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Category: Personal

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Maya Personal

Week 12: Rube Goldberg sequence 1

We have three weeks to create a Rube Goldberg sequence using the Bullet system we learnt last week. When I think of the Rube Goldberg sequence, the first thing that comes to mind is a clip from an animated film, Robots, it is a 2005 American computer-animated science fiction adventure comedy film produced by Blue It was directed by Chris Wedge. There is a very classic sequence in the middle of it, which I found on YouTube and used as a reference.

I started by looking at the warp board footage, which I thought was an effective way of showing the physical simulation system, but after trying it out I found it difficult to determine where the object was going to fall. After discussing this with my tutor, he suggested that I use a combination of physical simulation and animated keyframes to achieve the effect.

The second object of reference was dominoes from small to large. I found this arrangement to be visually striking and effective in demonstrating the physical simulation system.

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Nuke Personal

Week 11: 3D system & CameraTracker

The first Nuke course of the new semester is about the 3D system in Nuke. Here’s our first look at working with the Nuke 3D system. Among them, “scene” and “camera” are the basic nodes of the 3D scene. We can then create basic shape nodes like “Sphere” to add geometry to the “Scene”. You can also import obj files to directly add completed models.

We can adjust the size, material, lighting and many other information of the 3D model in Nuke.

Afterwards, we focused on explaining and practicing the “CameraTracker” node, which allows video sequences to generate points in 3D space through RotoPaint tracking. We can then create and add images or models in 3D space based on these calculated points. Creating a “card” as the ground is our first exercise.

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Maya Personal

Week 11: Ball animation & Bullet

The first class of the second semester is Maya animation ball movement, to imitate the trajectory of the ball in the real world. And understand the Bullet system with Maya.


First, we modeled the ball and the stairs, and then edited the curves in the Graph Editor using keyframe animation, so that the movement of the ball simulates the ball with elastic properties. Then we used the same method to create the second ball again, but the second ball simulated the trajectory of an inelastic ball. This small ball looks like an iron ball in reality, so I use a blue material to distinguish it. To simulate a small ball with elastic properties, I use a red material to distinguish it.

In the second stage of the course, we used Maya’s Bullet system, which can simulate real physical collisions and masses. We add Active Rigid Body to the model so that it can have a movable relationship with other objects. Add a Passive Rigid Body as an object that can only be touched but cannot move.

Our ultimate goal is to complete a Rube Goldberg sequence in week 4.