Thursday 3 May 2012
Re-Rendering
After adobe premiere didn't work i thought one of the problems could be something wrong with the renders, so i attempted to play the first one and it said that it has a duration of 5 seconds, which didn't make sense as it should have been 21 seconds. So i checked the other two and they both said the same thing that they were too short. i thought this may have been because they were all trying to save to the same folder at the same time from 3 different computers, so I created 3 new folders & redid the renders. This fixed the problem so the renders are the full duration now. After doing this and importing the new renders into premiere they can now be joined together. there is a slight problem as i left some overlap between the renders as i thought it would snap them together, however this does not happen so the last second of scenes two and three are repeated at the beginning of the next scene. I have fixed this by editing the end time for scenes two and three. Pressing i at the begginging of the scene, and o when i wanted the scene to end. Then moving the later scenes back to realign the timeline.
premiere pro
After rendering my animation i needed to join the 3 renders together using adobe premiere pro. i open premiere, create a new project, in select HDV 720p30, then import the 3 renders separately, drag them into the time line. ensure that the magnet tool is clicked so that the 3 overlapping renders merge together into a consistent video, then click on the sequence tab and select render entire work area. When i attempted to do this the rendering says that's it reaches 6.9% (frame 19) almost immediately on 1/3, then it just freezes. If i click the cancel button then it brings up the loading circle which doesn't get anywhere, so i have to use the force quit option to close the program.
Cameras
Finally i added a target camera. I thought of using a path constant to make it and where it is aiming follow the tank, but didn't because after the tank it would be annoying it make it move in the direction that i wanted. so i just used set key and manually followed the tank along its path. when the tank stoped i zoomed in on the cannon so that i would have a close up of it firing the cannon ball. Then following the cannon ball through its trajectory and zoom in to see it hit the tower and the crack appear. after this i made it spin around and up the tower to the man.because the man started to jump too soon, in order for the camera to be watching him jump the camera has to move around the tower too fast. when the camera has reached him it has to watch him jump from in front of him, then rotate around to behind him to show the parachute expanding. then follow him as he floats away. to end at frame 1269 when the camera is zoomed in on the parachute to give a single colour background for the ending.
Wednesday 2 May 2012
Animation
I decided that i would animate the create the whole of the animation first, then add cameras to follow the action that happens during the animation.
First in the animation was making the tank move towards the tower in a curve. to do this i created a curved line leading towards the tower, applied the tank on a path constraint to the line. Then edit the the time for the end of the tank movement so that it finished at frame 600 instead of the end of the animation.
Next was making the cannon ball move towards the tower. this part was simple, just adding a key frame at 600 where that cannon ball starts, and another at 820 when that cannon ball hits the tower. the difficulty was that the cannon ball was there before the tank. So to stop this i made it invisible at frame 0. It took a few attempts, but eventually i realised that to make it visible again i needed to use auto key while changing a frames visibility to 0.1, then the next frame visibility to 1. Using set key to edit the visibility does not change any of the future frames, it is just visible for the frame that you change, whereas auto key makes the object visible for the rest of the animation. If i was to do this again then i would ensure that the tank hits higher up on the tower by scaling up the tank, scaling down the tower and editing the texture on the tower so that the bricks aren't so big.
To make the crack animation i first attempted importing the crack image with a transparent background onto a plane, but this did not work as it put a white background around the crack. To solve this issue i used the same technique as for the leaf shown earlier in the blog, which involves importing the image into photoshop, selecting the around around the image using the magic wand tool, creating a new layer, filling in the selected area black, adding another new layer, filling in the area where the original shape would be white, then deleting the layer with the original image on. Opening the maps section on the material editor and importing the black and white image into the opacity section of the maps tab. this meant when i used the texture on the plane it has a transparent background which causes the image to look like a crack in the wall. After this i had to shrink the crack plane so that it was behind the ball when it hit the wall, scale it to the size of the crack, curve the plane so that it fits the shape of the tower, re shrink to the size required for starting the animation. Then repeat the steps used for the cannon ball so that it was invisible up until the image is needed. Finally when the cannon ball hits it scale it up so that it looks like the crack is growing.
The next step was making the man jump off of the top of the tower. First i used the preset biped animation to make him jump over the wall around the top of the tower.
Next was scaling the parachute, this again involved making the parachute invisible bfor it was required. followed by scaling and rotating it as it expanded on his back.
