Evaluation

Evaluation of my 12 Weeks:

Modelling:

Week one was definitely one of the hardest weeks I had in my whole course, together along with the class we was chucked into a brand new program environment. Starting from simple shapes to an insight into what we will be making in 6/12 weeks’ time, daunting to say the least.

I began to try and master the program in the first lesson by making Taj Mahal why everyone else built an American ‘Whitehouse’ (which I thought I could) but this wasn’t going to happen. After the first week; I was determined to know more about this program. 

After the first few days I jumped straight onto the ‘educational’ version of 3DS Max that I downloaded and begun searching the internet for something to do. As the project brief was a James Bond trailer, and I had chosen Casino Royale, a poker chip was born! After learning how to apply my first ever material and how to ‘UVWMap’ through YouTube tutorials, soon after there was detail and my very Photoshop images on the chip. Now I was beginning to feel more comfortable.

As time followed in the upcoming weeks, more and more complex objects were being built, along with a gun, a poker table, a bullet and a watch by time it had reached week 6. All of my models were completed and finished.

Animation:

As Week 6 was done; relief sank in, however I needed to animate them. This wasn’t going to be easy at all. As the weeks went on we learned a lot about daylight settings, camera movement, target cameras, free cameras and movement in the ‘noise’ parameters of 3DS max to animate my water that I had used and by setting the time line from 1-100 with different noise parameters in auto-key had changed the settings to animate automatically. Thanks to my tutors help it looks great. 

The Animation took a new form when in week 11 I thought of an Idea of using wireframes as well as my models animated to add a new ‘James bond spy’ effect. This was visually pleasing and very good. Animating the wireframe and everything was exactly as how I wanted when it rendered. Premier Pro done a good job when scaling it to frame size and was everything I was after. I used simple Opacity transitions from scene to scene and stole a few sound clips from youtube.com. Which I think is fine as I couldn’t make this myself; these clips were free to download by the artists. 

After my animation was finished, playback was done and after watching it and it reaching 27 seconds, I added my SID Number at the end and the change in sounds. I do like my animation and my finished render; it’s a shame I didn’t have more time as I feel on 3DS max over a span of say 20 weeks, everything could have been improved and my learning curve would have been even greater and steeper. Thank you too rich for his help and to my fellow classmates, as for when I missed a few classes, they were the ones who helped me catch up. Overall this was an interesting and great assignment, which I think I completed to a high level.

Late Boning Screenshot

I had found a screenshot that I have not uploaded of the boned hand. This is there to pull the trigger on the gun and make it seem realistic, however if it isnt boned it will not look good pulling the trigger and will not look REAL. However thanks to the boning tool and connecting it to my turbo smoothed hand. It couldn't have looked any smoother..

Here is the screenshot of the hand boned and ready for use:

Finished Trailer - AVE IT!

This is my finished trailer for my James Bond Assignment. I am very happy with this and will most likely evaluate tonight. It its now 8.45 and I have been here since 10am, so I think I deserve my rest!

Will continue the blog later on.

Scanline Additions!

Ive now thought of a very 'James Bond' secret agent type effect using a scanline. Which at the moment looks pretty damn good! Im really really really really happy with this and this is my favourite effect that I have done so far..

Definitely a favorite! Have a look at the PNG that I have made. 

Cheeky Preview..

Below is a snippet of where I am right now on editing on premier pro. My gun is now involved with the hand and the hand being successfully boned. The editing style with the wire frame works perfectly and is exactly how I wanted it to be; having this in my trailor means my storyboard and my movie are not accurate. However this is part of the editing process and although I'm disappointed it didn't go to plan. I feel like I have made a more positive impact by doing this.

They're currently gaps in the clip of black space, this is where I am still rendering to fit my scenes in. I would like to finish this today for rich to say in our very last class tomorrow, Tuesday 12th April 2011.

Premier Pro - Finish line is in sight..

Im now editing in premier pro and have the majority of my renders to put together and finish. Only a few more which will be through some of my very earlier renders. I have decided as putting the clips together that my story board isn't going to go to plan As I havent made Martini Glass yet and still have to model that scene. I believe that it may a be a possibility for me not to have it, but hopefully if I have time I will.

I'm happy with a lot of my renders and my techniques. I Think when in premier pro they will work well and hopefully will go well with the music that I have chosen. Which is the original sound track from James bond, casino royale. So far so good! Hopefully no Hic-ups!

James Bond Style Renders

Im currently rendering a sequence to make it look james bond and have a 'scanning' type effect when put into the editing software.

I didnt really know on how to do this so in the end I found a very clever wireframe render tutorial and used that to render my whole scene again. Link can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6BFT3S1zo4. 

This is great for my scene - it doesn't match my storyline but I think it will be a great effect in the final trailor... Especially if I use it on a title sequence. 

A Rendered Film

This is the rendered clip - I have two versions, one that is double the length and is good for editing on premier pro / after effects.

A Week in a Day

As I said in my previous post - last week. I will put aside Modelling this week and concentrate on other modules while some of my work renders.

I have put together below A list of images and I will then comment on them further below.

Roof Tiling is something that was very easy and was done by a downloadable texture that I saved from google. The Roof shape is something thats very simple and also just repeated across the top. This was the start of my city of venice.

 Almost imediately I began on the buildings and constructed several simple cuboid shapes to resemble the city of venice! I was getting there swiftly. I used a simple water tutorial at this point and created windows in the buildings so it would reflect the water. 100% Relfection plays a good treat when reflecting opposite or the other buildings.

The buildings were being stretched and multiplied and I was beginning to feel very doubtful of my project of venice so far. This is dissapointing for me as I felt I was 100% comfortable in the program of 3DS Max. Obviously not! I wasn't happy with this So I decided to scrap it and begin again. While re-starting my city I was searching the internet for ideas and came across a 3DS Max website which had loads of venice related articles on how to build a city. With finished downloadable files on it. (I will explain this later on in the blog).

Water - My original water I made wasnt very good and I felt this insulted what I was capable of on 3DS max, whether you follow a tutorial or not. Everything is a learning curve!  I found a tutorial on the internet which literally created the perfect ocean for me and successsfuly using daylight settings that rich taugh us very early on in the Modelling side of this module.

http://www.freeitsolutions.com/3ds/viewTutorial.aspx?id=4129

The link can be found above and is a very good tutorial on creating exceptionally good water. This Ocean was spot on and perfect for just popping the buildings on! Once I had a great plain persay, the rest would follow!

Now here's the venice part. Considering it is week 11 and the most important part of the module at the moment is animation. I would like to reference these venice buildings to this:

http://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/free-aria-buildings-3d-model/368820

However I had modified and changed the buildings completely, But i did not originally create these, however it doesn't effect that I feel I WOULD have the ability too. The buildings are made out of an editable mesh and the windows and archway's, roofs are very easily created.

Unfortunately I do not have the time - however If you were too look at the link above and my current city, they're very different in a lot of aspects and are somwhat compeltely different. I have edited the whole scene just for a small section of filiming.

 

As seen above this is one single frame rendered. This is 1080HDTV, 1920x1080. I will be rendering all my films and movies in this ratio and at this size so everything is at a high quality - no materials will lose quality and some 'grain' like problems which can occur. Which can be easily fixed by rendering at a higher quality. 

It may take longer - BUT thats what over night rendering is there for.

It will post again with the rendered clip that took a day and a half to render (most likely due to daylight/environment settings).