Head Model - Update

Since the last 6-8 weeks have been spent working on the group project and other assignments I have not had a lot of time to make many changes to the final head model I made for the first part of the project.

However I did update the nose on the model which the tutor pointed out was too narrow and had very small nostrils. After doing so the modifiers above the changes broke, including the material textures and head and fur modifier. With no way to fix it to how it was I have simply handed in the changes in the hope that it willbe taken into account for final marking.

Group Project - Evaluation

Overall the project has been an enjoyable if frustrating experience. Working in a group on such a large scale project can be quite challenging to organise and not taking into account other modules is probably why the group needed the deadline extension.

However we squeezed everything we could out of the extra time given and managed to make a very professional looking video which meets the brief we were given at the start of the module. I also learned quite a few useful techniques in 3DS Max.

• Slice Animation
• Rayfire Animation
• Advanced Lighting Techniques
• Backburner Mass Rendering

Lighting gave a lot of headaches when it came to rendering. Getting a perfect flow of animation without lighting speckles or artifacts seemed to be impossible and I plan to develop my knowledge of mental ray rendering in the future.

I am happy with how the group worked as a whole, even though I had to animate a great deal of the project myself due to other members work commitments of lack of a high spec computer it was probably for the best as early on we decided that out of the four of us that I had the strongest animation skills. Jack Dickens helped me out a lot with how rayfire works and when it came to setting up the last scenes animations.

If we were to do the project again as group leader I would try to better organise the team and delegate tasks when required. We struggled initially to maintain a constant level of progress and missed the initial deadline as a result for which we are dissapointed about. Next time better planning would be required.

As a final note I am extremely happy with the final rendered video. It looks professional and I think displays a high level of skill.

Group Work - Encoding/Rendering Final Video

While the last few scene were being rendered and processed into video clips I began putting together the final video together for the group using Premier Pro.

Fade to black and transparency transitions were added to link from one scene to the other where appropriate giving the video a nice flowing feel.

We also added a 5 second intro screen and 0918959 quickly made up a ending credits for the video showing who worked on the project.

Finally we added a free to use sound clip titled 'Dreams' by Stephen Richards.
http://longzijun.wordpress.com/2010/05/28/free-background-music/

After a lot of searching for appropriate backing music we settled on this track because we felt it fit the flow of the video quite nicely.

Here is a screenshot of the final project before rendering:

Group Project - Lighting/Render Problems

Me and 0918959 spent a lot of time today setting up cameras in the interior of the house to show of the rooms in a nice high quality view. It wasnt planned initially but we thought it would be best to show how each room looks.

The lighting was extremely tricky to work out and gave us countless problems. No lighting looked bland, the daylight system didnt work indoors on its own and adding skylights gave speckles on certain textures. In the end we had to pick the best option and render those. Hopefully the rendered videos will look ok.

After the project I plan to personally look into the best lighting setup so I can use if for future projects.

Animating Scene 6 and 7

Scenes 6 and 7 involve showing how the interior of the building has changed and was quite a complicated and tedious process. However I think that the final rendered result will look really good and I am happy with the results.

Scene 6 deals with downstairs. Including the changes to wall layout and proposed use furniture. For example the shop, museum and library.

It starts by slicing away the roof and top floor. (this is important as it helps show that we are now looking inside the house). Then pans over and looks down. From here the camera pans right and walls are removed or replaced and furniture is dropped in from above.

Sceen 7 does the same but includes the walls in the guildroom which has plaster removed. The plaster is removed with rayfire and the wind modifier. The wind makes the peices float to the right and is a really good effect. I discovered this while animating this scene and if there was time I would have gone back and done something similar for the other scenes.

Slicing the top floor

Removing Old Walls

Adding new walls and furniture

Dropping in new furniture

Removing old walls

Scene 7 Screens:

Dropping in furniture

Before plaster is removed

Plaster floats away to right

Fading away

Animating Scene 5

While not originally planned in the storyboards I felt it was best to show a small scene of the changes to the entrance archway area. A simple slice of the current steps to the new steps and dropping in the new steel bollards was implemented for this scene.

Mid Slice

Bollards Dropping

Bollards in place

Animating Scene 4

The 4th scene also makes use of rayfire. The extruding walls which house the staircases to the second floor is removed in the new model so they are exploded away to make room for the new glass walkway.

The walkway is revealed by using the slice technique again, the old wall is also replaced at the same time.

Fragmented into peices

Exploded

Drift away

Slicing in the new walkway

Animating Scene 3

Scene 3 involves replacing the guttering on the guildhall with the new set and the slicing the walls from old to new. The gutter moves off the wall to the left and fades out (Keyframe animation) and the new set which starts off transparent fades in and moves into place.

The camera then pans left and up to show the walls slicing from right to left, changes in windows, doors and paint colour can be seen.

Slice being used on a number of objects.

Animating Scene 2

The second scene involves using rayfire on the chimney for a cool effect. The chimney blasts apart and floats away (using reverse gravity) as well as dissapearing (keyframing the transparency of the pieces)

Rayfire Part 1

Rayfire Part 2

After this the roof will be replaced with the new roof by using the slice tool which is another new technique for me, albiet very simple to use.

Animating Scene 1

Since the rest of the group is busy with work commitments I have taken it upon myself to begin animating the transition from old guild hall to new. Both models are complete with some last minute touch ups to furniture and textures being done on the new guildhall.

The first scene is a simple slow pan of the guildhall in its current state to give a representation of what it looks like now.

To get a nice fluid motion the camera was attached to a arc line using the animation tool path constraint. The total frames in this scene is roughly 500 at 30 frames per second.

Group Work - Surroundings

With both the old and new guildhall models complete and ready to animate I quickly added some extra detail to the surrounding areas we currently have. Since time is short we are only focusing on the small patch around the guildhall. If we had more time we would have liked to include some of the surrounding buildings (simplified) as well.

Using the built in foilage tool I added some plants to represent what plants are present in the area. The hedge in the scene was downloaded as a free model from the turbosquid website.

Overgrown Plants

Side Hedge

Testing out Rayfire (New Skills!)

0918959 Has been experiementing with the Rayfire plugin and has realised that his computer at home cannot reliably handle the program very well. Since my system at home is new and quite powerful I have agreed to animate the rayfire scenes at home instead.

After a brief explanation of how it works from 0918959 I managed to put together this small animation of a collapsing block:

The effect is quite cool and I am sure with some more experimenting I can get the desired effect we wanted for breaking away old walls in the guild hall.

Group Work - Stairs

The new guildhall has brand new staircases to replace the old set. The service stairs near the entrance and the stairs which lead to the new hallway and loft.

Service Stairs

Main Staircase steps

Adding Banisters and Sides

Finished

All thats left to do now is texture the staircases for the final renders.

Group Work - Radiator

To help others with creating the furniture for the house I made a radiator for the bathrooms in the guildhall. It was quite a complex shape using extruding, bevel, manually editing polygons and so on.

Mid Progress

Complete

Group Work - New Gate

As part of the new guildhall a large metal gate is being added to the back of the entrance archway area. The actual design on this is quite sketchy so I had to improvise and deisng something which I think suited the building.

The gate is made up of primitive boxes, cylinders and cones which have been edited. 

Mid way complete

Finished and in place