Following this was making him float away, theproblem was that the feet were still stuck to the jump animation of the biped which mean that while his body was moving away the feet and legs were trailing behind at an almost right angle to his back. My first attempt to solve this was to not just the jump animation and make him move manually, but this was not very realistic. So i figured out that if i added a new layer then moved him on the new layer then it would move the whole model including the feet. This also had a problem that when i moved something in the new layer it affected previous sections of the time line, to fix this i had to use set key to edit x, y and z axis a tiny bit just to add a key frame at the beggining of the animation, then another after the jump animation so that the new layer knew were the model should start from and wouldn't edit anything before the jump animation. Actually making the model float away was simple as it was just moving it to a new location and adding key frames.
Finally was making the parachute follow the man as he floated away. what i should have done is linked the parachute to the man model, this would have meant that it followed him perfectly as he floated away. But i could not do this as i had already scaled the parachute to expand. So i had to slowly follow the man with the parachute adding a new key frame every 20 frames to correct its position. Then at frame 1268 zoom into the canvas on the parachute to end the animation.
First in the animation was making the tank move towards the tower in a curve. to do this i created a curved line leading towards the tower, applied the tank on a path constraint to the line. Then edit the the time for the end of the tank movement so that it finished at frame 600 instead of the end of the animation.
Next was making the cannon ball move towards the tower. this part was simple, just adding a key frame at 600 where that cannon ball starts, and another at 820 when that cannon ball hits the tower. the difficulty was that the cannon ball was there before the tank. So to stop this i made it invisible at frame 0. It took a few attempts, but eventually i realised that to make it visible again i needed to use auto key while changing a frames visibility to 0.1, then the next frame visibility to 1. Using set key to edit the visibility does not change any of the future frames, it is just visible for the frame that you change, whereas auto key makes the object visible for the rest of the animation. If i was to do this again then i would ensure that the tank hits higher up on the tower by scaling up the tank, scaling down the tower and editing the texture on the tower so that the bricks aren't so big.
To make the crack animation i first attempted importing the crack image with a transparent background onto a plane, but this did not work as it put a white background around the crack. To solve this issue i used the same technique as for the leaf shown earlier in the blog, which involves importing the image into photoshop, selecting the around around the image using the magic wand tool, creating a new layer, filling in the selected area black, adding another new layer, filling in the area where the original shape would be white, then deleting the layer with the original image on. Opening the maps section on the material editor and importing the black and white image into the opacity section of the maps tab. this meant when i used the texture on the plane it has a transparent background which causes the image to look like a crack in the wall. After this i had to shrink the crack plane so that it was behind the ball when it hit the wall, scale it to the size of the crack, curve the plane so that it fits the shape of the tower, re shrink to the size required for starting the animation. Then repeat the steps used for the cannon ball so that it was invisible up until the image is needed. Finally when the cannon ball hits it scale it up so that it looks like the crack is growing.
The next step was making the man jump off of the top of the tower. First i used the preset biped animation to make him jump over the wall around the top of the tower.
Next was scaling the parachute, this again involved making the parachute invisible bfor it was required. followed by scaling and rotating it as it expanded on his back.
Following this was making him float away, theproblem was that the feet were still stuck to the jump animation of the biped which mean that while his body was moving away the feet and legs were trailing behind at an almost right angle to his back. My first attempt to solve this was to not just the jump animation and make him move manually, but this was not very realistic. So i figured out that if i added a new layer then moved him on the new layer then it would move the whole model including the feet. This also had a problem that when i moved something in the new layer it affected previous sections of the time line, to fix this i had to use set key to edit x, y and z axis a tiny bit just to add a key frame at the beggining of the animation, then another after the jump animation so that the new layer knew were the model should start from and wouldn't edit anything before the jump animation. Actually making the model float away was simple as it was just moving it to a new location and adding key frames.
Finally was making the parachute follow the man as he floated away. what i should have done is linked the parachute to the man model, this would have meant that it followed him perfectly as he floated away. But i could not do this as i had already scaled the parachute to expand. So i had to slowly follow the man with the parachute adding a new key frame every 20 frames to correct its position. Then at frame 1268 zoom into the canvas on the parachute to end the animation.
