This project gave me a chance to step away from the primarily procedural workflows I was (previously) more comfortable with, and into a more manual and hands-on approach. I used modelling, rigging, keyframe animation, and blendshapes to gain more control and precision, which was especially important to capture the intricacies of cardiac development. I also had the opportunity to develop my Maya FX skills (Bifrost), as well as shading, lighting, and rendering.
Students often encounter difficulties when studying fundamental concepts in embryology, especially cardiac development, due to the spatiotemporal complexity of visualizing anatomical structures evolving in time and in three dimensions. Currently available teaching resources are mainly two-dimensional static images, which often fail to adequately depict these embryological processes and their dynamic nature.
I aim to create a 3D animation depicting embryological heart development, beginning from the creation of the heart field until the formation of the functional heart. This animation will be incorporated into my content supervisor's course as a learning resource. This approach has the potential to significantly improve comprehension, retention, and overall engagement among students, enabling learners to understand cardiac development in a more intuitive manner and to apply this knowledge in higher-level coursework and clinical contexts.
This project is currently in the works, but please enjoy some in-progess excerpts below!
To animate looping of the heart tube, I used a hybrid animation workflow involving first rigging and keyframing a base heart tube, then extracting poses at set intervals and refining them through modelling tools. These refined poses were then set as blendshapes to create a smoother, more controlled deformation.
