Finishing touches

The poster has now be finished and added into Chris' scene. This is the point where that animation will end. I had a couple of problems doing this which started with creating it in Adobe Indesign. A program i used at college for a year and always got along well with. Not in this case however, the pictures where coming out rather pixelated so to counter this i saved all my text and boarder as a PDF and opened them in photoshop. I then used this to input the pictures and maintain the quality of them.















The next thing i went onto was the hallway scene between mine and Chris' room. All that was needed for this was to have the camera move from my room to Chris' door. This seems easy but was not without its own complication, one of these was the outside wall disappearing, this was because i had hidden everything from the downstairs scene which included the wall around the whole building. Also the biggest problem was trying to get the scene that my animation finished on to line up with the scene Chris planned to start on. This just took a lot of patients for me to move the camera into the right place and get the lighting the same.

Chris had a great idea which helped with the lining up of cameras in the hallways. This was to create the walls of all the rooms in a specific place then we all used a copy of this file. This meant when we merged the hallway scene in it was in the correct place and we could use the coordinates for the cameras we had each used at the start of our scenes and would all line up.


What I've learnt

I learnt a range of new skills when creating this animation, all of which i think will help in the future. These were:

Multi/Sub object materials.
This is a 1 material that can have several other materials applied onto it on different layers. This is great when you have a complicated object that requires different materials to it. you can set each polygon on the object to a different ID then once the material is added to the object the different sub materials apply themselves to the correct polygons.

IK Spline Solver
This was used to the create a chain for my lights. After creating the chain links and lining them up (this was done with the Array tool, after creating one link i could then clone in within array and rotate each of them by 90 degrees so they all lined up and linked) a Spline solver was attached to the chain. A line spline was then linked to the IK solver. This line had different vertices's on it which when moved were able to move specific sections of the chain.

Rendering
I learnt that when rendering in max and taking the file into Premier pro to make the final video it is best to render it uncompressed. This means that the quality is of the highest quality but also the file is a large size. Once this is taken into premier pro and all the videos lined up it can then be rendered compressed to make the file size lower but keep most of the quality. The problem with rendering it compressed from 3Ds max is that it will then be rendered again in Premiere pro it will be compressed twice. This would take the quality down a lot.

Creating objects
Following on from the creation of the head i learnt that complex objects can be made from on simple box, this keeps the poly count down so that the render wont take an unnecessary amount of time. It also makes it easier to edit if something goes wrong and when animating you dont need to group objects or animate them individually.

Character animation

I learnt how to make a character move by using its helpers. The character was created by Chris and after a short tutorial on how to make it move we all set about animating the characters within our scenes.

The main problem with our character compared to other peoples was that it isn't a biped. This meant that the bones were all custom made and so move differently bipeds. The elbow joints within our character bent the opposite way to that as a biped which meant when moving into certain position the should often distorted and we had to spend a little time trying to sort that. After a while i got used to the way the character was moved and managed to make some animations i was pleased with. I attempted to get he character to walk at one point(this is easy with a biped as you can use the step tool and tell it where to step and how many to take) but with our character we had to animate each leg moving forward and then move the whole character forward. This took alot of time and effort and i felt i should concentrate on other parts of my scene rather then that and try to do it at a later time. Unfortunatly i didnt have enough time to spend on this and so failed to create it. Because of this i can say that other people within my group did extremly well to get their characters walking and i am impressed with what they have created.

My favourite peice of character animation was my guitarist jumping. This was created by using the helper attached to the characters waist and key framing it moving up and down. The feet of the character moved up as high as the character did but would not go below the lowest helper on the character. This meant when moved down against this help the knees automatically bent.

The group

I feel that the group i was working in for this project communicated very well and jobs were easily split amongst us. We were all keen to do the best work we could and take certain responsibilities within the work. Everyone used their own initiative to create things that weren't discussed but worked very well in the final video. Everyone within the group kept each other motivated and offered help when needed either via the Internet or within the university. This helped the final animation as we were able to offer advice on how to make each other scenes look better or how to help them get around a problem.

Evaluation

Overall i am very impressed with the final animation. The other people within my group made some very impressive scenes which when put together made an animation i never thought i would be able to create at this stage. The music we used within it set the scenes as well and gave a good atmosphere throughout.

