Week 4: Exercise 5

 

1.       Imagine you are creating a scene where a car drives along a straight road, but swerves around at random as if the driver is drunk. Do you think it would be useful to know how to program using MEL when creating this scene? Explain.

 Yes I believe so. If we manually animate the car swerving, it will appear unnatural as the intended effect is supposed to be random and animation makes use of curves, which make the animation appear stiff or too unnatural; impossible to make it seem realistic. Using MEL script, we can randomize the swerve and this can even be achieved without much effort. We can even make the car interact with pedestrians or other cars unfortunate enough to be in its path.

2.       For the drunken car scene, give TWO advantages and disadvantages (pros and cons) of using scripting to create the swerving car animation.

 Using scripting to make the scene allows the car to move more naturally as the randomizing of the movement allows for swerve to be unpredictable. Another advantage is that limitations can be set to the car's movement so that it won't cross a certain boundary, such as outside the street or a building.

A disadvantage though is that the car will not return to its initial position when returning the timeline back to frame 1. In fact, it will cause the car to move even further down its path. This can be troublesome and potentially project-breaking as the car may be hard to find if neglected. Also, even with the randomize effect, the car may turn too quickly, making it appear jittery rather than swerving. Swerving is more easily accomplished with animation, although more time-consuming and less natural.

3.       You might think that programming using MEL is similar to using ALICE (in Year 1). It is actually very different. Explain TWO of the main differences, as far as you can tell.

Alice is much more object oriented, even more so that Maya, in that all the models, scripts and categorization is already provided. However, unlike MEL, Alice merely allows us to mess around with the models and built-in scripts while MEL lets us modify the attributes and even allows us to create scenes, such as a zombie apocalypse or a drunken driver. Another difference is that MEL is far more advanced and it is meant for users familiar with scripting in general. Alice serves as a form of introduction to scripting and makes use of proper English to better facilitate this. 

Conclusion

To conclude this, I have to say that this week is by far the most interesting and innovating week as I am exposed to MEL scripting for the first time. I learned a great deal and I honestly had fun watching the zombie apocalypse play out. It makes me interested to make my own scene using MEL scripting. Overall, this week was fun.