Hand in day

Today was the final day of the animation module. I found that going through this module I have learnt a lot. There are a lot of new thing tools and options that I now know about max that I didn’t know before I did this module. On our last day we decide to put the animation together and add the final audios too.

I had to remake the DJ scene as the arm was distorted, so I had to import the character into a new drum n base scene and add new bones and attached them to the body by the skin modifier. Once this was done I animated the character again and then rendered it.
The entire animation was now rendered and put together in movie maker. Once that was done the audios were added from Audition.

I have enjoyed doing the module but at times have got to a point where I felt like giving up, as it can get very frustrating when something doesn’t work. For just doing what we did takes up a lot of time to do it. I first thought modelling was hard and took along time to create but now am efficient and find that I can model a lot quicker than I could before. I found that creating characters and adding bones took along time to do and when animating that the amount u animated isn’t as long as you think it is.

I remembered how to use the cloth modifier by going through a tutorial from YouTube with my group member John

I have learned the types of lighting effects you can add by adding the volume light. How I can use the camera to add angles by adding path constraints or just by moving it on it’s own and key framing it. I’ve have learnt how to put multiple materials on one object by setting it different ID’s.

Before this module I had never used these tools, modifiers and etc…
Skin modifier
Hair and fur modifier
Animation
Path constraint
Adding bones
Biped
Volume light effect
Edge and wire materials and more through the tutorials that I had done.
Multiple materials

Cloth modifier

Rock Y dancing

Today I had completed the dancing rock y and now had started to render both scenes and we found out that there was a better quality to render them in, which we did so I had to re-render my DJ scene again, which I didn’t mind as we needed a close up instead of the whole room which was empty.

fall over scene

Today we had to present what we had done so far to our clients at the YMCA. Before we went there we went through to see what we had done any scenes we had not finished we rendered a single image so we could show them what we had planned to do. They seemed really happy with what we had done, which I found was something that was good to hear knowing that everything we had done was not a waste of time.

We went back to class and went onto finish off the final scenes, I now had to animate the Y character falling over I did this by rotating the building from one way to the other and animated the y waving from one side to the other too and then got him to fall over.

Once this scene was done I had started on the final scene, which was to animate the rock y dancing in the club and have the camera spanning around the room around the band but still aiming towards the Y, as it’s moving around.

path constraints and camera's

My scene was done so I decided to help out my group member with his. I had learnt a new tool allowing you to create a camera and attached a path constraint. So I created a path by using the line tool and put it into the intro scene and experimented around with it until I got the appropiate angles.

Once this was done I then helped him out to do the same thing for the scene where the girl characters is picking up the lego. Having the camera come around her. By the end of the day Ben and me had rendered four scenes.

First animation

Now I had to animate the character to do this I had to merge it with the drum n base scene I tried to do this but for some odd reason the character was stretched across the screen. I then tried to export it and import but found that the skin modifier was removed and had to add a new one. Once I had done this I went to animate the character and found the arms were stretching a lot further than normal so I knew there was something wrong. To solve this problem I merged the scene into the animated character instead of the other way.
This worked perfectly fine the only problem I had was that the lighting had lost the effects it had in the room before it was merged in.

I selected the bones and moved them from one side to another at the same time had auto key selected allowing to move the arm to an angle and then go to another frame and move the arms again with having to press the key frame manually.
This was the first time I had animated in 3D max I liked it but found it odd at times.

Problem of character

By now the designing of the character was getting frustrating as I felt that once I had solved one problem I had another one straight after. But I had then finally sorted out the character, but now had to animate him, but before I did this I wanted to add hair to the character to do this I had to us e a new modifier I had not known about which was the hair and fur modifier. I played around with this until I got a good hairstyle, the tool allowed me to have the hair down long, change colour and etc…

The only problem about this was that it made the rendering time a lot longer. So in the end we decided not to use it. Might have been a waste of time but its something new I had learnt.

Biped and bones

Today I was trying to animate the character, but first had to make sure everything was linked meaning bones and arms to the body. Some reason the head would not link to the body and some of the other bones were not working too.

