wk 11: Done!!

Captains log, Star date 569688: I have now finished my file and have exported it from premier pro as well, the main head ache was finding a suitable compressor in max to export my donkey scene properly and I managed to clock a four hour rendering time because of it!

After I had over come that I added to my premier file which I had been dipping into as I finished each scene, then I added the text overlays and the transition fades on everything to give a calmer feel to the mayhem. The I exported it and have finished, voila!

After studying the mastercard adverts I found that some had just voice overs with text but no music (just sound effects) and others had music but no voice over just text. I went for the latter because I felt the soundtrack suited the 'beachy' feel and when I tried adding a voice over it felt too cluttered noise-wise so I stuck to just text which I think works well.

I had various problems although looking back I would not have done much differently and I think that for once I got my planning right and followed it well enough to produce a good result. I am happy with the mastercard idea and had one other back up idea but if I hadn't had my flash of inspiration then Im pretty sure I wouldn't have been happy with my result, but lucky that didn't happen.

I have listed all of my problems through out my blog but here is a main summary of what went wrong!:

-Getting the water effect right (which I managed to get a half decent version of) for my 1st scene.
-Modelling the donkey (I tried to use the symmetry tool but this did not work so I had to model both sides).
-Boneing the donkey (this rather long story has been fully documented on a previous blog).
-Exporting the donkey (I had to go through most of the codecs to find one that has both a good quality export and that didn't jump and run slowly when played back).
-Keeping the file size down for my donkey scene - failed!
-Getting the cloth on the deck chair to flop convincingly (perseverance won that battle!)
-Modelling the childs face (I started off with something that looked like an egg, and after a tutorial came to my rescue I ended up with something that looked remotely like a child).
-Exploding my sand castle (I got a half-way decent version that looks like an exploding lego brick tower, but I am happy with it)
-Child crying ( One of my easier problems to solve, the problem was making it look convincing, which I think I achieved in the end).

Apart from that my project was problem free! Alot of them and some I haven't listed where trivial problems with some more vexing than others, but I don't think that any of these were because of my planning. They were mainly because I didn't know enough about max, but after learning along the way I am pleased with the out come and found the module to be extremely useful and I enjoyed it thoroughly.

wk 10:last leg of rendering

Captains log, Star date 569687: I am still re-rendering my donkey scene over and over until I get the right quality, length and animation in the right place. The rendering times are up to 2hours 12 minutes now so it is taking a while!



My idea has been to make an advert, but to make it humorous by taking off an advert already in circulation, so I have been analysing these adverts to pick up the characteristics that they use, for example whether to use a voice over or have just text, or what song to have on in the background (which incidently I have already picked one of the ones that they have already used and seemed appropriate) and then cut it to the appropriate length.

wk 9: recovery misson

Captains log, Star date 569686: After 3 weeks of modelling my donkey I had achieved an acceptable level, so I then added the bones and linked them to the skin and after some trial and error got it all lined up and working quite nicely, so after saving my work I came to re-open it a few days later only to find that somehow the bones had distorted themselves and taken the donkey with it! So now I have a messed up donkey but luckily I had my recent back-up copy to work from so it wasn't the end of the world!

I will have to now try a different approach to boning it now because no-one could work out how it went wrong!!

Here is the aftermath:
(the eyes are where the head is meant to be!)

wk 9: failed seas

Captains log, Star date 569684: Here is a video and a picture of my failed attempts at improving my sea as well:
(they were both videos but one was too big to upload!)

wk 9: almost done!

Captains log, Star date 569685: Below are the rest of my videos to date with an explanation of how I made it.



As I had not yet modelled a face in detail I decided to have my crying child look a bit more cartoon-ish, so with alot of help from some studio max tutorials I managed to achieve a childs face and make him cry!

Once I had modelled the face I used the editable poly to animate the smile by keyframing the movement of the vertexes. Then I made a teardrop from a sphere then added a transparent material to it and keyframed it moving down the face, then cloned it and altered each drop slightly to make the child look as if he is crying.

For effect I made the background dim and also made the childs head shake to add to the tradgedy!

Also I forgot to post a video of my deckchair that collapses so here it is:

(I modelled the chair from seperate parts and simply keyframed each part to collapse whilst corresponding with the general demise of the rest of the chair at the same time.

wk 8: (after easter break) 3 weeks of donkey rendering fun!

