Summer Portfolio Piece #3

3rd Portfolio Piece Ideas/ Timelines
As is tradition with Tech Art, we present several ideas to Barak and Mary, the Tech Art teachers, and they tell us which is the best path. Here are a few of them:

cr_SkinAssist
Problem: I have found there are three major annoyances I have when skinning in Maya, and I have a few ideas to fix that
1) Component Editor: powerful but impractically big, create a GUI to assign weight values multiple ways for multiple selection types. As opposed to displaying every single vert name, it will focus on joint names only.

2) Joint Viewer: When skinning I often isolate parts of the model for skinning, this hides relevant joints when skinning. I'll add to the GUI a tool to isolate joints to bring in scene so you know which is selected, and colorize them so you can see on the model which one you have selected

3) Skin Isolator: Often I'll isolate a component level-selection and wish I could easily add more skin to my selection (especially when skinning) this would utilize a slider and a grow selection technique to bring in more mesh without leaving an isolated selection mode. Also would like to be able to display only skin with influence based on selection

Thesis: This would relate to my cloth sim thesis, as some of these tools assist greatly in the cloth skinning process.

Timeline:
Week1: GUI and function complete for piece #1
Week2: Skin Isolator and Joint View function complete- serve writing the theses due here
Week 3: GUI complete and integrated with all three in a united piece

cr_ClothBake
Problem: There are multiple ways of creating cloth in Maya and porting it to engine. Including creating real-time cloth sim for UDK. However the exporting process varies across them, and I could create a tool to serve as a multi-purpose cloth exporter.

1) Research: A lot of time will go into researching and documenting multiple cloth approaches in maya, comparing strengths and weaknesses as well as needs to get into three game engines (this involves researching each game engine.

2) Basic Bake Joints Export: Most game engines need baked looped animations for cloth, this would serve the exporting process of getting this animation into their engines. Bonus points for researching ways to optimize this process with less joints.


Timeline:
Week 1: 1/2 Research Complete: All ways to create cloth sim, and the needs of each of the three game engines.
Week 2: Research Complete 2/2: Presets made for interesting cloth effects. Started on tool for baking these assets, and researching practicality of joint optimization complete
Weel 3: Final Product: Tool is complete, cloth documented, and demonstration of cloth sim in three engines.


Thesis: This is more of an expansive approach, where the majority of the project is the thesis