Evaluation

Overall I am really pleased with my final animation, the two scenes work really well with eachother. I decided to have music only at the end of the animation, it creates more of an impact at the ending. If I could change anything about how I made the animation, I would have planned a bit more. Thinking more about the sequence of the animation. so there was a plan to abide to.

The bit I particularly like is when the camera spins around the flying parachute, it works really well and looks almost realistic. This is when the music starts, it fits really well with each movement of the character. This module has been a tricky one for me, mainly because I had never used 3DS Max before. I learnt alot through Youtube tutorials and advice from others. The Youtube tutorials allowed me to pause when I needed to and catch up with the work.

I am very much looking forward to next years module of 3D animation and hope to do well in it.

Rendering the Two Animations

Whilst rendereing the animations I realised that the strings the character is holding onto do not show, this is because the strings are splines rather than cylinders. Splines do not show in rendered animations. After noticing this I edited both the animations and changed them to be cylinders.

I rendered them again and the cylinders showed, the character was not flying in mid air!

Making The 2nd Part

The first step of the ainmation was to merge the  and character into the 2nd enviroment and place it on the step o it is in position to jump straight off.

I then added the parachute to the scene placing it directly behind the character and bit by bit making it a little bigger creating the effect of it opening whilst the character takes off. It is a tricky and time consuming procvess as at each movement both the charcter and parachute need to be in the exact same position.

The parachute then opens fully and carries the character off of the step and across the mountain and out of shot. The parachute and charcter became bigger as it gets closer to the camera.

The 2nd Animation

The animation does not make sense without adding another section, at the moment the parachute just appears and has no take off scene. I have created another section which will go before the other scene and become the begining of the animation.

The basic idea of the animation is for the character to jump off of a building that I created, this was done by putting together basic shapes giving it detail. I also created a step that hangs directly off of the building.

Putting the two animnations together should be simple, I will transfer both into Premiere Pro, slow them down, add music and a title page.

The Final Animation

I am very plerased with how the animation has turned out, the only thing that I realised is the parachute is not jumping from anything. It does not make sense and needs either a building or a mountain to jump from, I have decided to create another scene and add the two together on Premiere Pro.

Making the Final Animation

Creating the final animation was a pretty simple process, I knew exactly what and when I wanted things to happen so doing it was quite easy.

I firstly inserted a camera into the enviroment and set the bottom left hand corner view to camera, this made the process easier as i could see exactly what was being seen by the camera.  I moved the camera so that it was at the starting position of the animation.

The second step of the animation is the camera zooming into the buildings and turning round to the right.

The camera then moved upwards into the sky, the parachute then appears and the camera spins around the parachute with a view over the enviroment.

The camera then spins around the parachute showing all aspects up close.

It then pans over the buildings and around the rest of the parachute. This gives the viewer a better

idea of how the parachute was put together. 

The last step of the animation is the landing of the parachute, it is a smooth landing and the parachute falls slightly forward, it makes it look more realistic. I did this by rotating only the parachute forward.

 

Animation Test 1

Before deciding to change the enviroment I was using I decided to test the original enviroment by creating a simple animation. This confirmed that I did not want yo carry on using this enviroment. The main reason for changing to the other enviroment was the quality of the first one.

The Final Enviroment

 
The final enviroment needed alot of testing and tweaking but in the end came out exactly as planned.

The Enviroment

The first step of the process was deciding which kind on enviroment I wanted for my animation, my first thought was open grass land in which my building would go. I tried this with a couple of different grass and sky images. I did not feel any of the combinations worked very well and decided to completely change the type of enviroment.

The next thought was to create a town which is full of buildings, I planned for the buildings look rustic and compliment each other and I feel that they do. I created one building and made it bigger and smaller to produce enough for a small town. Once the town was complete I added at stone floor to the enviroment and added a cloudy sky. I am very happy with the rendered enviroment.

Creating a Skeleton for a Body

To enable a body to move a skeleton must be insetted into the body, this process is called physicing. To create a skeleton you must select a 'byped' from the systems section of the tool bar, you then drag the the skeleton to the inside of your exsisting body. It is easier to freeze the exsisting body and make it see through, this way it will not move and you will be only be able to see the skeleton.

 

Rolling Movement

I decided I wanted to create a rolling effect on a tube shape, I would do this by making a simple animation that moves forward and back. I then used the curve editor to make the movement smoother. The final result is on a CD that i have handed in.

The Curve Editor

We were taught how to use the curve editor on an animations, the curve editor determines how fast or slow you want an animation to go. To access the curve editor you simply click on button on the toolbar. A window will appear with your animation on it, you change each point by dragging it in a direction.

Circling a Model with a Camera

For my final animation I want to get the parachute to look as if it is floating across the town of Da Vinci, to do this is will use the 'path contsraint' tool which enables the camera to circle a model, 360 degrees. The camera acts as the viewer of the model and shows exactly what will be seen when rendered.

To do this you must create a path around the model which will be seen, ie. a circle or rectangle. The camera must then be selected, go to 'animation' and select the 'path constraint' tool. A line will then appear which must be joined from the camera to the edge of the 'path'.

Playing the animation as you usually would do allows you to see around the entire model.

Cameras

There are two types of cameras valible for use in 3D animation, target and free. To view what the camera is capturing you have to change the view point on the bottom left hand side view point. By doing this you are able to see everything that is being done to the model. You can also move the camera up, down, left and right to focus in on a particular scetion.

