Semester 2

In our first lecture we discovered how to make a basic animation of a bouncing object, in this case balls.

This video was made using key frames with the curve editor and dope sheet. Although the bounce doesnt look 100% natural I believe it to be of a good standard for my first attempt.

The task this semester set before us is to create an 'ident' for a television channel of our own choice.

Evaluation

Evaluation

Winter – Initially I was very pleased with the outcome of this image and it set the learning curve for myself. My main criticism I would have to make of it however would be that to my eyes it is clear that this was my first image. I believe this because as I look at my next two images I believe that the quality is higher, but this could just be my personal opinion. I would have liked to make the short animation fully rendered of the snow falling but as stated my laptop could not handle this, but I have included the early stages of the design with the desired snowfall effect.

Summer – I enjoyed making this scene but feel with more knowledge it could be greatly improved upon. I would have liked to include the sea but had no idea how to set about making water. This will be one of the things I hope to learn within the upcoming semester if at all possible. Another problem I found with this image is that creating depth is much trickier than first anticipated; I refer to the sand in particular here. I still feel the sand looks too coarse and flat as if it were gravel or stone. I am particularly pleased with my little play area of bucket/spade and sandcastles. This was just going to be an additional little thing to fill the image up more originally but I feel they came out really well.

Spring – I probably enjoyed making this image the most out of the three. I set myself the task of creating a flower, seeming rather difficult at the time. It was quite challenging to get the appearance correct but I think that made it more enjoyable seeing the improvement I was making. I also feel that this image very different to the others but as for why I cannot quite pinpoint. This image shows my progress with the tools within the program as I have used preset 3d shapes, splines and various modifiers; one of my favourites being the hair and fur modifier. My main criticism of this image would be the grounds original bitmap, it doesn’t quite blend with the grass as much as I would have hoped and so would be the only thing I would change in this image.

Overall I am pleased with the images I created and I feel much more confident using this program. I look forward to the next semester learning about other tools I have not experimented with so that I can create more professional images and even animations. I particularly found asking people’s opinions on my images, as I worked on them, useful as they gave me new ideas and pointed out problem areas which I had not seen myself.

Final Spring Scene

Spring

Spring Scene – March

Ground
- The ground was made using a flat plane. I added a bitmap of grass to this to create a base. I looked to improve upon the appearance of this by adding a bump map yet this still didn’t help a great deal. Soft selection was used to create hills, to which I then decided I could make grass. I made the grass by using the hair and fur modifier. The colours were altered to greens with the mutations being brown. The sheer number of ‘follicles’ was dramatically increased to approximately 30,000 with variations in positions.

Daffodils
- The stem of the daffodils were created using cylinders. This was then modified using the bend tool so they did not look like they are so stiff. A plain green colour was applied as no special texture was needed. The petal were created using splines, in particular ellipses. These were extruded and bent so they had a curve to them. They were then edited with soft selection to create the point at the end of the petal. These were then cloned and placed around where the head of the flower would be. The material used for the petals was originally going to be a bitmap, however the program stated this could not happen due to a rendering problem so I had to find an alternative. In the end I came to use the noise material with a bump map using both a yellow and an orange colour. The final modification to this material was to add a black self illumination, this created the patch effect seen on the flowers to make them seem as if the surface was not smooth but had little rises. The centre of the flower was made using a cylinder and the soft selection tool. The cylinder had to be more trumpet shaped and so needed points on the outer side, so this was done by grabbing points and pulling them out. The connecting side of the cylinder to the petals was made narrower by selecting the face and scaling down; this made the cylinder get wider and bigger as it progressed to the points of the trumpet. Clones were made of the original daffodil and then placed at various points on the image with being edited for height, scale and rotation.

Background
- The background was another bitmap image placed in the environment setting of the render tool.

Text
- The front of the image felt like it was missing something by having an open space. Originally tested with placing another daffodil at the front I came to the conclusion some text would look best. I chose to take an extract from a famous poem about daffodils themselves. I felt this gave a different look to my other images. The text itself was created using the text tool and then extruded to give it some depth. The material used to colour the text was a gradient from grey to white to grey. The specular level was then boosted to give the final effect of a nice crisp white.



Lighting
- I used two omni lights to brighten up my scene. They were both of the same intensity and same colour, again a soft yellow/orange colour. I only turned on shadows on one of the lights so not to confuse the origin of the primary light source. The shadow system I used was ray traced, and again I lightened the shadow intensity so not to overpower the image.

Final Summer Scene

Summer

Summer Scene – July

Ground
- This was made using a flat plane and adding a custom bitmap. The specular and opacity traits were modified to have the cellular material applied in sand type colours; this was to accentuate the sand effect. A bump map was also added using the same custom bitmap. This plane was then edited using the soft selection tool to create mounds and dips.

Towel
- The towel was created using a flat plane with a custom bitmap applied to it. This was then modified to have the cloth properties of silk, as this is the most reactant to the variations in the environment. The friction settings between the towel and the ground were increased so that when the settings were simulated it would not slip out of the entire image. The simulated state was then grabbed and lowered slightly so that it would appear some sand has been kicked up on top of the head of the towel. To create a more material effect to the towel the hair and fur modifier was used. The hair length and sheer number of follicles was reduced so that the overall effect made the towel look more 3d and woven.

Parasol
- The pole of the parasol was made using a cylinder and then tilting it to an angle using the rotation tool. The material used was very simple as all that was modified was the specular colour, being changed to a grey. The parasol top was created using the shape spindle. This was then edited using face selection and deleting one half. It was rotated and positioned on to the end of the pole. The material used on the parasol was a custom bitmap of tweed. This was then modified using the hair and fur modifier to create some depth. This was done in attempt to create a straw looking parasol.

