Week 5 – Reactor Tutorial

During this weeks lecture we looked at using items in the reactor menu in 3Ds max. To start with I had a go at getting a ball to roll down a slope.

For this I drew out a plane and a sphere. I positioned them to make sure the shapes were not touching and then rotated the plane slightly to create a slope. After this I went to ‘create object’ in the reactor menu and made the sphere and plane ‘rigid bodies.’

After this I applied a mass of 50 to the sphere by opening the properties window. When I previewed this animation the sphere dropped to the plane and rolled off.

Next I added blocks to the scene. I once again made each element a rigid body. Lastly I gave each block a mass of 5.

When I played the animation the sphere rolled along and knocked over the blocks. I then clicked create animation before rendering the scene.

Next I tried to get a table cloth to droop over an object. To do this I started by drawing out a box and making it a rigid body. Next I drew out a plane with many segments and placed it above the box.

I selected the plane and went to the reactor menu, down to apply modifier and selected cloth modifier. Then I went back to the reactor menu with the plane still selected, to create object and created a cloth collection to store the plane.

I then previewed the animation which worked successfully and so created the animation.

Next I went on to complete the reactor tutorial in max. I found this to be a much more complex method than I used to create the previous animation.

To start I drew out a sphere and a sloping plane which I once again made into rigid bodies in the reactor menu. I also gave the sphere a mass to make it move. When I previewed the animation the sphere rolled down the plane so I continued to create the animation.

I then went on to create the arms using a cylinder which I also gave a mass. When previewed this reacted in the same way as the sphere.

After this I created the rest of the body by drawing out different shapes. I then selected the rigid body which the rest of the body belongs to and added these parts. Lastly, I created a small box and placed it at the base of the character and gave it a mass much greater than the rest of the shape. I then grouped it with the rest of the body.

When I previewed the animation the character wobbled down the plane.

Next I went on to create a wooden box. To do this I created one box for the base and cloned it four times to make the sides. I then positioned them and grouped them together before making them a rigid body. I then positioned the wobble-man in the box and cloned it thirty-nine times.

I then previewed the animation and the wobble-man collected in the box.

Next I removed the key frames. I then added one at frame 0 using auto key before adding another at frame 60 where it was rotated so the content spilt out. After this I previewed the animation.

When I was happy with it I selected create animation and rendered it.

The reactor tool seems to be very useful, but I am not sure how well I could do it without a set of instructions.

Week 4- Continuing to Create the Scene

During last week I started to create the play equipment which I will use in the background of the animations. This went quite well, and so I will continue this during this week. I decided to begin by creating the swing.

Swing

To start I drew a spline in the shape of the frame using the line tool. I then drew out a spline of a circle with a radius of 2.043.

I converted the circle spline into an editable poly. I selected the polygon icon and from the menu opened the ‘extrude along a spline’ window. The initial extruded shape was quite misshapen and not what I wanted, but once I increased the number of segments to 12 the shape was much smoother and what I was trying to create.

Next I closed the window and capped the open edge of the frame. I then cloned an instance of the frame and with the move and rotate tools I aligned them to create a structure of a swing.

As I was pleased with the swing so far I went on to make the seats. To do this I drew out a box and changed the dimensions to 31.143 in length, 14.163 in width and 2.943 in height so the seat would be in proportion to the frame.

I then increased the number of segments to 12 across the length, 7 across the width and 2 in height. I then made it into an editable poly and selected the polygon icon. On the top of the box I selected rows of the segmented shape and opened the extrude window.

I made alterations to the extrude height until I reached 0.6 which I was happy with. Lastly I selected mesh smooth from the modify list and set the iteration level to 3 to get a smooth, realistic surface.

At this point I was happy with the appearance of the seat and so duplicated a copy and aligned them evenly under the frame.

At this point I went on to create a link for the chains. For this I used the line tool and set it to smooth and drew out a loop. I then made some alterations to the vertex points to try to get a symmetrical shape.

Finally I used the circle spline to create a circle to form the ring size of the chain. I converted the circle to an editable poly, selected the polygon icon and opened the ‘extrude along spline’ window. Initially when I extruded the circle along the spline in the shape of the link the size of the circle was too narrow and this made the link look too weak. This took several attempts to get right.

After I increased the radius it looked much stronger and suited the purpose. I also needed to increase the number of segments to 70 as this gave me a smoother shape and a fuller circle. Before I started to create the chain link I was trying to make it a full loop, but once I had seen this with a gap I felt it was more realistic of a piece of curved metal so I decided not to resolve this. To complete the link I capped the open edge of the link.