Biped
during the animation i needed my straw man to jump over the wall on the top of the tower so that he could parachute away. to make the model easy to animate i applied it to a biped. this involved adding a biped to the stage, then positioned the biped inside the model. there was a slight problem that the biped was always added facing the front and my model was facing to the left. to resolve this i had to reopen a new version of the model, rotate it to the front, freeze the model so that it was not edited when i was adjusting the biped, then add the biped. after doing this i had to scale the limbs of the biped so that they were the correct size for the model, which was slightly annoying because it involved editing the axis individually so that the biped was not visible through the model. next i unfroze the model and linked it to the biped. finally editing the biped so that it does not render, which means it will not show up in case it is visible through the model at some point in the animation.
Tuesday 20 March 2012
Reactor
first i created two boxes, raised and rotated one of them so that when it fell during the animation it would be more interesting. then converted them both to rigid body collection
then changed the mass of the falling block to 20 so that when i animated it the block falls
the animation shows how the block falls to the ground, and how the angles cause it to roll when it hits the ground
after this i edited the friction and elasticity of the both block changing the friction to 0 and elasticity to 5
this caused the block to bounce when it the other block so that each time it landed it gained height and span in the air
i further developed on this by creating a bowling animation, i imported objects to form a bowling alley
again converting everything to rigid body collection, giving the pins a mass of 10, and the ball a mass of 20
after doing this the when previewing the animation the pins jumped off the boards because of the tolerance was too high(minimum distance between 2 objects) so i decreased this to 0.6
i then used the auto key tool, dragging the time line to five, moving the ball towards the pins. i attempted to rotate the ball, but the pivot point was in the centre of the scene, so i went to the hierarchy tab, clicked on affect pivot point only, then centre to object, then going back and rotating the ball to give it spin.
when i tried to preview the animation, but the ball just droped because i had forgotten to start the animation at frame 2 which meant that the ball had no momentum.
after fixing this it worked well, but did not look very realistic as the ball went in a straight line, so i added some side rotation to give the ball a slight curve as it moved towards the pins
then changed the mass of the falling block to 20 so that when i animated it the block falls
the animation shows how the block falls to the ground, and how the angles cause it to roll when it hits the ground
this caused the block to bounce when it the other block so that each time it landed it gained height and span in the air
i further developed on this by creating a bowling animation, i imported objects to form a bowling alley
again converting everything to rigid body collection, giving the pins a mass of 10, and the ball a mass of 20
after doing this the when previewing the animation the pins jumped off the boards because of the tolerance was too high(minimum distance between 2 objects) so i decreased this to 0.6
i then used the auto key tool, dragging the time line to five, moving the ball towards the pins. i attempted to rotate the ball, but the pivot point was in the centre of the scene, so i went to the hierarchy tab, clicked on affect pivot point only, then centre to object, then going back and rotating the ball to give it spin.
when i tried to preview the animation, but the ball just droped because i had forgotten to start the animation at frame 2 which meant that the ball had no momentum.
after fixing this it worked well, but did not look very realistic as the ball went in a straight line, so i added some side rotation to give the ball a slight curve as it moved towards the pins
Friday 16 March 2012
Tower Top
After doing the storyboard I realised that the tower would be viewed in allot more detail than I though, so I decided to remodel the top
I created a cylinder like before, but instead of deleting the faces, I edited the vertices's pushing the top down to created a shape kind of like a short glass.
I then moves the outside ring of the vertices's that I had pushed down up slightly so that the object has 2 height sections.
then manually aligning some of the vertices's on the x and y axis to get back to the glass shape, but with vertical line on the inside separated into two section by vertices's.
I had to delete 3 faces for each battlement, one from the outside, top & inside, then repeated this for all of the battlements.
I then used the create tool to remake the faced back inside the battlements.
Finally was applying the texture, I had to use a multiple/sub-object to get the tiling correct for the different sections of the battlements then apply two layers of UVW mapping to the inside to get them to face the correct way.
The problem was that when I did one UVW map, the other reversed itself. The way that I got around this was to apply UVW mapping to each of the individually, then select both of them at the same time and click on UVW mapping so that they both applied at the same time in different directions.
Previous simple top tower design
New top tower design
Render of new tower
I created a cylinder like before, but instead of deleting the faces, I edited the vertices's pushing the top down to created a shape kind of like a short glass.
I then moves the outside ring of the vertices's that I had pushed down up slightly so that the object has 2 height sections.
then manually aligning some of the vertices's on the x and y axis to get back to the glass shape, but with vertical line on the inside separated into two section by vertices's.
I had to delete 3 faces for each battlement, one from the outside, top & inside, then repeated this for all of the battlements.
I then used the create tool to remake the faced back inside the battlements.