There are a couple of problems that we encountered throughout creating this animation, the most common of which was with the character. This was the shoulder part, when the arm was moved the shoulder twisted round and we couldn't get it to sit straight. After rendering the animation we could hardly notice this so it was felt that this problem was OK to leave and if the client had any problems with it we could experiment to try and get the should to not distort.

Another problem i had was with the ground floor. one of the walls was a little too high and came up through my floor. This was easily solved as all i had to do was hide the wall. However because i also made the scene between one of the downstairs rooms and my own i had to unhide it, this often meant i forgot to hide it again when rendering the scene in my room.

After thoughts

After completing this project i feel that any problems i thought we had were resolved so if i could go back and change anything i don't see anything that could be changed. The only thing i could have been better with was file management as i lost a couple of files at times which set the group back a couple of hours at a time. In the end the animation all came together and was fully rendered at over 5 minutes long. It is felt that this is a reasonable time for the animation as it will be shown in schools and an average of 30 seconds to a minute is not long enough to catch the children's interest.

The presentation went well and even though i didn't say as much as other group members i feel the animation spoke for itself. We didn't need to introduce it to show what we were trying to achieve which is what a good advert is about. I thought the client's were impressed with what we had created which is what we were working towards.

Sound Editing

I have found a song to use on my animation and have been cutting it down to fit the video. I am currently rendering my animation so i can see if the song lines up or if i will have to go back to the original sound file and re edit it.

This is my first attempt at sound editing so i am a little nervous about the outcome.

Poster

My animation is now almost finished with just my speakers left to animate. I have thus being concentrating on another part of the final animation. As the group decided we are going to finish on a poster promoting the YMCA and this is what i have been creating.

Its a simple design with screen shots from each room and a title for each one telling viewers what it is. This is so that people will understand exactly what we are showing them in each room.

This is how it is looking so far, all that is left is to add a picture of the ceche when sooz has made this and arrange the pictures in a more attractive way. I also need to move the border around a bit to make it fit better.

The"Y-man" we are using for our logo has been included and made a large size to catch peoples attention, this was added to the poster so that it looks more reallistic and not just created for the sake of the animation.

A rather large problem

Well after planning to spend a nice long weekend putting the finishing touches to my scene and animating my camera how i want it to flow i have encountered the biggest problem that i could imagine. My computer has died a slow and painful death. My thought on this are the hard drive is dead. Fortunately all the most recent copies of my work were saved onto my Pen drive so nothing has been lost. Unfortunately this does mean that i now cant work from home until i can get a power lead for my old computer.

However i have been into uni to use the computers provided so my work should be finalized for Tuesday.

Made it longer

I decided that i wanted to show a bit more in my animation as i spent a while sorting out the different characters. The main reason behind this was the guy using the turntables could hardly be seen and he didnt look animated so i wanted to show an "over the shoulder" view of what he was doing. There are a few changes to be made still, for example camera angles, animations that have been deleted (see the buttons on the turntable) and a guitar with a mind of its own. (i know i said he was the next slash but i dont he is good enough to play with the power of his mind just yet)

Getting there

I have animated all of my characters on stage now and made my camera move around the room. I am going to be changing the camera path soon and making the animation a little longer so that i can show the different models i have created and give a better view of the animations.

A bit of choreography

Animations

I have now started on the animation side of my project. I have so far managed to get my lights moving around and have animated one of the characters to play the guitar (He could be the next Slash). It is looking good so far but hopefully over this weekend i can make it look alot better by adding flashing lights and get some more characters moving.

Rock Band

I have started merging my models into my final scene now and it is going rather well.

I have however spotted a few problems. For example when moving the characters arms so that they were holding the guitars the shoulders twisted and looked rather deformed. This was a complicated problem to try and correct. To start with Chris and i were looking at the elbow to see how that was affecting the should, chris then turned the IK off for the arm and it helped a little bit. It was then just a case of Rotating the shoulder and moving the arm more to make it look more realistic. I eventually got it sorted and think that the scene is looking rather good now.