The next step was to create a chain from the link, and so I cloned the shape and arranged them to make the chain appear taut as though the seat was weighing it down. I created a small section of the chain and then grouped and cloned it to create one length.

After this I cloned the selection to create chains the full length from the top of the frame to the seats. I then cloned this and arranged them in the correct position in relation to the frame and seat.

When I was happy with its appearance I looked at the swing overall. I felt that it did not look quite right, and after further thought and looking at some images of swings I decided to include a side bar to give a more sturdy structure. For this I started by drawing out a cylinder with a radius of 2.65 and a height of 27.457. I then aligned it between the side bars.

Afterwards I cloned an instance and placed it on the other side. However, I was still not happy with this as the main bars of the frame were too close together and so used the rotate tool to move them outwards. As a consequence I needed to increase the height of the side bars so it touched each side of the frame again.

At this point I decided to create the attachment between the chain and the seat. I felt the best way to do this would be to use the extrude along the spline technique as I did for the main part of the frame and the links in the chain as I once again wanted quite a unique shape.

To begin I set the line tool to the corner setting and drew out a pyramid shape. Next I drew out a spline circle.

I then converted the circle into an editable poly, selected the polygon icon and clicked on the circle. In the side menu I opened the ‘extrude along the spline’ window and picked the line. Lastly I increased the number of segments to 15 and capped the end.

Afterwards I aligned it between the end link in the chain and seat. This fitted quite well as I drew out the initial spline and made it in proportion before I extruded it, but despite this I had to scale it down slightly so it was not visible outside of the seat. Finally I cloned instances of this part and aligned them between the remaining chain links and the seats.

I am quite pleased with how this went as I feel it is easily identifiable as a swing. I am going to continue my project by making more of the playground equipment.

Slide

I decided the best way to start the slide would be to create the handles so that the height would be set and I could work from this. For this I used the line tool to draw the spline for the handle. I then created a circle spline with a radius of 2.5.

I made the circle spline into an editable poly and selected the polygon icon. I opened the ‘extrude along the spline’ window and selected the line to extrude the polygon along. In the window I increased the number of segments to 13 and capped the open edge. As I was happy with the end result I cloned it and placed it next to each other.

The next thing I did was to draw a spline in the shape of the slide with the smooth corner setting. I did have to spend some time editing the vertex points to get the smooth flowing shape I was looking for as well as the correct height and length, but eventually I managed this.

I then drew out another spline for the curved shape of the slide. I once again used the line tool and used several vertexes to create the shape. Once the spline was closed I edited the vertexes to keep the width of the shape consistent all the way around.

I made the second spline into an editable poly, selected the polygon icon and clicked on the spline. From the side menu I selected the button to open the ‘extrude along spline’ window. I then picked the first spline as the line to extrude along and increased the number of segments to 18 to get quite a smooth shape. To complete this shape I capped the edge.

I then aligned it with the step poles. Afterwards I drew out a box with a length of 14.614, width of 36.193 and height of 1.537 before placing it at the end of the slide.

Next I went on to create the steps. To start I drew out a box and changed the dimensions so that it fitted between the poles well. I then edited the segments, increasing the number in length to 10, in width to 7 and in height to 2.

I converted it to an editable poly and chose the polygon icon. I selected some of the polygons in the top of the box in rows before opening the extrude window. I set the extrusion amount to 0.6 as I felt it was the correct amount.

The finishing touch was to apply mesh smooth modifier to the step. I increased the iteration amount to 3 and left the smoothness level at 1.0 because this gave me the surface I wanted.

To complete this part I cloned instances of the shape and arrange them at even intervals going up the poles.

I was quite pleased with the appearance as a whole, however it was not quite finished as the bottom of the slide was floating in the air. Due to this I created a cylinder for support legs. I set the radius to 2.671 and height to 20.55 so that it would reach the bottom of the slide and the floor. When I was happy with the size I put it in place under the slide and duplicated it three times. I then spread these evenly under the base of the slide.

I am quite pleased with the appearance of the slide and so I am now going to go onto another piece of playground equipment.

Bench

Before I started I decided I wanted the bench to be in a traditional style. I did not want its appearance to be to bold or interesting as I did not want it to take the attention away from the animation. Also, children would not find the bench greatly interesting out of everything in the park and I always associate it with parents rather than children.

