Software Flexibility

          For my showreel I wanted to show that although my work is predominantly keyframed animations in Maya, I can also be flexible and use whatever tools or software I have available, so that I am not seen as a 'one trick pony'. It is important for people working in the games industry to be flexible now days and technology is quickly advancing and we have to show that we are capable of picking up new techniques and learning new practices. With that said I wanted to show the work I did on motion capture with the Xbox Kinect. I've therefore set time aside in my showreel to display the recording of the mocap, the targeting process and the final product after cleaning up the animation within Maya, and maybe even in-game if I have the time.

Kinect MoCap capturing

MoCap Re-targeting 

MoCap Cleaned up

The above image shows just a shot of the final animation, however for the actual final render I will be using a 3-point lighting set up (like I have with most of my renders) and having it without a floor. This is because I plan to have a different background once in After Effects, and so having the renders with alpha'd backgrounds means I can place the animation sequence in front of what ever background I choose. It just gives me a little more flexibility when editing. I did consider doing a render pass just for the shadows so that I could still keep them, but I decided they were not important to what I'm showing and so didn't do the shadow pass.

Alpha'd Background

Example of the 3-point lighting I'm using