I tried boning from beginning to see if that solved the problem but it didn’t so I tried another method, which allows you to move a character and the new method is called biped, which is a human skeleton, but found that this was not suitable for my character and tried to see if I could solve out the problem.

The day ended with me frustrated that I couldn’t solve the problem. The good points of the day were the fact that I had now learned a lot of new tools about 3D max. I had never known that there was such an option of bones and biped to animate a character and that to attaché the bones you needed to use the skin modifier. These were the only pluses I could take on for the day.

Role change

Today my role was changed from doing the rooms to doing the model man. This is because my group member was getting frustrated and felt that it would be good to do something different. So he left off from where I did and added his touches to the rooms and I tried to see if I could solve his problem. We also did this as we felt it would allow us to gain more experience in different areas of Max
The character arms were for some reason blacked out.

I went through the process of cloning one arm and boning it again, but found that the same thing was happening. Carried on and finally decide to delete all the bones and start from scratch and now the arms were showing up perfectly fine when I loaded up the file again.

Before I had solved this I tried creating new arms by extruding from the body and using the bevel tool too. I’ve used the extrude tool before but had never known what the bevel tools does but now I do.

Drum set

The disco ball was added to the drum n base night. Then I started to create the drum set for the rock night. Using boxes, cylinders, cones and more, did this. I created one drum and cloned it until I had enough. To create the drums set I first went online and based the drum set on a picture I found from Google images.

Lego, disco ball and microphone

The first room had a bit left to do which was to create the lego walls. Using a box and a cylinder that were combined together to give the user an impression of a logo did this. Once I had done one I cloned it and change the colour. This step was repeated twice more until I had four different colours. I then stacked them on top of each other and cloned and put them into place until I got a big enough wall to cover the sides of the rooms.

I had finished doing the first room so I started creating some objects for the rock night. The first things I wanted to create were a microphone and a disco ball. To do these both I went through two different tutorials. When going through the tutorials I had learnt the different types of textures there were available for me to use.

First design in max

We were now into week 8 and I had created the first internal room. It was just the basic modelling.

Once the modelling was done textures were added. I had shown this to my group members who liked it, but wanted the speakers to be animated. So I created a new speaker. The speakers were made out of three box sides with the front side being booleaned by a cone.

Week 7 Presentation

We had to present our ideas in front of the class. Me Ben and John went up and explain our storyboards and the theme we have chosen to do. It allowed us to see the kind of ideas everyone else was thinking of doing. A lot the ideas had characters which were the letters from the YMCA logo. But it was good to see what kind of different ideas they had in mind to use the characters for.
After the presentation we had all talked about what we had to do for the next coming weeks.

Final day

This is my final post for this module. Since the last post i had started on the ears ad i felt that the back of my face was complete, But that was not the case when i came in today and rendered the image i found that there was a lot of jagged edges at the back and knew i had to sort it out. So i stopped where i was with the ear and went to back of the head.

I found that a lot of the lines were not welded together so i had to go through each line found that there was a lot of random lines which were overlapping other lines.

As i was going through i felt that i had to delete some polygons on the way. i replaced them by created new ones by the create button or pressing shift. I found that once everything was welded together that the back of the head was a lot smoother than before.

I have realised that the copy i had handed in was an old version and not the one with the back of the neck complete. After this was done i went back to the ear where more topology lines were created and imported into 3D max and this time i used lines to create the shape of the ear, welded them together and added the turbo smooth and started to stretched the lines in and out to give a more shape of an ear, this was as far as i could go.

I had a little bit of time left and decide to added some material like the face material by looking up skin tone online and using the RGB colours from Photoshop to use on 3D max and drag it onto the face. I then added eyes balls to the face got a sphere and added a material from the Internet and used the UVW mapping to straighten the image up. I realise that when i went to burn onto the CD i had forgot to add the material too. So if you do read this JO the eye ball does have a material its not a plain sphere and the back of the neck was done but had forgotten to put the right one on. As you can see from the picture above the neck is complete.