Bucket
- The bucket was created using two cylinders and the Boolean tool. A smaller cylinder was subtracted from the cylinder visible in the picture to make it hollow. The material added to this was an anistropic flat red colour with a light red used for the specular highlights, which were increased from default along with the glossiness. The handle was created using a torus, scaling it both down and rotating it into position. A simple self illumination of white was set on this.

Spade
- The spade is made up using rectangular splines. These were extruded and then scaled to the correct size. The Boolean tool was then used to create the gap for the handle and the shovel part of the spade. The shapes subtracted from these were boxes positioned and angled at the desired location. The material applied to the spade was near identical to that of the buckets except that the colour used was green instead of red.



Sandcastles
- These were created using cylinders that were then modified using the soft selection tool to bring in the top face of the cylinder. Once that was done all that was needed was the material. The material used had the same basic bitmap as used for the ground but modified more intensely. Self illumination was added to brighten up the sand as it looked too dark without it; the colour used for this was a shade of yellow. Bump mapping was very important to the sandcastles, so much so the bump map is set to maximum to get the desired effect of the sand being compressed into each other.

Boat
- The boat in the background may not be very noticeable but I feel it adds to the image. This was created using a variety of shapes; the main hull of the boat was created from a box. This was edited using the scale tool by bringing in two corner points, creating an upside-down trapezium. The mast was created using a simple vertical cylinder. The sails were then made using a pyramid and finally to give the effect of motion a sphere was added between the boat and the sea. This sphere was edited with soft selection to create a tadpole like shape. The colours were kept very simple as vast detail was not needed in the object. The hull and mast were both set to a light brown colour, whereas the sail and the ‘motion sphere’ were set to white.

Background
- The background used was again a bitmap image. This time though rather than applying it to a plane I used the environment tool within the rendering options. This positioned the background perfectly to the rest of the image.

Lighting
- For this image I used Area Omni lighting. I increased the intensity of the light to create the illusion of a sunny day. I also changed the light colour to a soft yellow/orange colour so that the beach looked more inviting. I used ray traced shadows for this image and edited the shadow colour so that they did not appear too harsh and kept to the friendly warm atmosphere the image is portraying.

Final Winter Scene

Winter



Winter Scene – December

I wanted to keep this scene simple and make the main focus on the fact it was actually snowing.

Ground
- The ground was created using a simple plane with a custom bitmap added. I felt that there was no need to ‘bump’ this particular image, as it did not seem to look wrong for the environment it’s in. Instead I feel it gives the feeling of perfect untouched snow.

Fence
- The fence was a long box shape stretched out to fit the width of the image. The texture added to this object again was a custom bitmap file of vertical standing planks. This image was edited in photoshop to dim the colour to give the illusion the planks were weather treated.

Snowman
- The snowman is made up from 5 components. The main body and head are spheres that were elongated using the scale tool. Further modifications were carried out here using the soft selection tool to make the shapes less ‘perfect’. The material used for the snowman’s body was different to that used for the ground. The texture used was the ‘dent’ option pre-built in with the colours edited to fit the situation. A bump map was also included using the same texture with colours slightly darker and reversed around. The ‘carrot’ nose was created using the preset shape cone and then had a gradient texture added to it with variations of orange. The eyes were made with spheres, using the scale tool again to alter the shape from a perfect sphere. The material added to these eyes used the dent preset again with bump mapping in the colours of maroon and grey.



Shed
- The shed is made up of 5 objects, 4 of which are boxes. The boxes make up the bulk of the shed by creating the walls and the door with a window. The roof comprises of a prism. The walls materials all use the same bitmap but were rotated to fit their situation, so for example the side walls have the planks running horizontal instead of vertical like the front. The Window was created using the Boolean tool to subtract a small box from the main door box; this creates an indent in the door making it appear to have a window. A custom bitmap was then added to this flat surface to look like it is possible to see some of the contents of the shed itself. The prism roof was complex when it came to materials. The front had to show the materials interlinking all in different directions, this entailed rotation and face selection by breaking down the shape using the modify tool. The roof sides proved tricky when creating a snow effect. A custom bitmap was originally laid down for the roof that was simple roof tiling. This then had a layer of opacity applied to it with the same bitmap that was used for the ground. On top of this a strong bump map was applied using the normal bump setting and then the smoke material for both settings within. This gave a rippled effect, making the snow look both layered and uneven.

Snow Hill
- This used the same principle as the ground but was applied to half a cylinder to add depth to the picture and blend to the background by making the terrain look as if it sloped down.

Falling Snow
- This snow was created using the particle system in built to 3d studio max. Modifications were made to the default settings to make the effect look more realistic. The fall point was set above the scene so that it looked like a natural setting. The size of the flakes, variation in fall and tumble rate were all altered to get a still image that looked just right. An animation of this was made in the pre-rendering stages but was unable to complete a final rendered copy due to lack of power in my laptop.

Background
- Rather than set this bitmap as an environment scene I chose to create a plane and set it at an angle to create more depth to the image. By setting this image on a plane I could also choose what to show by adjusting the height of the plane.

Lighting
- I chose to use omni lighting and sky lighting for this image. The omni light was used to simply pick up highlights and so was set to a very low intensity. The colour of the lighting in both cases was set to an ice blue/white colour as to give the impression of the cold and reflection from the snow. The Sky light was set to the default intensity and was the main light in casting shadows; both used shadow maps with global settings.

Prototype Snowfall