To start I created the frame and drew out a spline with the corner setting. I edited the vertex points using the modify side menu to get the exact shape I wanted and made sure it was evenly sized throughout.

Next I made it into an editable poly and used the extrude tool to create the third dimension. Then I capped the open edge.

I created an instance of the shape and moved them apart to a point which I felt was sensible and proportional to the size of the supports. When I did this I felt the shapes were too wide and so selected the scale tool to make them slightly narrower.

After this I drew out a box with a length of 84.342, width of 12.708 and height of 2.199 so that it was slightly longer than the spacing between the two supports. I then duplicated it and used two for the seat and the other two for the backrest.

I was reasonably happy with how the bench had gone so far, but felt it needed some finishing touches. I decided to add on screws which I felt would do this. For this I drew out a cylinder with a radius of 1 and height of 1.105. I then cloned it and slightly arranged the pair half submerged into one of the planks where the screws would be.

When I was pleased with the positioning I grouped the cylinders cloned them many times before placing them at each point where the bench supports and planks crossed paths.

I am quite pleased with the outcome of the bench, and hope with materials added at a later date the outcome will be as I planned.

Helter-Skelter

The final piece of equipment I needed to create as part of the scene was the helter-skelter. I chose to leave this one to last as I am not completely sure how I am going to make it, but now plan to give it a go and see how I get along.

I thought the best method to use would be to work from the inside out and so decided to start with the stairs. From the AEC Objects rollout in the create menu I selected a spiral staircase and drew it out in the viewport. I decided to use this preset rather than create them manually as I believe they will have a better appearance and they can be produced much more easily. I changed the standard setting by removing the rail-path, adding a handrail and central pole, increasing the revolutions to 1.2 and increasing the stair width.

Despite these alterations I was unable to get the full height of stairs I wanted without the steps becoming too far apart. Due to this I felt the best way to get the height I require would be to clone the stairs and accurately align them so they appear to be one.

Next I went on to create the slide. I was not sure of the best way to do this part and so tried out several different methods including trying to bend shapes, use the twist modifier and extruding along a helix and in segments and placing them together afterwards. Two of these had a similar effect to what I wanted, but still not quite right.

As the ‘extrude along the spline’ technique was the most successful out of the ones I tried I repeated this process. To do this I drew out a helix spline and changed the amount of rotation until it fitted in with the twist of the stairs. Also, I changed the rotation direction to clockwise so it was in the opposite direction to the stairs. I then created another spline in a u-shape cross-section of the slide.

I converted the u-shape cross section spline to an editable poly and extruded the shape along the helix spline. I increased the number of segments to 100 to get a smooth flowing shape, but I still had the problem of the slide being twisted as I did before. To try to solve this problem I tried altering the other controls in the extrude window once again and after some time I managed to resolve this problem somewhat. I found that setting the twist value to -228 reformed the shape to keep the u-shape upright all the way around. Originally I did not alter any of the values to this extent and that is why it took several attempts. It is still not perfect, but I have been unable to improve this any further and as the imperfections are only noticeable from angles which I do not plan to use cameras I am going to keep this as the slide.

After looking at what I had created so far I did feel that the bottom of the slide came to an abrupt end and so extruded a copy of the cross-section spline horizontally using the same method as before. I then aligned it with the bottom of the extruded helix so it appeared to be a continual shape.

I felt the next step would be to make the stairs the same height as the slide. To do this I cloned copies of the stairs I created earlier and aligned them to the height of the slide. To make it look like one set of stairs I used the move and rotate tools to align the steps and handrail and when I was happy with the shape I grouped the objects. I also needed to rotate the stairs as the initial position meant that the stairs entrance and exit were in the incorrect places. I found I was unable to have the entrance and exit in the position I required without changing the height and so I positioned the entrance at the bottom as I felt this was the most important.

To remove the large gap at the top of the stairs I used the spline line tool to draw out a shape from the top of the stairs to the beginning of the slide. I edited the vertexes to get the exact shape I wanted and made it into an editable poly, extruded the shape to a similar height to the stairs depth and capped the open edge.

This is the outcome of the helter-skelter so far.

I am pleased overall with the outcome of the play equipment and hope the finishing touches to the helter-skelter which I plan to do next week go as well as my work this week. Also, during next week I hope to get all the materials on the objects and build the final bits of the scene where all of the animations will take place. I am hoping that I may start to create the characters next week as well.

