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.
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.
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.
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.
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