Finally was applying the texture, I had to use a multiple/sub-object to get the tiling correct for the different sections of the battlements then apply two layers of UVW mapping to the inside to get them to face the correct way.
The problem was that when I did one UVW map, the other reversed itself. The way that I got around this was to apply UVW mapping to each of the individually, then select both of them at the same time and click on UVW mapping so that they both applied at the same time in different directions.
Previous simple top tower design
New top tower design
Render of new tower
Storyboard
this is the story board depicting the scenes of my animation. the animation will be using the leonardo da vinci models show on this blog, along with tools such as lighting and cameras to giving the desired angles and effects.
the animation starts with the tank advancing towards the tower using an angles longshot to give an idea of distance. the second involves the camera rotating around the tank, and zooming in on a cannon to show it firing. next the camera will zoom out, and follow the cannon ball as it travels with a slight spin towards the tower. When the cannon ball hits the tower it will cause a small dust cloud and the wall will crack. because of this the person standing on top of the tower decides that its time to run and jumps of the tower. he opens his parachute to glide away. the animation ends with a fade out to black on the man with his parachute floating away.
the animation starts with the tank advancing towards the tower using an angles longshot to give an idea of distance. the second involves the camera rotating around the tank, and zooming in on a cannon to show it firing. next the camera will zoom out, and follow the cannon ball as it travels with a slight spin towards the tower. When the cannon ball hits the tower it will cause a small dust cloud and the wall will crack. because of this the person standing on top of the tower decides that its time to run and jumps of the tower. he opens his parachute to glide away. the animation ends with a fade out to black on the man with his parachute floating away.
Tuesday 13 March 2012
Morpher Tool
for this tutorial i have imported a model of a head from Richards blog to 3ds max, which i copied 3 times. i edited the copy's to give different facial expressions by moving the faces. for the first one i selected 4 faces, the used the grow tool to select the whole lower jaw, which i then moved down and back to open the mouth. second was closing the eyes, just moving the upped eye lids down to cover the eyes. finally was raising the eyebrows, again moving the faces up for the eyebrows.
next i went back to the main head model, clicking on the drop down modifier box, and selecting morpher. right clicking on a channel and clicking select from scene, then one of the expression copy's. this gave me a scroller on the right which i could increase, or decrease to edit how much the facial expression changed between the original and the copy. i repeated this for all of the models. because i wanted to extend how much the mouth opened i went back to the mouth open model and increased how much the jaw droped to give a cartoon effect. then back on the main model i right clicked on the mouth open channel and selected reload target which updated it.
after this i applied turbo smooth to the main model and started animating it using autokey and clicking the channels to increase and decrease facial expressions
this tool was very easy to use and would allow me to edit the models, then update the channels on the main model
next i went back to the main head model, clicking on the drop down modifier box, and selecting morpher. right clicking on a channel and clicking select from scene, then one of the expression copy's. this gave me a scroller on the right which i could increase, or decrease to edit how much the facial expression changed between the original and the copy. i repeated this for all of the models. because i wanted to extend how much the mouth opened i went back to the mouth open model and increased how much the jaw droped to give a cartoon effect. then back on the main model i right clicked on the mouth open channel and selected reload target which updated it.
after this i applied turbo smooth to the main model and started animating it using autokey and clicking the channels to increase and decrease facial expressions
Tuesday 28 February 2012
Person
this was the easyest of the models, just combiningcapsules together.
I have created several capsules to create a simple human body, used the scale tool to squish the body, neck and head. Next using soft selection on the body to decrease the curve at the top of the body.
I have created several capsules to create a simple human body, used the scale tool to squish the body, neck and head. Next using soft selection on the body to decrease the curve at the top of the body.
Finally adding texture to the body
Parachute
I created a pyramid, converted it to an edible Polly and
removed the lower faces, copied the pyramid, scaled it down a tiny bit to fit
inside the first pyramid and reversed the normal to turn the smaller pyramid
inside out. After this I created 4 cylinders for rope, angled them so that they were all pointing towards the center and added texture to everything.
Tower
I created the shapes for the tower and aligned them all
around the central cylinder so that the fitted together. The top most part
involved removing the faces from a cylinder to create battlements. The supports
to the top are created by combining 3 boxes together, and using the snapshot
tool like the tank to copy them around the tower.
Tank
To start off I created a cone shape for the tank, then a
cylinder for the body, and another cone for the base, but made the cone not
form a point to have a flat lower surface. Then I realised that the top of the
tank looked different, so had to edit that to create a cylinder and another
cone on top which involved remaking the first cone to not include a point.
