Class 4 (01/19/2022): Finishing Models & Beginning Previsualization

Since there was a long weekend, I wanted to use that time to finish up the Keurig and start previsualization for my opening scene. Below are some screencaps of some of the models.

Bringing the models into Houdini immediately brought up questions, namely how to keep mesh 'groups' and separate pieces of geometry separated instead of importing as one mesh. Thankfully, Houdini was able to recognize the different pieces of mesh as primitive groups, which are easily accessible through group tabs once defined.

The first thing I wanted to tackle was the animation of the clock hands, since I envisioned a close up of the clock striking 7AM and starting the chain reaction. I knew I could keyframe the hands or do a simple procedural "by frame" animation in a rotation transform, but I had a method of procedurally animating the hands that would start and stop and enhance the ticking effect of the alarm in a loop.

The rate pictured in the screencap controls the number of degrees in which the hand

rotates around the pivot point (the rate for the second hand is six since there are 60 seconds in a minute and 360 degrees in a circle; the negative sign is just so the hand will rotate clockwise). The static and rising variables determine how many frames the hand will rotate and pause, respectively, so I set those both at 12 (added together is 24 frames, which aligns with a true second of animation). Once I was able to get that functional, I used the same methods on the minute and hour hand, slightly adjusting the rates and static/rising to go slower and move in smaller degree increments. I also adjusted the position of the hands to be closer to 7AM in a separate transform node before applying the procedural rotation. I was able to affect only the hands in the group node since they were separate pieces of mesh in my Maya file.

Once the hands all matched, I moved on to the shaking of the

bells, ringer, and alarm as a whole. Since the ringer cannot constantly be ticking like the hands of the clock, I couldn't do a looped animation. My solution for this was to have the ringer be static, but to feed in a transform node to the same source file and use a switch node to toggle between the animated and the static based on the frame in which all the hands hit 7AM. For the ringer animation, I used a sine function and multiplied by some large numbers to get a (very) fast swinging effect of the ringer between the bells. I then used an if statement to trigger the switch node and applied the same techniques to the alarm

as a whole and the bells, utilizing both separate transform nodes and primitive groups.

Just to finish up the current shot, I quickly keyframed the position of the shaking clock so that it falls off the nightstand it is on. I added a quick camera move and some extremely preliminary lighting and here is my rough animatic for my opening scene.

Of course this is a very rough block out of the scene with minimal lighting, set dressing, and so on, but I'm happy with the current state. Ideally in the beginning shot there is some visible atmosphere and ambient noise for sound design (birds chirping, leaves rustling, etc.), so it's not as 'sit and wait' feeling on the opening frame. The next step in the process is to piece together the next parts of the machine.