You Fish?

This may sound like a Naturalist sort of question but it is NOT! This relates to animation. I mean, this is an animation blog after all. And if you didn't already guess, WE'RE MAKING FISH!!!

The point of making a fish is to be able to get back into Maya. Get the feel of modeling again and to rig the thing. I've attempted to rig a human with a human IK, but I didn't get very far. I think I started blogging about it. I don't know how up to date it is. I'll check and if needed I'll update. But that is kinda the purpose of fishing in Maya.

So first I obviously modeled. Well actually, that's a lie. I drew a picture to base our model off of. I couldn't use a picture off the internet because it isn't MY fishy. So I drew my own fishy. I based it off the structure of a goldfish. I say the structure of a goldfish because it certainly isn't going to be normal colored by one.


Now I modeled. I started from a box. Well cube. Same diff right? I added divisions to my box so I could have more vertices. Vertices are life when it comes to modeling. You need shape. Then from where my box was compared to my fishy, I moved the vertices to make a oval shape. I didn't want to make any fins quite yet. Then I extruded two faces from the back end to get the tail fin. Sounds easy enough right? Well not really. You have position stuff right so that when you add more polygons to it, you can easily shape it to look like a tail fin. Not as easy as it first sounded. I fished alright. Not the best but not the worst. But I'm getting right back into Maya.

Next was texture! Fun times. NOT! UV texturing IS NOT THE SAME as adding a blind or a phong texture. I basically took a screenshot of my fish and brought it into photoshop and painted it. Then I applied it as a texture. Then I tried to do planar mapping stuff and Maya doesn't like me and my fishies, but hey Maya, deal with it. Me fish. I called Danny over and Danny helped me fish. My fish wasn't facing the right direction. Once my fish was facing the right directionI did planar mapping and went into the UV editor. Nice awesome button! Using the UV editor (I am in UV mode instead of object mode or vertex mode or face mode) I "moved" vertices around to place the texture on my fishy! Then Maya CRASHED!!!! UGH! Maya has favorites problems, actually it's more of a hatred problem. I had to do all the texturing AGAIN! Not fun. Let me tell you. SAVE YOU WORK PEOPLE!!!!! Because Maya hates everyone and you never know when the school district will decide to strip you of all you computer power. But anyways I fished and my fish looks pretty! But it took FOREVER! And the modeling ENDS! I defeated that monster.


Boss battle now. Monster: rigging. First part of that is boneing the fish. Or adding bones to my fishy. I know absolutely nothing about fish anatomy, so um, great start. And sadly there is no Fishy IK unit that I can use. So I went to lynda.com (aka the site of all e-Comm knowledge from the pros in that field). And guess what? There is a fish tutorial that talks about boneing it! So lucky, I know things (Ok, this is sarcasm as my teacher has been watching these videos and basically been teaching us the videos in about half the time the video takes and says, if you don't got it go watch the videos in lynda for they will help you. Just an FYI for all of you.).

Ya, um, rigging a fish is NOT fun. Maya's wrath was upon me. My geometry flipping crashed!!!! Every dang day!! Like five times EVERY DAY!!!!!! Every day can't be a wrath day! So that was a struggle. SAVE OFTEN PEOPLE SAVE OFTEN! It saves fishy lives! And your animations. So save your projects and all will be well when your geometry cashes making Maya wish to crash as well ultimately giving you a crash report. Great way to start your Monday morning right? That was some adventure time with Maya. So glad that Maya hates absolutely everyone and not just me. Eventually I got to the point where my fish was fully rigged with all my geometry intact. It was great!


The next part was moving my fishy. This was relatively easy. Once I got my geometry to stop crashing once I touched the timer slider. Bit of a problem. What was happening is that at time 1, everything was fine, but every other moment on the time slider, the bones were twisted weirdly on the x, y, and, z axis'. So I had to clear the time slier of all keyframes it had. Once I did that, it was smooth sailing. I set a start and end frame on the x- axis for my fishes movement. Then I moved the tail on the z-axis. I haven't rendered it yet. I will not until I absolutely have to because I hate that horrid, rebellious, stupid, piece of POOP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Why should you care about my fishy? Because it reminds you of Maya and what things to keep in mind when working with Maya and doing projects in general. What are those things again?

• Have a source image. Do your own work.
• Create your own textures/colors.
• Save your work!
• Have as much detail in Maya as you absolutely need. No more.
• Work on the smaller side. Don't overload Maya.
• SAVE YOUR WORK! Did I say that already? Yes, BUT YOU NEED TO DO IT OFTEN!!!!!!
• Need help? Lynda.com probably has something on it to help you.

*I apologize to any who may be offended by the lack of grammar in parts of this post, but this is how (most of) my animation class, and how I, spoke during this project and our fish skills.

** And no I'm not a gamer. Plenty of friends do and talk video games to me so I hear about different boss battles, boss levels, and the like.