Evaluation

Overall I'm very happy with the results of my animation. Considering this was my first time using 3D Studio Max coupled with the small timescale we were given to complete the scenario I managed to create a trailer that represented scenes from my chosen film with a fair amount of realism.

I adapted to working with 3D Studio Max quite quickly and anything I did have trouble with I went and researched what I was doing wrong or how I did it. 

I felt like my original storyboard was quite optimistic, including explosions, character animation and other effects and I'm impressed with myself that I managed to stick to my storyboard so closely.

I was disappointed that I never had the opportunity to use Reactor in my trailer as I originally planned to use Reactor for my explosion scene. As I mentioned in a previous blog post Reactor would not work with the particles generated using PArray. However I am fairly pleased with the effects generated from the combination of PArray, PBomb, Gravity and Deflect.

If I had had more time to develop  the trailer I probably would have added more detail to the environments used in some of my scenes. The scene with the plane flying through the hanger seemed very bland to me and was primarily due to rushing the scene. If I was to improve this scene I would attempt to add some extra props (planes, equipment, scaffolding) and model and animate some extra characters to have manually closing the doors.

Ideally I would have also liked to not need to download models from external sources but the timescale meant spending time modelling things like trees would have probably cause me to not finish the project in time. 

In conclusion I'm generally pleased with the animation quality of the trailer despite the few weak areas. I feel like I learned a lot in terms of modelling in 3D and animating using key frames and other techniques. There is certainly a long way to go and more to learn and I hope I can do so in the near future.

My Trailer!

After doing some small final touches to some of the scenes and rendering them all in high quality I imported the clips into Adobe Premier and cut the clips together to make the trailer as I intended. I used the original James Bond theme as the base sound track and added some sound effects gathered from www.findsounds.com.

I added some fade in and out transitions between some clips based on my storyboard and the final scene is a jpeg image created in photoshop.

 

I'm happy with the overal results for my trailer. I managed to follow my storyboard as I intended and managed to complete the animation on time. I will give a full evaluation of my work in a following blog post. 

Final Scene - Test Render

I have animated the character to move in the final scene where he avoids bullets and then fires his own gun. I originally intended to model the gun that he holds in this scene but decided that the time it is shown the trailer is too small for it to be worth the extra time to model.

For this reason I have imported a pre-made gun from the turbosquid website. The model was created by the user ChuckNepo. http://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/free-m1911a1-pistol-3d-model/362695

I linked the gun to the characters hand using a link constraint and closed the characters fingers around the gun.
I then used key frame animation to animate the character to try and match the movements from the film. It looks ok but moves perhaps too quickly.

I also added a small particle effect again using super spray to simulate the sparks from a bullet hitting the train carriage.

Explosion and Title Screen

I decided to change up my storyboard slightly for this scene. Not only does the hanger explode but a peice of sindged metal flies at the camera which displays the words '007' and 'Octopussy'. I wanted some kind of pause in the trailer between the initial sequence and the random scenes which come afterwards.

I should also mention that I plan to have the train scene come before the car scene simply becuase I feel it works better in that order.

Here is the rendered video of the explosion I created for this part of the trailer.

The effect is created using the PArray particle system which converts an already present object into smaller peices and explodes them out. This only makes them explode out in a definitive direction however so I also used the PBomb tool to cause the particles to explode out more realistically. 

I planned to use Reactor here to simulate the gravity effect on the exploded particles but it seems that it is next to impossible to use the system on particles.

Attempting to convert the particles into objects would mean they would lose their momentum and move unnaturally as well.

In the end to make up for the lack of Reactor I linked the Gravity tool from the forces tab to the PArray to cause them to fall and also added a UDynaflect tool from the deflecters tab to prevent the particles from falling through the ground.

The explosion itself was created using the SphereGizmo which is under the Atmospheric Apparatus from the Helpers tab. A fire effect with explosion checked and some modifying gave me a fairly decent result.

I'm quite happy with the result despite not being able to use Reactor. The idea for the titles to show up like it did came to me as I was creating this scene where a peice of the hanger flew at the camera when I was testing. I thought it looked really good and decided to use that for showing the title sequence.

I made the texure with the text on it in Photoshop and used UVW Mapping to get it to show in the right way.

