This reserach project was part of the Computing Research Association Distributed Mentor Project. The CRAW-DMP matches undergraduate female students with female mentors for a summer of research at the mentor's institution. The research was conducted at the University of Utah summer of 2001.

For current information on the CRA DMP click here.

To learn more about my mentor please visit the page of Dr. Elaine Cohen.

 

The goal of the MAYAN PROJECT is to create a real-time virtual walkthrough of one of the ancient Mayan temples, while dealing with non-photorealistic rendering and different levels of abstraction. My work included creating the entourage for the walkthrough, that is the figures and models that will be placed in the background to help give the viewer a better sense of the surroundings.

 
To create the entourage I used Poser and Maya. Poser is a figure design and animation tool. It produces lifelike 3-D illustrations and animations of human and animal figures. Poser is user-friendly and doesn't require much time to get used to. Maya is an animation, design and visual effects system that produces digital images of animated characters and scenes.


STAGE 1: Modeling

Before starting to model the Mayan people, I needed to read about the Mayan civilization to understand how the people of that culture might have looked. After doing some research, I had a general idea of the characteristics of the Mayans and I was ready to start modeling.

  • The first step was to work on creating the appropriate clothing. Unfortunately, the default clothing items in Poser did not match what I had in mind and so my options were:

    1- Use a second software to generate the clothes
    2- Find clothin modelsonline
    3- Be creative with what I have.

 

I tried all but the first. I found some very interesting and useful clothes models online and I also spent most of my time playing with the clothes provided in the Poser library. Cloth deformation was hard and posed a problem because since the geometry of the clothes did not match that of the Poser figures, I had to go through all the keyframes and "tweak" the clothes using control dials trying to make the clothes appear to fit the modelsand have them move accordingly with the models. The images on the right are examples of my "creative" work on clothes. (Click on picture to enlarge)

 
  • Now that I had some clothing ready I began to model the Mayan figures. Below are some examples of what I have created. The time to design the groups differed from one group to the other. The Soldiers scene took about 2 1/2 weeks because I had to search for accessories such as the spear and model others like the necklace.
  • The third step is to animate the different groups. The animations are kept at a minimal because there isn't much emphasis placed on them in the walk-through. The animations were keyframe animations and to help me create a smooth animation I used a video camera and recorded live action. I then viewed certain fames of the movie and used them as a guidance for creating the key frames for the animation. This method helped trumendously especially since I was always basing my animation on a live action movie.
  • The last stage is to combine all the various groups and their animations, along with what the other members in the team have created, into the final project. This will a long way down the road and we may not even get to do that by the end of the summer.
    Here are few more examples done using a feature in Poser called "Sketch Render".

 

STAGE 2 : Maya's Paint Effects

This is the second phase of my project. Along with creating the people for the walk-through, I will also be designing the scenary i.e. the landscape. I am using the Maya software which contains a feature called Paint Effects. It's a painting tool allowing the user to create amazing detail both on a 2D canvas and in 3D space.
I will be using the 2D canvas to create texture files that will later be used and placed on polygons in World Tool Kit. The polygons will be strategically placed to give the impression of background scenary. Below are some examples created using this paint program (click pictures for a larger image):

 

 

The image shows various examples of painting feathers. What's interesting is the ability to control colors, one can for example paint a feather with two different colors such as the yellow-green ones shown. Also you can turn on the "flower" feature which will cause flowers to sprang from the end of the feathers as shown in the middle of the image.

All of the images were created by simply chosing a brush type, a "feather" brush in this case, and then simply dragging the mouse and Maya does the rest

 

 

Starting from the left there is the complete tree. Next one shows the cabability of controling the colors. The third shows the option of creating a tree with no leaves. The fourth is an example of a tree that is partially drawn and the last one is another example of color control.

 

This image shows some of the different types of media that can be simulated using Paint Effects. There are various types of paints, inks, and airbrushes.