3D Modelling and Animation

I decided to make my idents revolve around famous scenes or key features of films. I selected 3 different films and went about storyboarding these. The films I selected were Indiana Jones, Alien and Lord of the Rings.

Indiana Jones

This was the first ident I created. I had decided to recreate the map room from ‘raiders of the lost arc’. The first thing I had to set about doing would be making the room, this was simple as the room was a simple rectangle; meaning I could create the walls, ceiling/floor from boxes. The room however needed a small opening for the lighting effects to be added later. This was created using the Boolean tool subtracting a small box from the front wall, thus making the window.
I decided to add materials to the inside of the room so I would be able to see where it was going. I created sand like textures by layering a custom bitmap with pre-built in bump maps for a grain effect. Colours were edited for the floor so it appeared darker and mixed with dirt. The walls had a similar treatment but rather than create a dirt effect, tiling was added to look like carved stone blocks.

I then went about creating the staff and medallion head. The staff was very simple to make as it is just a cylinder needing a wood like material, which again I used a custom bitmap of. The medallion head was created using the line tool and then modified so it could be extruded. The material added needed to look metallic, so I made sure the preview of it would shine. I used a Phong shader with reflection maps to try and create this shine whilst using a yellow base colour. The next part and possibly most important part of the medallion was the crystal. I used an NGon to create the basic shape and then proceeded to the materials. I used a simple red Blinn effect with a high specular level and self illumination but found that it was still too solid. I added a refraction map using a ray trace map on top of it and setting the object to 2 sided, this seemed to fix my translucency issue.

The buildings created were all made from boxes and set to different sizes/shapes. These also had the sand grain effect applied to them but with a variation to the bump map. Lighting would be needed for multiple reasons in the animation. Obviously one would be to keep the room at a constant level so the viewer can actually see. 4 other lights would be needed still though; these would be for the sun, beam of light from the crystal and the end glow. The sun and the end glow would use the same principle. They needed to be big and bright with visible rays and glow. This meant I had to add lens effects to the selected lights. The beam of light was more complex than this; I used a free directional light for it and increased its intensity to 5x the normal. The reason for this was that this light was going to be like a laser beam and so would lose much of it’s intensity through the ‘fog’. A volume light effect was added to this light, this is what made the whole beam visible. The fog colour was matched towards the desired colour of the light whilst the attenuation colour was set to blue to filter through it. So that this beam of light didn’t seem to come out of nowhere a fade in of another light was made from the crystal so that once it met its peak the beam would appear. This again used lens effects of glow and rays.

The final animation part of this ident was of course the camera angles. I created a free camera and key framed from the beginning where I wanted it to move and what it should be showing at the specific point. I wanted to show the sun and show started facing that way when panning up, only to swing around into the remainder of the scene. Finally an environment map was added using a bitmap of a sky so the sun had a setting.

The video editing was a simple process as I had already made all my angles and knew what I wanted to show. It was just a case of adding fade ins and outs and the final scene of clipping to the text ‘sky movies’. Sound was also added and edited in Audacity to get the correct length and segment needed.

Alien

I wanted to attempt different genres of film for my idents so I could show the variety of the selection which the channel shows. So after Indiana Jones, being an action/adventure, I decided to go along the lines of horror; Alien being one of the most famous ever. One of the most memorable things from Alien to me were the eggs and facehuggers, this is why I selected them for this ident.
The first thing I decided to create was the egg as it was probably the most important thing in the whole animation. I created it from a simple sphere that had been stretched out into an oval shape. Obviously alien eggs were never ‘perfect’ and so some deforming would be needed, this was done using the soft selection tool and moving parts out of line. A material was needed to create the correct texture so a Dent map was placed on top with the main colour being a green and the secondary a yellow for highlights. This again was too perfect on the object so an additional dent map was placed to bump it. This made the object seem much more rough and realistic. The next step to the egg would be the animation of it hatching. I did this by using key frames and the soft selection tool, lowering and expanding points to create an opening at the top of the egg.

Once I had done this I created the environment that the egg would be placed in. This had to be a dark cave like setting. So I first created the ground using a box and the soft selection tool to make it an uneven terrain. The material added to this was a simple brown dent map with a smoke bump map added to give it more depth. The environment backdrop was a bitmap of a cave just to keep to the theme. A tunnel was added as to give an entrance to the cave where the camera would later travel down, this was made from a cylinder with another cylinder extracted from it using the Boolean tool. As in the films any nest of eggs was surrounded by what can only be explained as a stringy ectoplasm. To create this effect I used multiple planes rotated at angles as to intercept each other and then added a wire material to them. Adding a green/yellow colour to them made them fit in with the eggs; the last touch to this effect was again to use the soft selection tool so that it wasn’t so flat. I proceeded then to clone the egg I have made. I made multiple eggs and then altered the key frame positions on the other eggs so that they didn’t all hatch at once.

The facehugger was much more complex than originally thought. The main body itself was easy, being a cylinder edited slightly with the soft selection tool to put curves where I needed them, and then a simple mouth layered on top. The tricky part of the creature was primarily its legs and then its tail. This was because they required bones to be added to allow movement. The tail was made from a cylinder and slimmed out to a point using the soft selection tool. Once the bones had been added to this it allowed me to curl the tail round into the body so it didn’t look so stiff. The legs were initially going to be made individually as to allow various movements in each but I found this to be complex as it had the tendency to mess up when rotations were needed. So in the end one leg was made with fully working bones and cloned so there were 6 legs total, this also meant when I wanted to change the original legs bones they would all correspond, which was ideal for a jumping movement. The materials used on the facehugger were all custom bitmaps. The body and legs used a sample actually from an image of a facehugger, though the body sample had to be rotated and laid differently as to look acceptable. The mouth was also a bitmap taken from an image of a fish, for its sharp scary teeth. The facehugger once complete was scaled down and placed inside the front egg, so that it could move up and out once the egg had hatched. It would proceed to jump out the egg and straight at the camera (as if it was a person) and latch on to their face, causing them to fall to the ground and then fade out.