Onto the room

I have now finished my modelling (for the time being at least) and have moved my models into the room i will be using. This was relativly easy as i had grouped all the objects in their own files before merging them, this got rid of the annoying 4 hours spent renaming everything like i had to do last year. I think ive learnt from that one.

This is how it is looking so far;















As you can see it looks a lil odd without any characters but they will be added soon enough and then the fun can start. I am looking forward to animating the characters and the lighting so i cant wait to get started. Hopefully i can get lighting all finished for end of the week and then really concentrate on my characters.

Chains

Once again ive been looking at things in far too much detail and decided that my lights needed attaching to the lighting rig, i have done this with the use of chains. At first i created all the links of my chain by making one using a regtangle spline, then making it viewable in the view ports and the render. Once i had this base image i used the array tool to clone it multiple times and make it rotate with each clone. With my chain now made i had to manipulate it so it looked right, at first i was just using the rotate tool which was very painstaking and annoying, i eventually gave up with this and went in search of a better way. I came accross a tutorial for making chains which used the SplineIK solver tool. To use this i first had to attach all the chains to each other, with this done i could select a link at one end of the chain, hit the SplineIK solver button then click the link at the opposite end, this then meant that the whole chain could be manipulatedinto whatever shape i wanted. All that was left was to create a 'helper' to drag the points of the chain out. This was done with a simple line spline (addint vertices as i drew it out), then in the motion tab on the right hand side (with one of the links selected) i could add the line as a shape in the IK solver drop down. This was all setup now and ready to manipulate, all i did for this was select the vertices on the line and drag them out to move the chain.

This worked very well however took some getting used to, i am very pleased that i learnt this skill and think it will be very helpful in the future.

Todays Acheivements

Well today i managed to complete a few more objects for my scene, i finished off my guitar, created a bass guitar and i also created some turntables. I may have gone slightly over board with the turntables by adding 2 monitors to them. These may be taking away before the end. Pictures will follow tomorrow.































For the last 4 hours or so i have been messing around with reactor. I have been trying to animate one of my cymbols so that when a drum stick hits it the cymbol will sway a bit. This has been quite the failure. After looking online for tutorials i have found nothing apart from videos that people had created. This was no help as they did not mention how they created it. I did find one tutorial with a light that was knocked by some boxes but stayed in the air. I attempted to use the same method from this on my cymbol. It was done using the Spring reactor tool which held the cymbol in the air, however the cymbol then swayed far too much out of place and acctually off the stand, all very frustrating and i will now be leaving it for a week or so. This way i can concentrate on more important things.

A final note, i start creating my lighting today. I Have the lights and the lighting rack modelled and some spot lights created in various colours. These also move around the scene and i will soon have them flashing on and off.

I will update this post tomorrow with pictures and videos, untill then im going to attempt to sleep.

Personal Aims

Within the YMCA project i have looked at new and different areas to concentrate on. Previously i have only done very basic modelling, mapping and animation and this semester i plan to extend my knowledge by quite a degree.

First of all i am planning on learning a lot more about character animation. My first real encounter with this was early on in this project when i came up with the character of the letter 'M' which i boned and skinned and then animated. The new character that we will be using is a lot more complicated and i look forward to learning how to animate it.

Secondly i plan to create some nice lighting effects for example flickering lights and moving lights. Again i have already had a go at this and will add the video with this post. I plan on creating a more detailed and more complicated lighting scene in the next couple of weeks.

Thirdly my models this semester are a lot more complex and rather then going through the problems i had last year and making the most complex objects with splines i will be using solid objects and manipulating their vertices's to create my objects. This can already be seen is early posts with my drum kit and guitar.

I have set myself some deadlines for my work to try and keep myself up to date as i don't want to fall behind and let the group down.

I plan to have all the models made by 9Th November. I don't have many left to go but they are also slightly complex. I plan to use the whole weekend for nothing but this animation.

After these are made i plan to create my lighting with will be done between the 9Th and 16Th November. I can see this being a large challenge but i have other things to concentrate on like character animation so this needs to be done ASAP. If there is time left after everything else i will come back and edit this if I'm not happy with it.

Last of all within max i plan to do my animations. I will be giving myself slightly longer for this and will have between the 16Th and the 30Th of November to complete this. There are slightly complex animations happening with using things like the reactor tool.