Captains log, Star date 569683: After 2 weeks of making the donkey (which I couldn't animate because the bones were moving all sorts of bits everywhere!) I made the rest of scene and when it came to rendering it the computer died and kept rufusing to render it, so I moved on to make the smashing sand castle scene where a foot treads on it and somehow managed to get that to work and here is roughly how I did it:

Firstly to create my explosion of the sand I created a PArray to do this.


The parameters that I changed were:
I linked my PArray to the sand castle with 'Pick Object'
'Object Fragments' to split the sand castle up
'Mesh' to view in the view port
'Picked Emitter/Get Material From' to add material to the particles
'Spin Time – 50' to rotate the particles
'Influence' to stop the particles from being altered by the castle
'Emit Start – 11','Life – 90' sets the start and end time in the timeline

To set an animation key I:

I set the autokey first
Object Properties dialog > Rendering Control group, right-click the Visibility spinner arrows to set this value to 0.0.
Then I right-clicked the key at frame 0. Then chose Box01: Visibility
Out – stairstep, makes visible till the next step

To add a blur I:
Right clicked the castle to get Object Properties
Enabled motion blur, then I clicked 'Object'

Then After this:
Right clicked the gizmo to get Object Properties
'G-Buffer' – 2
Rendering menu > Effects >Add button >Blur
Blur type > Radial
Pixel Selections > Whole image-off, Object ID-on
ID-2 > Add, then 'Update Scene'

To animate the blur I:
Curve editor > Dope sheet > Render effects > Blur >Blur Radial Pixel Radius
Add Keys – click at frame 0,11
Right-click a Blur Radial Pixel Radius key> I gave both a value of 0.0, and use dstairstep interpolation between them
Keyframe at frame 18, Right-click Blur Radial Pixel Radius key > properties > value 7.0
Keyframe at frame 100, Right-click Blur Radial Pixel Radius key > properties > value 1.0

Voila! Render time!

Also I made the water in my 1st scene look a tiny bit more like water than jelly! (look at my previous post for the even worse version)

wk 8: More donkey

Captains log, Star date 569682: I have spent a further week solely on my donkey and have mad a bit of progress, but not enough! Here are some screen shots of where I am up to so far. In the previous blog it shows that I made the donkey by creating one third and then copying it, but I couldn't work out how to "glue" them together so I then had to start again and make it out of one box and extrude each section.

wk 7: time to stop assing around and make my donkey!

Captains log, Star date 569681: today I attempted to model my donkey and learnt new functions like cut,cap, symmetry and union even though none of this really helped me! here is a screen shot of my attempts so far:

wk 6 work time!

Captains log, Star date 569680: This week I have set up alot of my scenes ready to start work (im leaving the donkey till last as that will take a depressingly long amount of time so im gonna give that one a miss for a bit!)

the rest so far are not worthy for publishing, except the deck chair which is almost worthy!

wk5 materials

Captains log, Star date 569679: this week we learnt about materials which I had previously learnt last semester, but I did learn about shadow basic parameters. And how to animate a water effect, so I can now start on my seaside scene!

wk 4 skinning and boneing

Captains log, Star date 569678: today I learn how to skin and bone a character and I new that this would be a complex subject to learn and indeed there was alot to take in but I feel that I have taken a step forward in extending my knowledge boundaries, as I have been excited about character animation since starting the course. Below is my light effects animation and my first ever skin and bone animation (hence the basicness!)

wk3 camera path and lighting

Captains log, Star date 569677: I have already made complex scenes using lighting with shadows so I am competent in that area but I had yet to animate cameras, so this was new to me. I think that getting the cameras moving will be vital to my project work so this skill will be well utilised.

Below are a couple of scenes with lighting that I made quickly.

Also I have included a couple of random camera paths that I created.

wk2 Mood boards and research

Captains log, Star date 569676: I Have created two collages for a mood board and research. One is a drawing that I made of the things that remind me personally of the seaside and the second is of photos that I have found and have taken myself of the seaside.

wk1 fruit

Captains log, Star date 569675: I have created my 1st scene of the semester and am pleased with the results as I have been introduced to the Editable Poly and mesh smooth tool which I am enjoying immensely.

Here are some pictures:

(The banana was a bit rushed hence the too-perfect-by-half look.)

wk1 initial reaction

Captains log, Star date 569674: I have ventured in to an unknown module. My first impressions are of the road ahead, and planning my work load. I have had one semester of 3Ds and have enjoyed it so am looking forward to this upcoming one.


The brief is an 'interesting' one and leaves a wide gap for creativity. I feel a storm brewing, as I have yet to learn anything about 3D animation! But as steep a learning curve as it is I can see that I will enjoy doing this.


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