Completed

After many issues and lots of problem solving the final animation is done. See above the pictures for the final animation. Overall I am happy with what I did, although there are many things that could be improved.

Some of the things that could have been improved were to do with the man in my scene. I had many issues with the skeleton and making him walk. While i did manage to get him walking he does not do it very well and it does not look very realistic. Also the timing of this motion is out in places.

I also would have liked to have boned the wings of the bird, but due to time restraints as a result of the power cut this never happened. But learning what i had from making the man i know this would have been possible to do with more time.

There are some other features i would have liked to improve on also, i feel that i did not get the sea water as good as i had hoped, whilst it is animated it does not look realistic enough and could do with some changes in material and modifiers to bring the best out of it but seeing as these are not the main parts of the animation it was not as important to get these correct.

I am quite happy with the use of camera`s in my final scene, i feel the use of a camera from the birds perspective adds to the theme of the animation and makes it more interesting to watch.

I am also happy with the sounds in the final scene, i would have liked to have spent some more time on this if this was possible but i am happy regardless of this.

Overall I feel the project was a success. The animation worked in the end and final video is fairly entertaining.

Some of the components in the previous posts have been tweaked, and i have now nearly finished the assembly of the scene ready for animation. I plan to do a render of the animation in full and then apply the textures and do the final render. I have taken a few screenshots during the setup of the scene but these are not final. See the pics below

More objects

Mood Board and Components for my scene

Here are a few components I have created for my animation

This is my Mood board. Its a selection of pictures that I associate with the British seaside.

Camera's and Lighting

Lighting Test

To test the way in which lighting works a basic scene was constructed, in this instance a lamp was created to how light works in amongst solid objects in max. I created the lamp and put an Omni light inside it, this gave the effect of a focused spot light. I also added a focused spot pointing at the lamp from the other side of the room, this gave a nice shadow projection of the far wall. An Omni light was also used into the room to light up everything else that was not in the direct path of the spot lights.

Camera Test

To test how cameras work some basic shapes were made in max. A camera was then added to the scene. Once this was placed the perspective view was changed to camera 1. Once the camera was set up I created a circle and constrained the camera to its path. After this was done I rotated the circle so that the camera changed height as it rotated. The scene was then altered using the lighting techniques from first exercise and rendered to a video.

Animation

The Bouncing Ball

To animate a bouncing ball a sphere was created and moved to a starting position. Once this was done the playback slider was moved along a number of frames and the auto key was pressed, this created a key frame for the animation. The process was repeated several times until all 100 frames were utilised. Once this was done the curves editor was used adjust way in which the ball bounces making it move in a realistic fashion.

The Weird Egg Timer like Thing

I first created a shape, using some of the tools learned when making the apple. Once this was created I drew a path for the shape and using the animation drop down, constrained the shape to the follow the path of the line. I also added in a rotation in the last frame so the shape would move along the path and rotate also.

Apple

The Apple

To make this apple I first created a box and put 4x4 segments into it. This allowed me to apply both edit mesh and edit poly modifiers. Using these modifiers in conjunction with scale and move tools and a preview in the perspective window I manipulated the shape until it resembled an apple.

The Stalk

To create the stalk I drew a circle with an approximate diameter of what I wanted for the stalk and using the create new shape tool drew a arc'd line to make the shape I wanted the stalk to be. Using the sweep modifier I selected the circle shape and then the line as its path and it extruded the shape for me. Once this was done I thought it was too large to using the scale function scaled the stalk by eye and moved into the position I wanted.

First Thoughts

First thoughts of this module are that it’s probably going to be a steep learning curve. Learning to do a 3d scene was tough last year so I can imagine the animation side of it to be even harder, that and the fact that I dislike animation. The theme for the module should be interesting though as seeing what people's perceptions of what a sea side town is like will be interesting, coming from a seaside town myself I know how I feel about them so will be interesting to see what somebody who lives a distance from one thinks about the subject.