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.