Midterm: Alien Abduction in Maya/ After Effects

Watch the video here!

Proposal: What if we were to recreate an alien abduction, where a modeled UFO appeared to take real people away?

Production Log: The initial plan was to animate the alien abduction in Maya, including the tractor beam and the two abductees getting physically moved into the ship, as opposed to the final vanishing.

1. Footage was taken from the AIMM balcony of two volunteers milling around using a standard handheld camcorder rested on a railing. Part of the visual intention of the project was the have low-quality video as is commonly seen in security footage in convenience stores, for instance.
   
2. A UFO was modeled using polygons in Autodesk Maya. Two spheres were created, one of which was flattened 84% in order to make the “saucer,” and the second was cut in half to form the “bridge” on top of the craft. These were then stitched together.
   
3. The texture of the UFO was then created in Adobe Photoshop, where a brushed steel pattern was applied to the hull, along with a handful of “nonsense” characters made to look like extraterrestrial writing.
   
4. The UFO was then animated in Maya. It slowly rotates as it approaches the camera over a period of a minute, stops, and then rapidly flies away. The difference in speeds was used so that the ship would appear to be a predatory animal, slowly stalking its prey and then quickly absconding once it made the capture to get out of harm’s way.
   
5. The project was then brought into Adobe After Effects so that the two separate videos could be combined to create the abduction. Text, “lighting,” and basic photo editing to remove the two actors were also employed in After Effects, and here the final render took place.

Evaluation: I’m really happy with the technical process involved. I learned a lot about both Maya and After Effects, including how to texture in Maya and how to do just about all of the stuff I did in After Effects. Artistically, on the other hand, I feel like more can be done. Especially, apart from physically being present, the UFO does not otherwise interact with After Effects at all. I think if I were to learn how to import the 3D model itself into AE, instead of just the movie rendered by Maya, I could get a lot more done to make the ship look more convincing, including edits to the canopy glass. As well, the scene could probably use reshooting, as the degree to which the wind affected the camera was not immediately apparent when the video was first filmed. All told, however, I think that the project was a big success for me, and it greatly advanced my understanding of the programs utilized.