Week 12-Adding Music and Sounds

Now that each part of each ident is completed and rendered I have lined up and exported each ident as a whole with video editing software.

I thought about what type pf audio to include and came to the decision to include sound effects and backing music. I came to this decision as I thought sound effects would be popular with the target group of the CBBC Channel, these being children. However, I felt sound effects alone would not work due to the start and stop in audio would sound peculiar. So I decided backing tracts were also needed.

Several of the sound effects I recorded myself using objects found around the home and percussion sounds on my keyboard. Any I could not source in this way I got from http://www.soundsnap.com.

I found it more difficult to get backing tracks as unlike with the sound effects I did not know exactly what I wanted. I spent some time looking through web sites for possible tacks.

For ident 1 I settled for a backing track from the film Fantasia which I found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddTBeNv9PwQ. The sound effects I included was of children giggling while the characters play on the roundabout and a descending key slide as the bear slid down the slide.

For ident 2 I selected a backing track which I consisted of a rise and fall in volume as I felt this would link well with the balloon floating away, which I found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_jA-zmsRA. I have also included a sound effect of a balloon bursting for when it hits the logo.

For ident 3 I felt a piece of music which would suit it well was ‘The Entertainer’ which I got from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cFkaeOj-Ns. I used recorded sound effects of percussion sounds to add a whiz and sparkle to the movement of stardust.

To get these to fit with the animation I had to make alterations, especially to the backing music. This included changing the speed and cutting and placing different parts of the tracks together. I also tried to keep the audio levels consistent throughout the idents and so music or sound effect did not drown the other out.

Week 10-Improving ident 2 part 6

As the adaptation to the string went well previously I feel it is necessary to incorporate it into this section as well. So, I made the sting into an editable poly, cloned a copy and made alterations to the shape.

Next I applied a morph modifier to the original string and put the new, modified shape into one of the channels. Afterwards I applied different morphing values along the timeline using auto key to make the string taunt when the bear was hanging and lax when he was not.

I am pleased with this as it links well with the part I previously adapted.

Week 10-Adapting ident 2 part 3

Currently I felt ident 2 part 3 worked reasonably well, however the walk sequence was too fast. So to start I rescaled the timeline from 90 frames length to 105 to prevent this.

Next I went on to create the tug of the string as this would add realism to the balloon making the character float as it suggested the bear had a mass. To do this I cloned a copy of the balloon string and edited it using the soft selection tool.

Then I selected the original and applied the morph modifier. Then, during the timeline I apply the morph at different percentages.

I am now much happier with this section, especially as the walk sequence is no longer at a great speed.

Easter-Changes to ident 2 part 6

I now feel this part of the ident needs some more alterations as I have learnt more since completing this. I do think it is not obvious that the balloon deflates. So, I turned on the auto key and used the scale tool to aid this.

Lastly I decided to add a cloud as I felt this would be a nice effect. To do this I used the same process as before and placed it in the bears rising path as I thought it would look effective if the view of the bear became slightly obscured.

I did find I needed to try different values to get the density of the cloud correct so I could see as much of the bear as I wanted.

I am now much more pleased with this and so will now go on to improve another part.

Easter-Changes to ident 2 part 4

There are several areas of this ident which I am not happy with and so I will attempt to improve these areas to an acceptable level. I felt the movement of the ground was not quite right as the grass did not appear to move at the same pace as the other objects. I therefore grouped all the elements on the ground and redid the movement using auto key.

Afterwards I went on to redo the bear as whilst working on this part of the ident last time parts of his body became deformed. To resolve this I merged the bear again and scaled it to the same size as the original bear. I then used the bones to make the bear in the same position as before.

When I was happy with the bears positioning I deleted the original and attached the new bear to the balloon so it was also animated.

The animation was good at this point, but I still felt it needed more. So, I decided to try to add clouds as I felt this would really help to show how high the bear was as well as add realism. I did not know how to do this and so researched creating clouds in smax on the internet. I found a good tutorial at http://library.creativecow.net/articles/lacle-greg/clouds.php.

I then tried to make a cloud in my scene. To do this I firstly drew out a box gismo in the scene. I made sure it covered the whole of the ground area as I did not want the edge of the cloud to be evident during the animation.

Next I went to the environments and effects window and applied a volume fog to the gizmo. I made several alterations to the settings so that it was exactly how I wanted it.

The last step was to animate the cloud at the same rate as the ground.

I am now happy with this part of the ident, especially as parts of the bear’s body are no longer deformed.

Easter-Changes to ident 3 part 6

I am reasonably pleased with this part so far but feel it could be improved slightly. Therefore I am going to make some alterations, firstly to the stardust.

I felt the burst of particles at the end were not that visible and decided they needed to be a bolder part of the scene to emphasize the theme of magic. For this I increased the particle rate to 500, but made it stop emitting at frame 120 leaving a 1 second for the particles to disperse to prevent the screen from becoming full and so the logo would be able to be seen.

Also, I made the stardust shoot towards the camera. To do this I changed the particle formation values of off axis to 10 with a spread of 10 and the off plane value to 0 with a spread of 180.

Afterwards I imported the hat into the scene before scaling it down so it was proportional to the rest of the content and then positioning it above the robots head. I then grouped it with the robots head so that they turned from side to side together.

The final alteration I made to this part of the ident was to make alterations to the lighting. I felt it was necessary to change the setting of the spot light as currently there was a ring of light clearly evident around the character. To resolve this I turned on far attenuation and set the start value to 80 and end value to 250. The area around the robot is still slightly lighter than the rest of the scene, however this is hardly visible. Despite altering the setting further I was unable to remove this without affecting the lighting level on the character and so will leave it as it is.

By adding these final touches I feel the animation has a better appearance and links with the other parts of this ident much better. I will now go on to make more improvements to other parts of the animation.

Easter-Improving ident 3 part 5

Since last looking at this ident I have noticed that its appearance is not quite how I had initially planned. Firstly I imported the hat into the scene.

Once in the scene I set the scale coordinates so that it was proportional to the other parts of the scene and of the same proportions as the other parts of the ident. When the right size I placed it on the robots head.

I then repeated this process by importing the object again and scaling it so it was in the same proportions to the bear’s hat as in previous parts. I added the hat to the bear’s grouped body so that when he grows during the animation the hats size increases as well.

Next I made changes to the zaps of startdust which came out of the wand as these were not as visible as I wanted them to be after the animation was rendered. For this I increased the particle rate to 600 for each of the zap sections.

Afterwards I altered the particle rate of the stardust burst which occurred once the zap hits the play equipment. This was increased to 800 and the particle size to 1.8 so it was easily visible when rendered.

After these alterations the animations finishing touches are complete.