Following this was adding materials. This involved finding an old wooden plank
texture, then figuring out how to make 36 planks. I attempted to make an
individual plank, but this would have made the render time way too much so
started looking for another way, and found about tiling. The original image had
6 planks, so I increased the tiling to 6, so that there were 36 planks on the main
section of the tank. Following this I added bumps to the texture to make it
more realistic. I then reopened the image in Photoshop, and slightly edited the
contrast to make the wood darker for the lower sections of the tank. Then
repeating the previous steps for all the sections of the tank, but with lighter
and darker versions of the plank texture.
Following this I created a shape of one side of a cannon in
illustrator, then used that lathe tool. The first time I did this my cannon was
too thick, so I redid it in illustrator, which ended up with it looking like a
candlestick, so went back and redid it again. There was one more problem though
that the wood texture was visible through the cannon when it was indented into
the tank so I extended the base which gave room to indent the cannon into the
tank without seeing the wood texture.
After
creating my cannons I had to duplicate them. This involved creating a circle
around the tank, then aligning it with the center of the tank. Fixing the
cannons to the path constraint of the circle. To duplicate them I had to right
click on the the tool bar to add extras, hold my mouse down on the array button
to select snapshot, from the snapshot menu select range, 37 ( it placed cannon
01 and 02 ontop of each other), then instances and that made my 36 cannons.
A
problem occurred here when I duplicated the cannons because they were all
facing the same direction, I had to click on the follow box so that they were
all facing outwards from the tank, then repeat the snapshot tool.
Animation
Creating animations using 3ds max is very simple and easy to
use, probably easier than actually making the models. This involves selecting
an object, pressing set key, clicking on the frame where the animation will
start, clicking on the key to add a key frame, sliding the frame to where the
animation will end, using move, rotate or scale tools to perform the animation,
then clicking on the key tool to add another key frame, finally unselecting set
key to continue modelling.
This can be expanded on by using the curve editor which was
used on a bouncing ball animation to speed up when the ball hit the ground, and
slow it down at the top.
Then using the parameter curve out of range tool and
clicking on loop to make the ball bounce repeatedly (this added the dotted
lines to the curve editor)
I copied the ball 3 times, then used the dope sheet to edit
the time that the animation started, and duration of the animation for 2 of the
balls. Slowing one down, and speeding another up.
Tuesday 14 February 2012
mental ray
i created some standard shapes
changed the material/map browser to arch and design
added templates
and changed the colours
then added mr(mental ray) sunlight and sky
changed the material/map browser to arch and design
added templates
and changed the colours
then added mr(mental ray) sunlight and sky
Pumpkin
this is my first attempt at using lighting to craete an effect for a 3d model of a pumpkin. i started by importing an image of a pumpkin
added a red plane underneath the pumpkin to give a base
placed a yellow omni light inside the pumpkin to act like a candle shining from within the pumkin
added a target spot light to shine ontop of the pumpkin
changed the colour to a dark green, decreased the hotspot to 15, incrased the falloff to 40
and added an atmosphere volume light, the decreased the density from 5 to 0.5
the atmosphere effect made light look as if it was shining through smoke
added a red plane underneath the pumpkin to give a base
placed a yellow omni light inside the pumpkin to act like a candle shining from within the pumkin
added a target spot light to shine ontop of the pumpkin
and added an atmosphere volume light, the decreased the density from 5 to 0.5
the atmosphere effect made light look as if it was shining through smoke
Tuesday 7 February 2012
Leaf
imported the image of a leaf into photoshop, then used the magic wand tool to cut out the leaf
followed by adding another layer, then filling in black around the leaf
then adding another layer and filling it in white
importing the lead into 3ds max studios material editor, removing the white background with the black and white image by adding it to opacity, then adding bumps to the leaf for texture
then adding the leaf to a plane to bend it into a 3d shape
then adding another layer and filling it in white
Material Editor
this can also beed done to apply multiple texttures to different sections of the same object
clicking on the get material tool, then Multi/Sub-Object
i am not sure why the teapot appears to be 3 colours, with a light and dark wood, even thout it is the same texture
the texture can also be rotated on a surface, incase it was facing the wrong way
Tuesday 31 January 2012
Array
Bool
i created a box, and the letter A, which was positioned in the center of the box, followed by extending the letter to make a 3d shape, then using the bool tool on the box to cut the a into the box.
lathe
i then repeated this process to create a wineglass
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