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.

Storyboards

Since my moodboards I have thought about everything I need to include to tell the story of each animation and also what I want the appearance of the characters to be. Below is how I plan for the characters to look from several angles.

When I drew these images I wanted to make them visually appealing to children and so tried to make their appearance quite fun, but still realistic enough to be easily identifiable. I tried to link the two characters and so decided to make the teddy the robots toy.

I have now completed the storyboards for my three idents. In every storyboard I have included a sketch for each section with an explanation of what I am trying to depict. Also, I have estimated the amount of time I need for each part so when I create the animation I have an idea of the number of frames I need to use.

The next step towards completing my idents is to create the background in 3Ds max ready to produce the animations later this semester.

Week 3- Morphing Shapes

During this weeks tutorial we learnt how to morph one shape into another. When I watched the demonstration I thought it was a complex procedure and I was not sure if I would be able to complete the task on my own. Despite this I still decided to have a go.

To start I drew out one box and then converted it into an editable poly. After this I cloned the box twice, making each one a copy. I then made alterations to each of the copies by moving the vertexes at either the top or bottom closer together to form a point.

At this point I selected morph from the modify list. I then added each of the edited shapes into separate channels in the channels section. The last step was to add keyframes along the timeline and at these points change the percentage in the morph channels to get the form of the shape to change.

I am really pleased with how quickly I managed to pick up this technique. At the moment I am not sure if I am going to need to use this method to produce my idents, but if I do need to I feel I will be able to do it quite easily. The important thing to remember is that it only works when the number of vertexes are the same.

Moodboards

From my research boards I have now made several decisions about my idents. Initially I decided to have a consistent character and environment throughout, but after some more thoughts I slightly adapted my choices. I am still going to set all of the idents in one environment, for which I have chosen the park as I believe this will be something which the majority of children relate to and would enjoy. However, I was initially going to have one character throughout the animations, but now I am not sure this will be appropriate as I could not think of a character which I could aim at both genders. Instead I am going to include two characters so I can aim them at the majority of the target group, therefore I will now include a robot and teddy bear.

The colours I plan to use will be bright as I believe this will attract the child’s attention as it will appear to be more interesting. Also, as an attempt to make it more exciting I will try to add a slight surreal feeling by including events which a child would not normally experience, for example the characters flying through the air unaided.

I also plan to use a stylised but legible font for the lettering so it is not dull. This style will be consistent throughout the idents.

As the idents will be aimed at children I am going to include actions within the animation as a way to illustrate good behaviour, such as sharing and playing together.

Below are the moodboards I have created using inspiration from my research boards. Under each I will explain what I am trying to show.

In moodboard 1 I am trying to show the excitement which children feel when they are at the park. The ident this moodboard represents will be fun and exciting and based around the play equipment in the park. The characters will be playing together, but it will end in an unusual way as one character flies through the air from one piece of play equipment to another. I am not completely sure of the exact pieces of play equipment I am going to use, but the character could land on the helter skelter and slide to the bottom, with the logo being displayed down the central column.

Above I have incorporated other childhood elements within the park area, in this case a bunch of balloons. To add a more interesting and unusual aspect to this ident I plan to make one character float up with a balloon. Here I focused on the idea of flight and what the world looks like from a bird’s perspective as I believe this may be something which the target group finds exciting. From this point I originally could not decide whether to have the letters of the logo in the air and the character floats up to them or for the character to look down to the ground and for the logo to be visible in the roads and land shapes, but after some thought I decided the character will land on the channel logo in the sky as I am not sure if all the children will spot the logo on the ground.

In this ident I wanted to make it as exciting as possible and so created moodboard 3 around the theme of magic. For the moodboard I tried to create an atmosphere which was slightly eerie as I wanted to suggest the element of surprise which the characters, and hopefully the target group, will feel. This will still be incorporated within a park as this will be where the magic set will be found and where the characters make things change using the magic wand. This will finish with the wand making the CBBC logo appearing in the air at the end of the ident.

From these moodboards I will now go on to produce a storyboard for each ident with details of each step in the animation.

Research Boards

At this point I am not sure which television station I want to create my idents for, so I have started my research boards by creating one with a collection of idents from different channels. I hope from this I will get some inspiration of possible idents I could create later this semester.

By creating this research board I have noticed several things about current and past idents. I have learnt that there are a lot of similarities in the way they are designed. Firstly, the subject of the idents are chosen so that it is aimed at the channels target group, for example Cbeebies and CBBC's idents are aimed at children whereas BBC2 idents are plainer and basic as it is a more serious channel with an older age group. Also, there is the use of a consistent character or characters throughout a set of idents, such as the BBC 3 blobs and the Cbeebies blobs. Other channels use shapes within their idents and incorporate them into different environments, such as channel 4's use of the number four and BBC 1's use of circles linking to the shape of the letter ‘o.’ There are quite often consistencies in colour schemes, for example ITV1's colours are black and yellow and BBC 3 idents are blue. Lastly, I found that there are quite often idents created for special occasions, such as Christmas idents.

