Final evaluation

Now that my project is complete I have learned a lot during the process, not just about 3d max but about managing work load.

The story does not match my storyboard produced early in the semester, I have had to skip the whole pier part of the story. The uncompleted pier can be seen in the background of the bar scene. This is because I kind of planned to do too much. I had never worked on a character when I modelled, boned, rigged and skinned myself.

I ran in to so many complications with the characters on the way that I eventually ran out of time to build the rest of the scene. A large part of the problems was that when something went wrong, it wasn’t until a lot later that I noticed it I would end up having to back track 20 or so steps to correct it then re do all the work (I had to set 3d max’s undo limit to 30 just to make sure). This, however eventually worked in my favour as constantly doing things over and over meant I learned it very well, especially as I had to do it with 3 characters of different builds (man, woman, child. All characters are duplicates of those 3 models). I think if I were to do character animation again it would go a lot more smoothly due to this.

Looking back I realise now that I perceived quantity as meaning quality when realistically quantity actually hindered the quality. Next time I take on a project which involves new elements I think I will keep the amount of the new element limited to give me more time to refine it improving the over all quality.

Wit regards to the rest of the scene (what is finished) I am really happy with the way all the materials and lighting came out.

Over all I have really enjoyed this module and learned a lot, but it has by far been the most time consuming module yet with scene rendering taking hours (putting my computer out of action for the duration), my sleeping pattern now revolves around when 3d max is rendering (hence the reason this was posted ridiculously early). the one thing I didn't enjoy is adding the sound, if I am honest I find playing with sound mind numbingly boring.

My final piece

My final animation is complete.

The words are titles added in premier pro.

After Thursday, when you all pointed out the way the guy entered the boat, you will notice that I have fixed this problem. It was simply a case of moving a few keyframes.

Scene 1 final......finally

After rendering it no less tan 4 times here is scene one (I originally planned 3 but am only gonna have time for 2 due to a lot of character animation complications).

Scene two is to be tagged on the end and there are still a couple of sound effects need adding but other than that its almost done.

The camera cut is done in 3D max rather than in premier pro, I achieved this by putting the camera in one place in one frame and in another on the very next frame, I did this so that the movie could be rendered as one complete AVI rather than 2 separate ones to save time in editing.

the jets out the back of the boat are 2 'super sprays' that have a fall off material applied to them, this fall off material is what makes the colour turn white when the boat accelerates.

The lens flare on the sun was actually added as a 'post prod' effect in Adobe After Effects as I found I could get a lot more control over it there than I could using the lens flare available through Max’s Video Post.

The fade effects on the video and sound were added in premier pro and it is now awaiting the other scene.

Its life Jim, but not as we know it

Where do I start. Over the past 48 hrs (sleepless I might add) I have been Boning, Rigging and Skinning this young man. The rig is ridiculously complicated and every 5 mins something went wrong.

To control the bones There are a series of helpers all linked to individual bones and linked to each other in an order so that the character can be animated by manipulating only a few of the helpers. I have also been using the reaction manager to animate the fingers, Basically I can now clench the fists by simply changing a number in the Parameter collector.

As you can see from the video the man has a bad case of pancake syndrome. This has been caused by the fact that I did not make the mesh fat enough from the beginning, never mind. I am going to mess with the envelope values for a while to see if I can improve it but there is not enough time to re-model/rig/skin as I have 2 other characters to get through, they are build boned and rigged, just awaiting skinning (and then of course animated).

In total I have three scenes and the boat scene (1^st scene) should be the only area you can see the problem, I’m going to populate crowds in the other scene but no ones limbs should bend enough for there to be a problem.

I will keep you up dated.

I would like you to meet someone

Meet the family. I have created Mr, Mrs and Junior (who is unisex so he/she can be a boy or girl).

They have now all been bones, rigged and skinned and are ready to be animated. I have colour coded the bones because they are going to be duplicated a lot for the beach scene and when animating all the bodies will be hidden, just the bones will show so my poor computer doesn't have a heart attack, this way will make it easier for me to identify who is who.

I'm gonna start easy tho, just these three in my boat scene, maybe i will include some facial animation if I'm feeling brave.

character modeling

This is a (very) brief timeline of the process I have gone through to build my first charecter for my animation, this will be the child on the boat.

It began life as a box the same size as the torso and I extruded individual polys to make the arms, legs and the feet. then I used the slice tool to add additional vertices around the edge of the shirt and sleeves, i then scaled them to smaller and pulled them under the sleeves etc to make them look like the edge of the clothing.

When it comes to applying the texture, as i plan to use the same model over and over, I am going to assign all the individual polys with material ID's so that I can use the Multi/Sub material to easily change their clothes. but that is a way off yet (time is not on my side, dam this obsession with perfection).

You may of notice the lack of head! Well the body took about 6 hours and the book I am using to do this went on for an entire chapter to do the entire body, shoes, arms, fingers, torso legs clothes, all in a chapter, now there is a whole chapter on the head on its own so I reckon its gonna be a long night.