Semester 2 - Brief

Brief -
Our first task of this semester was to research about Broadcasting Idents. An Ident which I remember clearly is the BBC 3's homevideo ident, which included videos from the internet of fans of the channel. They include introductions for programs, and adverts for the channel. This was memorable to me because it was unique in including ordinary people in their channel.

Research -
The channel I have chosen to do is the new UKTV channel called 'Watch'. I have seen many recent adverts for this channel on tv and think they are quite interesting. The scope for using this in the project is good, using the eye used in watch idents as a character which I can base my animation around. As this is a new channel there isnt many idents out there but here are a few images and videos which I found:

Here is a video of a couple of there idents. The quality isnt super but you can see reasonably clearly what happens -

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=CQ3b5eXDQIg
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=SMCaTsdRUfI


Here are a few still pictures from the Ident:

Animation

This semester we began by understanding how animation works in 3D Studio Max. The first thing I created was a simple ball, done by creating a sphere shape. Then I used the 'Set Key' tool and then slid the time slider along to the 50th frame, moved the ball to a different position, then pressed the key icon. Next I repeated this for the 100th frame. After, I used the curve editor to create a realistic curve to represent gravity. Then I clone the ball twice, and used the 'Dope Sheet' to alter each balls start point. This produced 3 balls which bounce independently next to each other. Here is the result:

Evaluation

January
The first image I created was the Winter scene. I thought of what I could include and the obivous thing everyone would think of in Winter is of course snow (although it seems to be rare these days). While creating this image it woke me up to how detailed 3D Studio Max really is, and how many functions I still havent used after completing this project. I enjoyed creating the water as it really made the image stand out, although it is evident that this was my first attempt, just by looking at it.

July
Secondly, I created the Summer scene. The first thing which came to mind was the beach and holidays, so I tried to incorperate these into one image by creating a set of small Islands. I thought this image looked the best of the three as it has a lot of bright light and clouds which really reinforce the fact that is a summer scene. I feel I could improve on the sand a bit, as if you look closely you can point out where the maps overlap. Also, I would like to have included an object such as a deck chair or sand castle to imprint a strong image of 'Holidays'.

September
This was the last image I created, and this is the one I struggled with the most for ideas. The thing that the majority of people would think of is falling leaves, especially since in America, autumn is widely regarded as 'Fall'. This then gave me inspiration to create a scene with leaves and trees in. I am quite pleased with the final result, although I would like to include actual falling leaves from the trees, if i knew how to produce this.

To conclude, I was quite proud of the images I managed to create, and feel I know a lot more about 3D Studio Max now. I also think I could probably consider any task set to produce using the software, as most of the basic and most used functions I got to grips with quickly during the period I used the software. I found tutorials on the Internet very helpful to me as this fits my style of learning, because I prefer to figure most things out by myself with only prompts.

Evaluation

September (Autumn)

Ground Texture - This was done by creating a plane on the workspace, and changing the material to a bumpy texture by selecting the 'Noise' option on the 'Bump' map selection. Then went onto photoshop and used the leaf brush and printed leaves all over a 600x600 selection of workspace. I then imported this into 3D Studio Max and used it as the texture of the floor. This produced quite an interesting result. I then altered the tiling number to make it look more realistic. After this, to make the horizon look more realistic, I cloned the ground plane and made it slightly rotated backwards so it looked steeper. This gave the appearance of a slight incline.

Trees - These were imported from the AEC Extended menu and positioned all over the plane in interesting positions, and by altering the scale slightly.

Compost Mound - This was created by making a sphere and changing the material to a much more bumpy texture. I used the 'Bump' map with the 'Noise' setting again, but I changed the tiling to 10 and the Noise style to the maximum. Then I used the same 'Noise' setting but for the 'Displacement' map which then made it even more jagged. Then I used the 'Convert To Editable Mesh' tool on the sphere and altered it even more to make it more distorted. Then I duplicated the sphere by using the clone tool and making the scale larger. Then I moved it under the initial sphere to give the whole image more curvature and look like a proper mound. Then I added the same material from the ground, to the pile of leaves.

Lighting - I created the light by including an 'Omni' light, in which I made sure the 'Shadows On' button was ticked to give shadows to all the trees and the compost mound. Then I moved it into the best place to highlight all the features of the forest.

Sky - This was done by creating the whole image inside a dome, which then had a material applied to the inside of it. The enviroment colour was initially set to a pale blue colour, so now all I needed to add was the clouds and texture. To do this, I made a material which was completely white, but in the 'Opacity' field on the maps drop down menu, I chose 'Noise' meaning the sky would only show parts of the background colour through it. I then changed the noise style to Turbulence to make it more patchy. Then I altered the other options like tiling and noise threshold to give the best results. Finally, to add the fading background to the sky, I duplicated the dome, and made it slightly larger. Then I changed the material to a new one, on which I changed the 'Opacity' map to 'Gradient' so the white parts of the sky will be stronger in the distance, like in the real sky.

