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
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