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.

I have been trying to get the flag for the top of my boat to 'flap' properly in the wind whilst the boat creates a nice wake on the water as it speeds by, all goes well so far. I think in the wake video I have finally managed to get the sea to look just right, its defiantly the right colour of murky to be British.

Pier comming along nicely

A bit empty at the moment (bit like my beach)

Something is wrong here, it’s well nice down there on the beach and there is not a British person in sight! (I guess I should probably get on and create them really, anyone else starting to fell like they are playing god here?)