Finished!!!

After a very long weekend I am finally finished!!! I’ve found the module fun, but hard work and very frustrating. I still struggle to produce realistic materials for my scene, this is the frustration bit!! Adding sound to the animation made a lot of difference, this is the first time I have used Adobe Premiere Pro. and although I only used its basic tools I can see it being a very handy programme, it seemed to bring my animation to life!

I did have a lot of bright ideas at the beginning of the module, but realistically I didn’t have enough time to create them all, well not even half!!! I must of forgotten how time consuming max can be!

I have definitely learnt a lot more on 3d max this time round. I found reactor good fun and got some good results by using it. My boat within the final scene uses a wave reactor to produce the effect. Also garment maker and cloth modifiers are handy, the flag in my opening scene uses these tools and I am pleased with the results I got here. I found bipeds a little tricky, but was able to get the results i needed, shame i didn't have enough time to animate my man though!!

I am happy with the modelling and animation side of things, but I do think that my lighting and materials let me down. Overall, with the sound, I am pleased with what I have ended up with!! Here’s a few still frames from the scene.

Bipeds

I've been playing around with Bipeds to help me create a character to put into my boat. Firstly i imported a body and then created a biped to suite it. By adding a skin modifier and moving the body into position, i was able to get the results shown below. I just need to create the engine and make some shorts to save him from any embarrassment!!!

Bike

I've created (very roughly) my ice cream bike for the scene and tried animating it so it follows a path with the wheels rotating at the same time. The model looks very rough and i need to start from scratch with the umbrella, but you can see the animation and the wheels rotation here. I used a path constraint on the bike, the auto key and rotate tool to make the wheels rotate so many degrees over a certain amount of frames.

Park

Here's a quick update, i've just created a park for my scene, i had alot of empty grass so had to fill it with something.

Clearer plane AVI

Still needs more work, but should give you an idea of what I am trying to do.

Flag

Here’s a flag I’ve animated, I am hoping to project my title for the project onto this and use it within the opening few frames of the animation.

Firstly I created a box, then added a cloth modifier to it and made the flag pole the collision object and the flag the cloth within the object properties. I added a wind space warp and dropped this into the cloth forces within the cloth modifier. By adjusting the winds strength and creating a simulation for the cloth modifier I was able to achieve these results.

Particles

Here’s my latest work on the assignment; I’ve been playing around with particles to try and create the affect of smoke coming out of the back of my red arrow plane. By using super spray and playing around with the basic parameters and particles generation I was able to create the following animations.

TRYING to model a red arrow plane

Here’s my attempt at modelling a red arrow plane. I picked up some sketches on the net to base my model on, top, front and a side views. I then created three planes, these were drawn to the size of the plane and aligned. The sketches were then set as material bitmaps and assigned to the planes. This then enabled me to model the plane around the three sketches, once the transparency of the material was lowered.


To start with I created a cylinder the length of the plane and roughly the same diameter, I then split it into the appropriate amount of segments to suit the sketches. The cylinder was then converted into an editable poly and modelled to the sketches by scaling and moving vertex. Once this was done I created the wings, I just extruded them from a line and then added bend, taper and skew modifiers to get the final result. I’m not finished on this model yet as I think it needs more time spent on it, to tidy up some areas of the main body and to add materials. Here’s the model as it stands at the moment anyway.

Lighthouse and boat modelling

After playing around with reactor and materials I thought It would be a good idea to actually start doing some modelling for my final scene. Here’s a lights house i have created, obviously no material finishes have been applied yet.

To create the dingy/boat I used a pathdeform modifier, I hadn’t used this modifier before and it made life easier. Basically it lets you select a object, in this case a cylinder and make it follow a path, so the out line of the boat I had drawn previously. Again no material have been added, so it doesn’t look great, but I was pleased with both the boat and lighthouse models!

Reactor; playing with ideas for scene

I’ve been playing around with reactor trying to get some effects for a boat going through water. Its very rough but you can see the kind of results I’m looking for here.

Materials; sky/clouds

After playing around with materials the other week I thought I would try to create a sky for my final scene. By creating a hemisphere, hollowing it and adding material maps with noise I was able to achieve the results below.

Lighting effects.

Omni lights were used to create the effect of the light coming from the lamps within this scene (which i had already created, a bit cheeky i know).

The sun light passing across the floor in this image was created by using a target directional light. I think both images are good examples of how simple it is to create half decent lighting effects within Max.

Animation; path constraints.

The following animation was created by using path constraints, the camera; ball and bin were all animated by using this tool. This was the first time I had used this tool, so even though the animation is very simple I was pleased with the outcome.

Apples & Bananas

Here’s the apple and banana from week one, finally stuck it on here. Both were created from standard primitives, turned into editable polys and then modified by moving and scaling polygons and vertexes. The banana had a bend modifier applied to give the bend effect, the two objects were then cloned to give the final image. The final result doesn’t look too bad, any comments welcome, don’t be too harsh!!!!!

First Thoughts

The brief sounds interesting, its nice to have a lot of freedom in what your producing. However, i do think it's going to be demanding, but after modelling with Max last year I'm looking forward to getting stuck into the module.