From this research I have decided to create a set of idents for the CBBC channel. I have chosen this channel as I feel that there is a lot of potential and hope it will inspire me to create good idents.

All the idents I found for the CBBC channel are aimed at the target group as they are quite fun, have a lot of activity and the ideas are creative. There is a consistency of colour, with mainly the use of blue and green. All the letters which spell out CBBC are bright green and stand out from the background. There are no consistent characters used in the idents, but the letters are animated instead. The font is also important as it is quite interesting and would appeal to children.

Now I know what channel I will create my set of idents for I will now look at the target group's interest. I hope this will give me ideas on what I can include in the animations which will allow me to aim them at my target group.

I have selected all of these images as I associate them with childhood and got the ideas from the internet, catalogues and my own childhood memories. I tried to include things for both genders and a range of items other than just toys.

From my research I hope it will inspire me to create exciting idents for my target group. I will now use these research boards over the next few days to think of ideas.

Week 2-Path Constraints

During today’s tutorial I learnt how to use path constraints to guide an object during the animation. To do this I began by drawing a shape, in this case a sphere. I then selected a circle spline and drew this around the sphere. After this I selected the sphere and then went to the animation menu, down to constraints and across to path constraints. The last step was to draw the line between the shape and the spline.

I then repeated this process using different shapes and splines. The last thing I tried on this animation was to add a camera to a path. For this I used a circular spline and attached a target camera. I did have some trouble with the target point of the camera as to begin with it appeared that some of the shapes were not moving, however with some slight changes to some of the paths and also the cameras focal point I resolved this problem. I am quite pleased with this animation as it was my first attempt at using motion paths. Here is the final animation.

When I had completed the first task I went on to create another animation, once again using path constraints. For this I tried to create a virtual walkthrough of a building. To start I created the building itself, firstly by using a plane for the floor and then boxes of different lengths to create the walls. On a couple of the walls I used Boolean to create doorways as I felt it would create a more interesting animation than if all the walls just had gaps. Also, I used different colour boxes and placed them on the walls to imitate pictures so the animation was not too boring.

I then drew a spline for the camera to follow and added a free camera to the path. Until this point I felt it had gone very well, but once I played the animation back I found the camera was travelling backwards and too fast, as well as the camera appearing to travel through the walls. To overcome these problems I increased the number of frames in the animation to make it slower and clearer as well as using the rotate tool to position the camera correctly. Initially I drew out a spline with pointed corners, but when I played the animation I found this was unsuitable as the camera appeared to go through the walls. Due to this I drew out a different spline, but this time I used more vertex points so I could create curved corners when I wanted the camera to change direction.

At this point I watched the animation again and was much happier with the outcome, however I still felt it needed some more alterations as the camera did not follow the line completely. To solve this I went to the motion panel to the right of the screen and checked the ‘follow’ tick box. This kept the camera facing forwards throughout the animation.

After these alterations I am much happier with my second animation and so have included a copy of this below.

I feel I have learnt a lot during today’s tutorial. Firstly, I found using paths to be an easy task to complete. It is much simpler and quicker to animate objects and cameras in this way and I feel I will be able to create a much smoother path using this method than auto and set keys. I also learnt the difference between target and free cameras and how each would be a benefit (or disadvantage) when placing them on paths. Lastly I found out how to make the camera face the direction the spline takes, this being by selecting follow.

Week 1- My First 3D Animation

Today is the first time I have attempted to create an animation in 3Ds Max, and with this in mind feel I have managed to complete the tasks quite well.

To begin with I just added key frames along the timeline and adjusted the position of the content at these points. At first I did occasionally forget to click on the key button, but after some practice I started to remember this each time.

When I went on to look at the Curve Editor I found understanding it quite difficult. When I was just concentrating on the shape moving up and down I found the graph in the Curve Editor easy to work with, as when the object went up so did the line and vice versa, however when I added movement along other axis’s I did find the graphs quite confusing to understand, but I hope with further use of the software for animation I will be able to work with these more easily.

I also looked at the dope sheet during the lesson. I did not use it to make any alterations as the animation I was creating was very simple, but if I ever need to align more complex movements I believe this would be very useful.

Lastly I went on to practice attaching and using a dummy. During the tutorial I only tried a simple movement of a single object, but from this I feel it will be a very useful tool when animating several objects at once, especially if they are close together.

I feel I have understood how to produce a basic animation during today’s tutorial well and, along with the notes I made, I believe I will be able to create another animation in the future using these techniques. I hope to build on these skills in future tutorials so by the end of the semester I can create a more sophisticated animation.