After all the above is completed i will then export my movie in a previously agreed format and take it into premiere pro to add to the other animations. It will also be here that i will add sound to my scene. I was thinking about having a band playing my instruments along to a sample of music but i will have to wait and see how complicated the animation is going to be to create. I have a feeling that this will be too much work however and i wont get it done in time.

It done, at last

I have just finished making my drum kit, i feel it went well and i have improved my knowledged of modelling.

I learnt a new skill while doing this which was the Sub object materials. I got confused with it at first but after going over it a few times i picked it up and will now use it while modelling the rest of my scene as it makes it easier to create a realistic effect.

On a roll, Drum roll that is!

I have started on the rest of the drums and am coming along rather well. The material i created using a sub-object material toget the see through part of the drum and the outside edge different colours. The effect i have used on the outside edge is a planet material set to different shades of blue. The Effect was then perfected with the use of specular level and glossiness.

One more down

I have been working on more models for the YMCA animation and today have created a microphone and stand.

Times up!

I have finally finished making me head. Its been a long and emotional journey with plenty of sleepless nights, but its finally over and ready to be handed in.

At the start of this project i was feeling very overwhelmed and couldnt get started. For the first week i kept redoing my topology because i felt it wasnt right, after being told multiple that it was fine i moved into max. Again when doing the face i started over a few times to get it perfect but eventually made something i was happy with. Thats when it started to go down hill and i lost my enthusiasm. Fortunatly after chatting to people and seeing other peoples work (mainly chris and Abby's) i decided i didnt want to be left behind so i pushed on. I made it through all the tutorials and made the complete head and i even added hair. I got help from friends within the course as well on the parts i felt lost and confused at so thank you to those people.

The hair tool was alot of fun, no really it was. but i eventually had to give up with it, theres only so many times i can comb my hair into my head, drag back out again and repeat before my head explodes. If my head explodes then it means my model would be wrong and i would have to start again, i really dont have the time to start from scratch.

Below are 2 views of my finished model and i would just like to mention why i have added grey hair, It could be to do with the amount of stress i have had these last few weeks which has made it that way but also its because when i made it all black and rendered it you could hardly see the hair. I spent far too long on it for people not to be able to see it so i thought id add some grey and bring it out a bit more.




























I have learnt alot this semester so far about max and photoshop and am proud of what i have achieved. In photoshop when create the maps i learnt how to use the colour match tool to give 2 images the same colours within them. This helped alot with the colour map as the front and side pictures i had were different shades and the hue/saturation tool just wasnt enough to correct it. I also learnt about disaturiaing and was impressed by what i had achieved. In max i learnt how to use reference planes to build up and image, how to use the UVW unwrap and UVW map tools. I also learnt how to use the hair and fur modifier.

All in all this was a very valuable, enjoyable, if somewhat stressful, project which has showen me a new level to max.

As previously promised

Here are the pictures of my hair so far.

























This is the first time i have used the hair and fur modifier and it is extremely frustrating. Having to drag the hair out of my face everytime i combed it a little got very tedious indeed. But i am happy with how it is looking so far. Lessons learnt: Black hair on black background doesnt work!

Hair

Over the last couple of days after completing the map for my face and tweaking till i was almost happy with it i decided to start on the hair.

The mapping side of things was relativly easy and just involved taking the image from the UVW unmapping and using that as a template in photoshop. I then used my original photos and cut parts from them to make up the map. One i had the templated covered with skin, hair and other features i used the clone and patch tools to cover and areas that looked out of place, for example lines that appeared between two different sections. After this i took it into max and applied it to my head.

Next was the hair. I used the hair and fur modifier for this and after numerous attempts to cut the hair to the right sections of my head and comb it down i found nothing i was doing was working. I had previously found a video tutorial online for this type of thing so watched that through again this helped alot and also i remembered a few of Abby's comments about the hair from when she made hers. Thank you to Abby for that. After a serious of trial and errors i eventually got it looking almost decent. Due to the lack of time left this will have to do. Images to follow.

YMCA Pictures and First models

Following our visit to the YMCA last Tuesday i have decided to upload the pictures i took. These photos were taken to give us an idea of the layout of each room so we can try to make the animation as accurate as possible. This is so that we can give children a good idea of how the events work.
























