer to the snake so he would maintain his tapered shape, then slid him back to the beginning of the wave deformer, which remained the center of the scene. Every shot of the snake slithering is actually just the snake moving forward in a straight line along the wave deformer. The only tricky thing about this is that the head would frequently become out of line with the neck, so I had to go through the animation a couple frames at a time, popping the head back into place and then setting a keyframe for it. Here's a shot of the snake halfway through one loop of the slither animation:
Animating the Frog
The frog I had brought into the scene was not originally a maya model, nor was a NURBS model, and it had no sort of rigging, so my ability to manipulate and animate it was extremely limited. Thankfully, the animation I had planned did not require any movement on the frog's part anyway, but I still didn't want him to appear totally lifeless. I decided to make his throat swell up like a croaking frog's to put a bit of life into him -- I did not actually do any research for this part, I went off of memories I had from working at a pet store and having my own pet frog when I was younger. All I did was place a small dome inside of the frog's throat, made it the same texture as the frog's skin, and keyframed it to swell up and shrink back down using the scale tool at certain parts of the animation. It might not be the best looking solution, particularly when viewing the animation one frame at a time, but in the actual video it happens quickly enough to look passable. Here is what the frog looks like with its throat extended:
Camera Work and the Ending
Most of the rest of the production was simply creating the camera and then setting up the various shots. The snake slithering and frog croaking animations were repeated, so it was simply a matter of going into the animation graph editor, copying the key frames for given objects, and pasting them for the later shot, then putting the camera into a new position for that shot. Getting the timing down took a bit of trial and error though, and because of how many keyframes the head had it was not always easy to make sure I was copying the right ones and putting them in the right places, so I had to go back in the end and redo the head's positioning in certain frames.
For the ending, I didn't really have time to actually animate the snake unhinging its jaw and devouring the frog, so instead I had a shot of the snake raising its head up as it approached the frog -- this turned out to be a bit tricky to do, and involved using CV manipulation to rotate and move the front portion of the snake one segment at a time. Here is a shot of the snake with its head raised:
I then used Adobe Premiere to cut the animation to black, and then fade in to the frog gone and the snake slithering away, but now with a noticeable bulge in its stomach (that I created by scaling CVs,) which can be seen in this shot:
Finished Animation
Closing Thoughts
Overall, I'm pleased with how this animation turned out. I can tell its amateur work, and it's a pretty simple animation, but I think it still looks pretty decent. I was also rather proud of myself for sticking to a project that was actually doable -- I have had a bad habit in the past for other classes of coming up with projects that are simply far too ambitious and complicated to be completed, and so I'd always end up turning in something that would look like it had a lot of potential, but be largely unfinished. This time, I managed to remind myself not to go overboard, and so even though my animation might not be really over the top or super impressive, I actually submitted a finished product this time that I believe is still respectable.
If I were to continue refining this animation, I'd probably remodel the snake's head and work on improving the snakeskin texture on both the head and body. I'd also see if I could make my own frog (or even change the frog to a mouse) that I could put more animation into, and then I could consider expanding the animation, like putting in a chase scene and actually showing the frog/mouse getting eaten. I'd also like to try putting a bit more into the environment, like grass and clouds that move, and perhaps some trees for additional scenery.
If I were to continue refining this animation, I'd probably remodel the snake's head and work on improving the snakeskin texture on both the head and body. I'd also see if I could make my own frog (or even change the frog to a mouse) that I could put more animation into, and then I could consider expanding the animation, like putting in a chase scene and actually showing the frog/mouse getting eaten. I'd also like to try putting a bit more into the environment, like grass and clouds that move, and perhaps some trees for additional scenery.