Week 4-Using Bones

During this weeks tutorial I was introduced to bones in 3Ds max.

To begin I started by practicing drawing out a section of bone. To do this I went to systems in the create toolbar and selected bones. Then, in the IK solver dropdown menu I changed the type of bone to IK limb. The next step was to draw out the sections of the bones. I decided to try to create a leg, so the first section I drew out was the top of the leg, and from here I worked down to the end of the toe. After this I tried moving the section of the limb and from this I have learnt that moving the higher sections of bone causes the leg to rotate from the top, whereas repositioning the bones at the bottom with the move tool creates a bend in the limb.

After this I tried to add a skin to a set of bones. For this I drew out a cylinder and then a set of bones which were in the same proportions to the cylinder. I then positioned the bones in the middle of the cylinder. The next step was to select the cylinder and go to the modify menu where I selected the skin modifier. Lastly, in the skin rollout I clicked ‘add’ and selected all the bones in the window before selecting OK.

At this point I decided to try animating the cylinder using the techniques I have learnt during this and previous tutorials. I repositioned the bones at different points along the timelines where key frames were added. I was pleased with this, however when I played the animation which I had created I was not happy with the way the shape bends as the cylinder became crumpled at this point. To solve this problem I selected the skin and clicked on the edit envelope button. I then widened the envelope area on each of the bones.

When I played the animation again this point had been improved. From this tutorial I have learnt how to animate with bones, including adding a skin, which part of the limb I need to move to get the bones in the position I require and how to get the smoothest bend by editing the envelope.

Week 3-Starting my Project

During this weeks lesson I started to create my idents. As I knew that we were due to have tutorials on using bones I felt it would be best to start with the background where only basic modelling which I learnt last semester was involved. Due to this I started by creating the play equipment.

Roundabout

To start I decided to produce the roundabout. The first thing I did to create this was to produce the base. For this I used a cylinder with a radius of 51.379 and a height of 3.999.

I felt the next thing to create should be one of the seats. To do this I created a spline with the line tool, and after a few alterations to the vertexes I got the shape I wanted.

At this point I converted the spline into an editable poly and selected the polygon icon. I then opened the extrude window to add a third dimension to the shape I drew before selecting the border icon to select the open edge and capping it.

At this point I duplicated the shape and spread them evenly around the base of the roundabout.

The last part of creating the roundabout was to produce the handle. To start this I used a cylinder with a radius of 1.51 and a height of 22.726. When I felt it was the correct height I cloned an instance for the other vertical bar and a copy for the horizontal bar.

I then made another copy of the cylinder, but for this one I reduced the height to 10.288. Lastly I applied the bend modifier to an angle of 90 degrees.

I then duplicated the curve and placed one on either side to join the frame together. When I was happy with the alignment I grouped the cylinders together.

Afterwards I arranged them at the edge of each of the seats.

Finally I added a mesh smooth to the base with an iteration level of 2 and smoothness of 1.0.

As I was happy with the appearance of the roundabout I went onto another object.

See Saw

To create the see saw I decided to work from the middle outwards as I felt this would be easiest. Due to this I began by drawing a box out for the central column. I then made the shape into an editable poly where I selected the polygon icon and selected the top polygon. I then opened the bevel window and changed the figures until I was happy with the shape.

Next I created the bar to go through the centre of the seesaw. For this I drew out a cylinder and placed it in the middle of the base. From here I changed the height until I felt the cylinder was in proportion to the central part of the see saw.

After this I went on to create the seat. For this I once again used a box, which I split into 7 segments in length, 3 in width and 3 in height. To begin with I used the scale tool to make sure it was in proportion to the rest of the object, and when I was happy with it I made it into an editable poly. I then selected the polygon icon and selected some of the polygons across the top before applying an inverted bevel of -0.6.

Finally I applied mesh smooth with an iteration value of 2 to complete the seat.

I then cloned an instance and placed them evenly on either side of the bar.

At this point I went on to create the handle. I felt the best way to do this would be extrude along a spline so I could get the smooth shape I wanted. Due to this I used the line tool with smooth corner to draw the spline I required.

Then I drew out a circle and converted it to an editable polygon. I then selected the polygon icon and extruded the circle along the first spline. To get a smooth shape I increased the number of segments. When I was happy with the shape I capped the open edge.

I felt the handle had turned out quite well and so I duplicated it and placed one on the inside of each of the seats.

I am really pleased with the way my project has gone so far. Next week I will continue to build the content in the background before I go onto the animation.