Basic Animation

The animation process is the part I was particularly looking forward to, I had no experience of 3D animation so any knowledge gained was a bonus. During the first class we learnt a few basic terms including 'Time Configuration' and 'Set and Auto Key'.

After practising the techniques I managed to to produce a multicoloured ball that moved horizontilly across the screen.

I then created a secong ball which I added a lepoard print material to, I wanted to create the effect of a bouncing ball, to do this I moved the ball up as well as along in each frame. 

The Final Building

The Final Body

The Final Parachute

The Reason Behind Choosing the Parachute

At the start of this module I was slightly nervous about choosing an invention to recreate, after a while of playing around with with the programme I decided I wanted to create something that would fly once animated. The options were then the flying machine and the parachute. As I was still not totally confident about making the model I decided to go with the parachute which I thought might be slightly easier to recreate. I am very pleased with the way the parachute has turned out.

Changes to the Building

After looking back over the 3 models I had created I decided I want not happy with the building, I decided to redesign the shape. I particularly liked the material I had used on the original model so wanted to keep it the same.

To keep the changes as simple as possible I copied the original building 5 times and resized it, I also deleted the roof of a couple of them and rotated them to create curtain walls for the castle. The changes were small yet make the model look ten times better. I am now very pleased with the final product.

Creating Hair

I looked into producing hair for the body I previously created, I researched youtube tutorials and found a very simple one to do. I practiced a few times trying out new things. I then researched into rendering time for hair and it would take a silly amount of time to render, I would need to book out a computer for 3 days for it to finish in time for my hand in.

 I decided to not include hair on my body but am pleased I now know how to do it. The youtube video I used was: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUsdi-dkMTk.

Final Details on the Parachute

To make the parachute look exactly the same as Da Vinci's I made sure I included the small details including the pole in the middle and tiny strings that come out of the top. It was tricky to get the elements in the correct places as they needed to be rotated and attached.

 
I then attached torus knots to each of the corners, the difficult thing about this was getting them to look as if they are wrapped around the parachutes frame.

The next step was to produce a bar that the body could cling onto, I did this by creating a thin tube and rotating it until it beacme horizontal.
 

Making the final inventions

After knowing I had to create 3 models I decided to divide my final animation into 3 sections: The Body, The Town of Da Vinci and The Parachute.


As I had already practiced making a body shape i decided to start with that. Like before I struggled with certain aspects of the body, I had a tendancy to delete segments of the body by mistake. I researched how to get a single segment back. The process is called capping.

I  want the body to hang off of the parachute so the arms need to be streched above the head of the body, to do this I created them seperately will attach them when I animate it.

The second thing I decided to tackle was the buildings for the town, I want to concentrate my efforts on one particular building and planned to clone it to reproduce the exact same one. The first step of the process was to draw a simple box with a pyramid on top, this created a simple building shape.

I then downloaded an image of stone material which I then inserted into the material editor on 3DS Max, dragged it onto the box i had created and it gave the effect of an ancient style building. The last step was to colour the roof grey and clone the finished building three times. I resized each of the buildings so they were not exactly the same and didnt look repetitive.

The final model to produce was the actual parachute, at first i was a little puzzled on where to start but researched  into it on youtube and found a tutorial for help. To start with i drew a basic cone shape and removed the bottom polygon to make the cone hollow. I than drew a small tube which would then become the strings, i cloned it 4 times and attached them to each corner of the cone.

I then rotated each of them until they met in the middle and joined up to become the strings I will then attach the body I made previously to make it look as if it is hanging off of the parachute. The next step is to animate it so it flys over the town of Da Vinci. Overall i am quite pleased with the way teh models have turned out.

The Materials Da Vinci Planned To Use

To know what the best materials to use for my animation i decided to reserach into what Da Vinci planned to use, his design consists of sealed linen cloth for the actual parachute with a pyramid of wooden poles inside it roughly about seven metres long.

According to  Olivier Vietti-Teppa who tested the design it worked well. The only fault in Da Vincis design is that it has no steering.

Zebra Tea Pot

The week 3 tutorial was all about materials and how to get them onto different shapes. Just for fun i decided to add a zebra skin pattern to a teapot shape, i think it looks rather snazzy!

The process was pretty simple, i saved an image of zebra skin from the internet and uploaded it to the material editor, then dragged it onto the teapot.

Final Animation - The Plan

I have decided that i am definatly going to recreate Da Vincis parachute, it will not be a exact copy as i plan to put my own style into it. In general the design will be the same with slight differences, which willl only be visible to those who have fully studied Da Vinci's design.

To create the material part of the parachute i will draw a basic cone, then extrude and bevel it unil it is the correct shape. Choosing the correct colour for the material should be relitavley easy as it is personal choice, Da Vinci's sketch is colourles. The strings will also be simple to create, i am going to use the line tool, attach and move them into the correct place. The tricky bit will be creating the body which is flying with the parachute, it will be hard to create the right shape.

The parachute will float over the town of Vinci, the hometwon of Da Vinci himself. I have researched into the town and got a few images of the landscapes in the town. It looks a beautiful town with a range of shapes and colours. Recreating them on 3D Max will be challenging but challenges are always good. Once both parts of the invention have been created i will animate the parachute to float slowly over the town. I think choosing Da Vinci's hometown makes the final animation more personal.