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.

Animation Tutorial - Reactor

3DStudio Max comes with a built in physics engine called Reactor (developed by Havok) which can add gravity, friction and collisions to objects in a scene.

The first step is adding the objects you want to be affected by Reactor to a Rigid Body collection. Other collections exist such as the soft body collection (in which objects compress and morph when colliding with other objects) and cloth collection which can realistically animate cloth based objects.

When using reactor there are a number of different variables which can be changed to modify how an object is affected. The collision tollerence determines at what distance a collision will take place. Gravity can be set on any axis with the z-axis set to -386 by default. Each object also has Mass, friction and Elasticity sliders to determine how it behaves.

Using these tools on the bowling alley objects provided for the tutorial I created a realistic looking strike animation.

 

In this scene I set the alley floor to have a mass of 0 so that it is not affected by gravity while giving the ball a mass of 20 and the pins a mass of 5. Mass is effectively proportionate to weight so the higher the mass the heavier the object. I set the collision tollerence to about 0.5 over 3.6 to make the bowl more realistic. 

Finally to give the ball momentum I moved the ball forward along the alley by about 5 frames and adjusted reactor to only take effect from frame 2. I also lowered to ball to just above the surface of the alley floor and added a spin to the ball.

Animation Tutorials - Morpher

Using the Morpher tool makes it very easy to create simple animations like facial animations. For this tutorial we practised using this tool on a pre-built human head model with the intention of creating a few facial animations.

The way in which the morpher tool creates these animations is that you create multiple copies of the head object and modify it to show the finished emotion you want to animated.

These faces are then added to the list of channels on the morpher modifier of the original head which gives a slider to tween between the start and end facial animation. A tween!

These sliders can then be used to create the desired animations, combined with the curve editor and dope sheet this makes facial animating quite simple.

Here is the animation I created during the tutorial:

Animation Tutorials - Bones

Adding Bones to an object, most commonly character models allows body parts to be moved freely and realisticaly with the other parts of the body. It is extremely useful and time saving when it comes to animating characters.
For this tutorial we used the provided character model torso and added bones to the model manually in order to animate the arms.

Provided Model

 

The bones are added using a heriachy so that each new bone created is affect by the last, just like a real skeleton. This means moving the Bicep will make the Forcep move too. 

Bicep - Forcep and Hand

For this instand I modelled the whole hand as one bone for simplicity but for models which require finger movement bones for each finger would also be needed. 

After linking the bones to the torso polygons the area in which it affects more than often needs fine tuning so that all of the polygons move when required and they do not affect areas they are not supposed to. This is a long process but is very benificial to the animation quality.

Rendered Tosro after moving the arms using the bones.

Animation Tutorials - Frame Animation

For this tutorial we tried animating our first objects using 3DS Max. This involved using key frames to set start and end instances of objects which is then tweened by the software. Frame by Frame animation is also possible.

Tools such as the curve editor allow easy editing of the generated animations to help perfect each particular animation. In this instance I edited the curves of the animation for a ball to make it bounce more realistically and squash slightly when it lands.

Other options under edit ranges allow you to loop and cycle animations.

Here is the result of animating using these techniques.

Project Asset 3 - James Bond Character Model

At first I was hesitant as to whether I wanted to model a human character. A human model doesn't have a simple shape and since we are organic rather than inanimate It would be hard to make a convincing model. However seeing other students attempt it on their blog I decided I might as well push myself and give it a try. 

I primarily followed the tutorial on low poly character modelling by Ben Mathis which can be found here: http://www.3dtotal.com/team/Tutorials/benmathis/benmathis_1.asp

As he suggested I started modelling using 8 edged cylinders rather than boxes as they more closely represent human anatomy and then started shaping the objects into a more human like shape. 

The Torso

Cylinders

I duplicated the leg to keep them symmetrical and used the Boolean tool to join the legs together as one object. 

Funky Trousers

Once I was happy with the shape of the arm I also duplicated that and again used the boolean tool to carefully attached each arm to the torso.

Funky PJ's?

I'm unsure as to whether making the body one object was the right thing to do when it comes down to the animating part but for now im quite happy with how it has turned out. Since in the trailer Bond is wearing shoes I have not modelled feet. However I did create some shoes. 

Smart Shoes

The Hands

I then tackled the hands in the same way the tutorial I was following adviced. I started with a cylinder shape and extruded out the fingers one by one and got a fairly decent result.

Start

Making it a bit smoother

Mesh Smooth FTW!

After completing the hands I once again use Boolean to attach them to the body. At this point I had a fairly decent looking headless corpse of a model.

At least he has shoes.

The Head

I was not looking forward to the head. Many online guides explain how the head is the hardest to model because we as humans are so used to looking at them that even slight deformities are noticable to us. I first tried the poly by poly method that was referenced in a peers blog but found it was taking too long and once again switched to the low poly tutorial I had been following so far.

Creepy.

I started with a cube and modelled from there, adding in new edges and cutting in details where appropriate. 

Demon Eyes

While not very realistic I'm generally happy that is is at least recognisable as a human head. Using the mesh smooth modifier makes it slightly better.

Not bad

At this point I wanted to add clothes to my character and I stumbled upon a video tutorial on how to use the Garment Maker and Cloth modifiers to generate clothing.
See Here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hkk8XgGPQw

These modifiers can simulate clothes locally within the viewport to wrap themselves around the character which I personally think is amazing.

Panels of the shirt.

Adding seams

Simulation Result.

Snazzy

I wont go into detail on how the process works. But I have to say that I am extremely happy with the results.

Now with trousers!

Finally I added the trousers and gave the objects textures. The model is not finished completly. (A trend I seem to be setting) as he still needs eyes, hair and ears. I look forward to rigging the character and seeing how the model animates. Fingers crossed that it does without breaking...

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Some Renders showing the character using the daylight system.