July (Summer)

I began this scene by creating the hills which eventually became the Islands once the water had been added in later on.

Islands - This was done by creating a plane sized 2000 by 2000. I then look a black and white image from photoshop which depicted the high and low areas of the textured landscape. To do this, I click 'Modifiers' and selected the 'Displace' option. Then I chose the image of black and white, and changed the strength up to 200 to increase the results. Then I changed the material texture to a sand type which I had obtained from google. Then changing the tiling to 3 to make the sand more refined.

Water - I created this the same way as I created the lake earlier. I began by making a plane which was exactly the same size as the Island plane. Then I changed the material texture, by selecting 'Flat Mirror' on the 'Reflective' section of the image map drop down box. I then made it more ripply by changing the 'Bump' map to 'Noise' which made it more realistic. Finally, I brought the plane up so the level of water on the Islands looked higher.

Trees - I then began placing trees on the map by selecting the palm tree from the Geometry>AEC Extended>Palm Trees. Then I placed them in interesting position by adjusting the rotation and scale of each of the trees. Then I added a few smaller shrubs for a more realistic look.

Sky - This was created in the same way as previously. This was by creating the whole image inside a dome, which then had a material applied to the inside of it. The enviroment colour was initially set to a pale blue colour, so now all I needed to add was the clouds and texture. To do this, I made a material which was completely white, but in the 'Opacity' field on the maps drop down menu, I chose 'Noise' meaning the sky would only show parts of the background colour through it. I then changed the noise style to Turbulence to make it more patchy. Then I altered the other options like tiling and noise threshold to give the best results. Finally, to add the fading background to the sky, I duplicated the dome, and made it slightly larger. Then I changed the material to a new one, on which I changed the 'Opacity' map to 'Gradient' so the white parts of the sky will be stronger in the distance, like in the real sky.

January (Winter)

This scene was created initially by taking the water scene I had already created, and editing it to the shape of a lake and making the texture a bit more distorted and ripply. Then I began by creating the trees.



Trees - These were created entirely from my own shapes. I started off by making a long, thin cylinder and then putting a cone on top. Frankly, this didn't look convincing at all. Then I used the 'Convert To Editable Mesh' tool when you right click the image. Then, by altering the spots on the mesh, created a distorted version of the cone. To make it more realistic I took an image of a tree's leaves and applied it as a material through the material editor. Then copied the cone shape 3 times to created more branches and a bushier tree. To finish, I then copied the tree many times and scattered them around the lake.



Snow - This was created by making another plane which was bigger than the lake. Then I edited the material this was on by making it similar to the lake but without the reflection tool. I then changed the colours to pure white and gave it shadows by changing the ambient colour to black.



Lights - The lights were created from an omni light, reached from the create>lights>omni tools. I then selected 'On' for shadows, and placed it on the workspace. I then moved it in a suitable position so that it would give the trees shadows ontop of each other and highlight the features of the snow material.



Sky - The sky was done by creating the whole image inside a dome, which then had a material applied to the inside of it. The enviroment colour was initially set to a pale blue colour, so now all I needed to add was the clouds and texture. To do this, I made a material which was completely white, but in the 'Opacity' field on the maps drop down menu, I chose 'Noise' meaning the sky would only show parts of the background colour through it. I then changed the noise style to Turbulence to make it more patchy. Then I altered the other options like tiling and noise threshold to give the best results. Finally, to add the fading background to the sky, I duplicated the dome, and made it slightly larger. Then I changed the material to a new one, on which I changed the 'Opacity' map to 'Gradient' so the white parts of the sky will be stronger in the distance, like in the real sky.



Here is the result:

Water Texture

This was my first attempt at using Water as a texture and giving it a reflective surface. This was relitively easy to do and produced great looking results.

To begin, I drew a plane on the worksurface which was large enough to stretch across the width of the Perspective view. Then I press 'M' and brought up the material editor. Then I scrolled down to the 'Reflection' map and selected 'Flat Mirror'. This gave the plane a shiney look but looked a bit too reflective and not very realistic.

To make the water seem realistic, I used the 'Bump' map and selected 'Noise' to apply a bumpy texture which looked slightly like ripples in water. Then I selected 'Fractual' on the noise type so the water looked even more distorted and realistic.

Finally I added an enviroment of an old holiday photo I have as the background. This gave the reflections from the water even more depth and realism.

Here was the final result.