This module has improved my knowledge on 3d Studio max. I found doing this task really had, this i because i haven't really used the software enough to create something like this easily. I found that on the way to creating the face i did have a lot of problems, but knew that if i followed the tutorials i should be ok. Due to me not using the program as much, some of the stages did take me a lot longer to do especially the nose. This took me the longest to do as i found that the lines i created were not right and had to redo them. I found that i was not able to attache the ear as i ran out of time, but am glad i gave the ear a try.

This is something that has improved my knowledge of the software. It has shown me what you can do with one object. The types of tools 3D max has to offer. I know it is something that i remember and will find helpful for the future.

Back of the head

Today i carried on with the back of my head. To do this i had to go back to Photoshop and create a topology line for the back of the face and insert the image into 3D max. To create the back of the head i was shown to use a spear and edit the spear by deleting the polygons that we did not need. By doing this i gave me the half of my head.

From this point i had to create new polygons by pressing shift with the edge selection. Carried on doing this until i had enough for the neck and back of the head. I then snap them together and started to shape up the neck so it was a straight line going down from the neck. But a shape which defined the jaws of my face making the 3d model look more like me.

Nose

I have spent so much time doing this part of the anatomy. This is because the lines i had originally done for the nose was to complex meaning i had to create new ones. There was a lot of playing around with this until i got it right.

Once i had got the nose the right shape i then had to create the nostril, this again was something that i found took me along time to do. I found that to the get nostrils to how i wanted i had to go back delete some polygons and add new ones or cut some of them down to line them up.

From creating the nose tip to the nostril i found that this took up al ot of my time and got to a point when i knew i had to move on.

Design 2 Rock room

From finishing the first room I had now got into doing the next internal room that is the rock night. This time I decided to design the room in flash. I did this so that I used multiples of software’s. Allowing me to improve my designing skills and knowledge of different programs. Below is an example of the rock night.

Design 1 Drum n base

Today I started and finished the first design of the internal room. The room I had designed was the drum n’ base night. I had created a rough design on Microsoft word. I first tried to sketch it out but found it difficult so started drawing on the computer and decided to use word.
Here is what the drum n base design looks like.

Week 3 lecture

We had a lecture on face building carrying onto the next stage finding what we have to do in 3d studio max, to mould the face to give you definitions.

Before this we were doing our YMCA project carrying on with where we left of from last week, one of us was drawing the character the other was designing the storyboard and the other two designing the set.

I was unable to have a look at other blogs as i was unsure on how to do it, i will ask one of my group members how i can view other blogs from my class, Once i know how to do this i will respond/comment on someones blog.

Visit to YMCA

Today we had our visit to the YMCA, We were told about the different types of service they offer. How they help the community and given examples of the nights they have and what they would like to be promoted to more people.

As a group we have chosen to go for the y club, this is to show that the YMCA are not just a place for rock, but they do drum n base nights aswell. To encourage more people to to turn up.

We have decide that we are going to use the letter Y as a character to promote the club.

Lines to surface

To turn the flat lines into a 3d face took along time. if found that as i stretching each line out that there was some gaps. so i had to go back and make sure the lines were welded. I spent a lot of time on this stage.

I found it hard to get the right indents of the face so i kept undoing and stretching the lines again. I realised the problem i had was the fact that some of the points were not welded.

Reference & line to surface

Brought my picture from Photoshop into 3D max and started to creating the references of my side and front view of my face. This did not take too long, as soon as i had completed this tutorial i had move onto the next, where i had to add the surface of the face.

This was done by using lines and following the topology we had already done in Photoshop. This task did get tedious, but expected it to take a lot longer than i did it in.

First Thoughts

From the brief and looking at the project ahead of us i feel that this will be something that will be exciting and interesting to do, it will allow me to expand my knowledge on how things are created. Improve my knowledge of the environments i will be using to create the projects in. The skills and techniques used will aid me in the future.

I feel that this will give me experience on how to market a company. This will be a great project advertising a company which has been built on helping others and being able to give them something back, Showing the public the type of different services they provide.

Building the characters face is something that i have been interested in doing, i know i am defiantly looking forward to this. It will give me a more understanding of what processes are used to get to the final product.