NCCA Animation Archive

Butterfly Flocking System

For this project I was assigned the task of creating an innovative piece of work within Computer Animation. The aim of this project was to experiment with new ideas and methods, and to learn more about an area of Computer Animation of interest to me. My project was a state machine flocking system of butterflies created using MEL (Maya Embedded Language). This report explains the processes I went through to create my final piece, with references to the research and design.

Music-Driven Flocking-System

This report outlines the design and implementation of a Music driven Flocking System. Section 1 introduces the initial aims of the project including what is intended to be the final product of the project. It also looks at what challenges are foreseen. Section 2 documents research on Flocking and Music Analysis. It investigates why flocking occurs in nature and how it is simulated in computer graphics. The Music Analysis research also looks at a plugin for Maya created by Andrew Mitchell that performs music analysis. Section 3 presents solutions for the challenges that were foreseen, and also gives a comprehensive description of how they were implemented in Maya to make the MusicDriven Flocking System. Section 4 concludes the report, giving a summary and a critical analysis of the project. Future work is also outlined.