Only 2 lights were needed during this animation, one of which would spend the majority of time flashing. The flashing light was to set the scene, as in all Alien films, that when you don’t have constant vision it creates a spookier effect. Again this light had a tint of green to it to match and highlight the surroundings. The second light was purely to make sure the scene never delved into pitch black.
The camera used was a free cam so that I could manoeuvre it as I wished. It was a short movement it had to do, going down the tunnel to the nest and getting attacked by the facehugger. This involved using a key frame of the camera ‘standing up’ and then another later with it side on, lying on the floor. The tween made here would make it look as if the person falls over, with it all the time having the facehugger its only view.

There was hardly any video editing required as such for this animation, only fades were used. The sound editing was a bit more substantial this time round using multiple sound clips layered on top of each other. There are 2 background tracks playing over each other to make the eerie sound effect and then still effects were needed for the egg hatching and the noise of the creature itself. These were mixed together in Audacity and put to the timing they were needed at.

Lord of the Rings

This was my third and final ident, whilst possibly also being my favourite. I started my scene by creating the basic landscape, which could be edited later on to fit my needs. This was created by making a box and initially adding a Displace modifier to it. This made a couple hills from the flat surface which would work as my ‘islands’ or water bank. The water was created from a flat plane, brought up to the level as to hide the lower segments of the ‘land’. To make this plane look like it was water was down to the material and the environment. A flat mirror effect was added to the Reflection map with its distortion levels being set to ‘use bump map’ that was to be added next. The reflection map level was kept at 100 for maximum effect. A bump map was then added using the Noise effect, the size was increased to 15 and set at a default phase of 20. I felt that the water needed to display some colour rather than just be a clear reflection so I set the basic diffuse colour to a dark teal, however I found this to make the water look either too murky or as if it were solid. To solve this problem I edited the opacity level down to 50% making a much more realistic effect. The final stage to my water was to animate it; this was a simple procedure of selecting my end frame in my animation, creating a key frame and editing the phase property in the bump map to 30. This gave the illusion of a current or ripple effect on the water.

My next step was to place this scene within its environment. I tried just placing a bitmap in the environment slot, but this looked too flat. So I set about creating a spherical setting. This meant I created a large sphere, ensuring that the other objects were all placed inside. I then converted the sphere to an editable mesh and went about placing my material onto it. The material I used was a custom bitmap of a cave, I set it to 2sided to ensure that it would be visible on the inside of the sphere, and sure enough it worked perfectly.

After having the environment in place I went back to look at my land. I had to cover the majority of the edges as to create depth. So I used the soft selection tool to stretch out and imperfect the curves of the rocks. Once this was done I finally added my material to them. This was a combination of a grey Stucco Diffuse map and a Noise Bump map set to turbulence size 7 to get the effect I desired.

The ring was made from a tube and downsized. A simple yellow material was added and later tweaked so that it gave some reflection and gave a self illumination. It was also made to be faceted; this was so the edges of the ring were defined. Though this was simple to make the next part was the more challenging, as this ring had to bounce down a rock and stop. This meant I had to use the reactor engine. Originally there were only 2 objects in the rigid body collection I made; the ring and the land. The land was set to unyielding and the ring to a light weight with its elasticity being edited to allow for it to bounce. I found however the land was too varied and did not allow for a path down for the ring, instead it would fall of to the side. To counteract this I made a box to act as its runway. It was added to the rigid body collection and set to unyielding; this worked perfectly but would need to be hidden just under the layer of land as to not be visible. To do this I rotated and placed the box in position and applied the same rock material to it to try and camouflage in more. As for the rigid body collection this meant that the main body of the land could no longer be set to active, so I swapped it to a phantom object; this meant I could see it when I previewed the animation but it would not affect the rings bounce. Once the runway was lined up so I was invisible and only just under the land I set about creating the stopping point/platform. A simple rock was made for the ring to bounce against and stop, this was done by creating a box and turbo smoothing it to create a rough rock shape. A platform was needed for the ring to rest on at the end and so just like with the runway, a box was made and placed hidden just under the land.

The last 3d element I added was to add to the imagery of the arena being a cave. I created several stalagmites to ‘hang’ from the ceiling. Although the bottoms of them are only visible at a couple points the main reason for this was due to the reflection off the water. The stalagmites were created using cones and edited with the soft selection tool making a more jagged shape. The material added to them had the same properties as the material used for the rocks except a brown tint was added in place of the strong grey colour.

The Lighting used in this scene consisted of 2 omni lights. The first of which was used to create a dim tone and cast shadows. The light was set to a dark grey with an intensity of 1.5. The 2nd light in the scene was to brighten to scene up slightly and to cast rays of light. The light was set to a teal colour with an intensity of 1.0, lens effects were added to give a glow and rays from the light, the rays again were set to a teal colour.

The camera used for this animation was a free cam moved along to show various points of the area. I felt like I wanted to show as much of the water as I could so I made a swing round of the area leading the viewer to behind the ring as it makes its first bounce. This also allowed for a dynamic view of the ring bouncing down and finally when it rests for the camera to zoom in on it.

Video editing was minimal once again as my animation was all in one shot, fades were added again to transition in better. The Sound was made in audacity using a variety of sound clips drawn from the internet. A musical backtrack was placed with speech over the top, ensuring that the speech was louder than the music. The main focus of the whole animation was the ring bouncing so the sound effects for this were the loudest however I found it a good idea to show the ring losing momentum by making each bounce noise quieter as it progressed.