I also started work on some of the models for our animation. After a lot of talking we finally decided who would be doing what room within the YMCA and what models should be made. I am going to be doing the rock school which involves creating the instuments and have some of our YMCA characters playing them. Chris came up with the character design which is amazing and i am quite envious of his skills within max, damn him! So during teusdays lecture i came up with a model of a guitar and then started on the drums. This is what i have so far:

The Head

After dragging out all my points on the face it was time to model the head. This was a fun task that i restarted around 3 times. Mainly due to myself over complicating things and making it all look rather poor.

To start this stage i had to go back to the pictures of my face and add some more topology to the head and neck. Once this one done and the reference planes in max were updated i could start!

A sphere was drawn that was roughly large enough to go from the face to the back of the head. once this was done most of that faces were deleted leaving me with a curve over the top of my head and half way down the back of my head. I then started cloning and pulling out the edges for the back of the head down the neck, and accross the head. This was were i was over complicating it by adding too many faces.

















Once i had this sorted in a way i liked i could then attach the face to the head. this was done by using the attach tool in the modifier menu for the face. Once this was attached the vertices on the edge of the face and the edge of the head could be welded together to make it one solid object.

Once this was all one object a turbosmooth was added to it to make it all nice and rounded. Well that was the aim anyway, it acctually took alot more tweaking to get it to look like the following picture.





























As you can see by this stage i had also modelled the ear. The ear was not too bad and i thought it went really well. Untill i looked at it from another angle that is! What a nightmare, first it looked 2D so i went back through the tutorial and found i has missed a bit and after adding the back of the ear all was well...............................for now!

Im not convinced this looks anything like me, infact im quite certain it isnt me!

When i asked a friend what they thought about my efforts they replied with "cool, who is it?", hmmmm not really a confidence booster is it?

YMCA Character

A little while ago i created a character for the YMCA advert. It was a simple charcater based on the letter M. The main idea behind it was to animate each letter individually and have them in each room.



I tried to make this animation child friendly so that school children would see a fun side to the YMCA that they could all join in on.

The head

Its been a while since my last post on this project so i will give a brief summary of whats been happening. I have modeled the face in Max and it has gone rather well so far. After a couple of errors early on due to me putting in too many sections and having lots of fun trying to line them up i remade them all but this time made less sections.















As you can see i have the face modelled but i need to do a bit of tweaking before i will be happy with the final result. I wont do too much tweaking at this point as i want to get all the parts done. Then if i have time at the end i will perfect it as much as i can.

Group animation

After discussing what we really wanted to do for this project we decided on a short animation showing a range of activities that the YMCA offer. We narrowed these down to 4 main ones which were a Creche, The Y Club, Rock school and Social events.

As there are 4 people in the group we have split these between us so each of us will work on one activity. The activity i shall be working on is the rock school. A few ideas have been discussed for what needs to be included in each room and these have been posted on the group blog.

Face allignment and Topology

At the start of this project we had to take photos of the front and side of our faces so we could model them in 3D studio max. Once we had these photos in the same document we needed to line all the features up. This included the eyes, nose and mouth. This took a lot of time to line up because as soon as one point was lined up another part the picture became unaligned. Once it was all lined up i was able to start on the topology. This basically involves splitting the face up into different sections. The first lines applied to the face were to indicated any creases within my face. These were mostly found around the eyes, nose and mouth. With these lines in place i was able to start splitting my face up into different sections by drawing squares on. These connected the original lines for the creases and broke the remaining parts of the face up.

This is my first attempt:

This first attempt isn't as good as i had hoped for so i will be going back and trying again.

Thoughts on the brief

First thoughts on the YMCA brief were a bit confused. I wasnt 100% sure what the brief would entail and i am waiting to see the place next week so that i can get a clear image of what we could animate and what exactly the client is after.

We split into groups for this project and i am working with Chris, Sooz and Abby. I feel that a combination of product design and Visulization students will give lots of different opinions and thoughts on how best to approach, execute and present the project.

The face modelling breif looks enjoyable and challenging. I have been wanting to create more complex models in 3Ds Max and this is going to be the most challenging so far. I look forward to getting into it.