Plane Scenes - Test Renders

I've spent some time animating the BD-5 Microjet model and the Missile to make the first few scenes of my trailer. I also had to create the scenes which they feature in meaning I also had to model the hanger which the plane flies through and the launcher for the missile.

The introduction scene - The plane is seen flying low over the terrain.

 

The trees in this scene are the same models I used in the car scene and are a downloaded model. Check the previous blog posts for the reference link.

The missile is launched leaving a trail of smoke.

 

The smoke is a variation of the particle generation system I used when I orginally created the missile. It is produced using Super Spray particle system. It produces spheres at a high frequency and quite close together. To give the smoke effect a smoke opacity map is used.

The missile gets close to the plane but bond makes a last minute dodge.

Probably my favorite scene of my trailer. It looks really nice in high quality. The downside is that I havn't managed to put my character model into the cockpit of the plane due to not being able to resize the biped it uses. If I have time I may come back to this scene and attempt to upscale the scene for the model.

The plane flies into the air hanger to escape the missile.

Quite a simple scene which does the job but feels quite empty to me. It could do with some extra people running around or some props.

Cockpit view as the plane flies through the hanger.

I had trouble getting the lighting to work in this scene as it was incredibly dark inside the hanger while using the daylight system. In the end I had to remove the daylight system during this scene. It reduces the overall qaulity more than I would like but its the best I could get.

The plane squeezes through the doors and escapes.

 

The final scene in which the plane is used. I'm fairly happy with how the animation has come along for these scenes. The particle system for the missile smoke especially adds to the realism. If I had more time I would probably add extra characters to the scene involving the hanger as in the actual film there is a lot of soldiers running around.

Train Scene - Update

To save time I decided to rig my character model using the pre-made biped tool so that I could animate him for the train scene. The rigging went very well and even animates with the extra clothes I modelled originally without clipping.

Having done this I imported my character into the scene and linked him to the train using the link constraint tool. This meant that he would move with the train as the train moved along the track.

I then spent a great deal of time manually animating the character to run across the roof of the train carraige and then jump across to the next one. I realise I could have used the footsteps tool that comes with the biped but decided not too as it felt like the software was doing the work for me.

Here is the animation I have so far:

The animation isnt as great as I would like as it looks like he is running faster than the actual distance he travels but overall I am happy with the results.

Train Scene - Test Render

I spent a few hours creating the train scene for one of the last few clips in my trailer. The train is not as detailed as my other models as I am fast approaching the delivery deadline but in the few seconds that It will be seen I am happy that it will look the part.

This scene is where my character model will be seen jumping from one train carriage to the other which I will animate next.

 

Car Scene - Test Render

This is a low resulotion render of a short action scene in which my car model is shown drifting around the street corner for the final trailer. It is almost finished but still needs the smoke effect for the tire squeel.

 

For this scene I originally used a path constraint to get the car to move around the corner. This worked ok but was a little jumpy and unnatural. I attempted to modify the object using the graph curves but could not get a result I was happy with. In the end I manually animated the car using keyframe animation mixed with edits from the curve editor. The result as you can see is quite good.

Due to time restraints the model of the trees used in this scene was downloaded free from http://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/tree-3ds-free/480774

All other models were created by myself. I take no credit for the tree models. All credit goes to user MedievalWorlds of the TurboSquid website.

Smoke Trail Effect Testing

The first half of my trailer include Bond flying the BD-5 Micro Jet while avoiding a heat seeking missile. For these scenes I ideally wanted a realistic looking smoke trail to be generated behind the missile as it chases the plane.

http://www.3d-tutorial.com/3d_max_smoke_effect-1039.html

Today I followed this video tutorial I found online and experimented with creating a smoke trail effect.

I used the built in particle generating tool Super Spray and tweaked the settings based on the knowledge I had gained from the tutorial. The result within the viewport was this:

Spherical Representation of Particles

I then added a smoke map opacity to the texture as well as a particle age gradient map. Finally i turned the overall opacity down to make it more see-through.

This 50 frame video took 15 minutes to render in the lowest resolution on my laptop so while being a nice effect it will greatly increase my render time in the actual scenes it is used in.