Week 11 08-05-08:

Week 11 08-05-08:

S.W.O.T:

Now the movie is complete, its time to assess my performance. Starting with a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (S.W.O.T) assessment. This should help me to get a better understanding of my performance and how I could improve on it:

In conclusion, I'm really pleased with my final piece. The S.W.O.T above made me realise that the success of the assignment could be broken down into 2 distinct areas. The first is the quality of the animation and the second is how well it fulfills its criteria.

In terms of the design of the piece. I feel that the animation successfully meets my original aims. Its colourful and youthful. I believe that the piece would appel to young people and as a result helps promote the British Seaside.

In terms of the animation I feel that the piece has also been sucessful. Again, as mentioned above this piece represents a step forward in my abilities with max as well as learning some new ones. These include using Adobe Premier Pro. I would say that the piece isn't perfect and there is room for improvement. one example would be the animation. With more time I could have made the animation smoother the movement of the central character more realistic. Also With more time I would have liked to have included more shadows. but these issues are a result of wanting to develop the piece further rather than being limited by my own abilities. I don't feel that I over reached with the piece.

Overall, I feel the positives of the exersise really outweigh any negatives and I have very much enjoyed the exercise.

Week 11 06-04-08:

Success!!!

So after some hard work and a few tears all the scences have been completed! Below are a few screen grabs that should reveal the overall narative:

Week 10 25-04-08:

Week 10 25-04-08:

Heres a image of the finished beach scene:

Week 9 21-04-08:

Week 9 21-04-08:

Heres another experiment with my beach scene:

And heres the initial work for the final apartment building:

Week 9 18-04-08:

Week 9 18-04-08:

One of the key aims of the animation is to illustrate the key differences between the two envirionments. I want to make the seaside to be a inviting location in stark contrast to the every day. I have attempted to make this clearer by adding raing to the opening apartment scene:

This was produced using a simple particla array system. aimed towards the floor in this case I have picked a simple cone shape to represent the rain drops. Although I'm looking for a cartoon style I'm not sure this effect is realistic enough!

Week 8 11-04-08:

Week 8 11-04-08:

Water, Water everywhere!

Here is another experiment with water effects on the program. the scene isn't really that different from what I have previously put together but does illustrate the nature of this assignment. A lot of the tools during this module are completely new to me and as such, there is a lot of experimentation and trial and error to find the best results!

Week 8 11-04-08:

Week 8 11-04-08:

After my initial tests last week, I have now finished my central character. below is an image of the final model with the errors in my previous effort corrected.


Below is an example of a test animation carried out on the character. this was produced to make sure all the parts moved as intended:

One particularly difficult part of this character was how to create expressions. This can be pretty tricky. Apart from the very best animations I have come across. the pieces that have rigged faces lose their character. This was something I was really keen to avoid. The solution I came across was to take the facial features (the eyes, mouth, etc) and link constraint them to the bipeds head. This meant they could be animated independently using the key frames but also held there position relative to the characters head. I'm really pleased with the finished result and would go as far to say this is one of the best pieces of work I have ever produced. Below are some example of how the Biped and Physique were applied:

Week 7 16-03-08:

Week 7 16-03-08:

Although a lot of this week has been spent working on the revised character I have also been doing a little work on the main beach scene:

Although this scene is very simple at this stage, It does give an indication of the direction I am taking the piece. the element of this piece is the water. This was created using a simple plane. I then added noise and ripple effects. I also added a faint reflection in the material maps.

I have also done a little bit on the opening title. I have added an apartment block as per the original storyboard. Overall I'm pleased how this looks. It is also an example of how I have included a moving camera in the animation although in this case it is a free one rather than targeted.

Week 7 14-03-08:

Week 7 14-03-08:

Say Hello to my little Friend!

After some previous model attempts, I had a big rethink on how I wanted my central character to look. Above is a short test video of the new character. This is my first attempt at rigging and applying a Physique modifier. This simple test animation has allowed me to identify some problems with the model. For example, the arms are too long.

It is worth mentioning that it I decided not add bones to the character but instead used a biped. The main reason for this was it proved to be a faster process it also allows more features. Adding motion capture footage to a model is one example.

Also this week I have been making some additional models. Below are a simple modelled sun. This also helps illustrate the cartoon style to produce.

Week 6 14-03-08:

Week 6 14-03-08:

Whilst looking at some of the work produced by other students, I came across a feature that I had not seen In 3D max before but was very impressed by:

Maria Was applying a hair and fur modifier to one of her models. This was something that I had never produced before and was really eager to implement. Above is an example of the hair modifier applied to selected polygons of a simple shape. I was interested in the idea of applying hair to my central character.

I was quite surprised how easy it was to get a hold of the basics of this modifier. the problem was when it came to rendering. The simple image render time increased from 1 second to 12 second once the hair modifier. Trying to add this to a final scene could slow the process massively. As a result I feel It won't make it into the final piece!