Summary

Over all I say I have good looking models and animation, but because I’m a gamming student I should have tried of made low poly models, while using techniques like normal mapping with materials to get the detail in the models. The animation of the models are good but they are a bit unrealistic, when R2D2 hit’s the wall R2 bounces back too far, its like the wall is made of rubber. I still got a lot of areas I need to improve on like animation and efficient low ploy modelling, and I should work on improving these in the future.

Post Production(Adobe Premiere)

Once I had all the files rendered I need to put them together with a video editing software, originally I was going to use Windows movie maker, but its not possible to have multiple audio tracks. I downloaded a trail version of Adobe Premiere. I watched a quick tutorial on how to use Premiere, as I have never used it before, I found the program easy to use and I can have multiple audio track for the video. I got my audio sample from 2 different website:

http://www.findsounds.com/ISAPI/search.dll

http://www.mobiles24.com/downloads/s/249798-3-star_wars-r2d2_scream

For the music I found an old copy of the star wars sound track on my computer. The music is by John Williams and is from the 3^rd star wars film. The song is called: Battle of the Heroes.

I made an overlay in Photoshop by using a transparent gradient, the overlay will be used to darken the edges of the video, I find this to be a nice effect for short animations/videos.

On one layer I applied the overlay for the full 30 seconds, on the other layers I have the video clips and sound files. I put a gap before last scene, to create anticipation as the viewer hear R2D2 screaming.

I used a three Way colour corrector on all the scene to soften the colours for the eyes, and to try and get that film look to the animation.

I also used a brightness and Contrast effect to counter some of the side effect from the three way colour effect.

On some of the audio clips I change their volume overtime, for instance when the mouse droids get closer the volume gets louder, and then gets quitter when moving away. I also doubled up the mouse droid audio file to get the impression that there is more than one mouse droid.

Problems

After I rendered the scenes I notice a couple of problems, for the materials on R2D2’s head and the mouse droid’s body they are set to world. The materials are not moving with the body because I made a mistake when setting up the materials. I don’t want to fix it at this point because I’m running out of time, and I don’t want to end up with more problems than I already have. The mistake is not that noticeable because of the low definition of the video, but it could have been a problem if I rendered the video in high definition.

Animating Scene 6

Just a quick scene/credits to show what happens to R2D2, and to show the credits.

Animating Scene 5

This scene is a lot like scene 3 but I have Vader’s shadow covering R2D2 slowly. I did this by a spotlight and using a cut-out of Vader. I attached the cut-out to the biped and need to exclude the biped from the light, so it doesn’t cast a shadow and ruins Vader’s shadow.

Animating Scene 4

This scene is for anticipation and to show R2’s fear of Vader. If I did not have this scene here, there would be about 15 second scene of Vader just walking to R2, what is slightly boring and doesn’t express any emotion to the viewer.

Animating Scene 3

As the camera angle for this scene is the perspective view of Darth Vader, I needed to get a walking effect, I decided to use biped and link the camera to a the walking effect. As Vader walks very slow I need to change the walking speed and how far the legs move. I used a target camera as I want Vader to always be looking at R2D2 to show that R2D2 is his destination.

Animating Scene 2

For this scene the mouse droids still follow a path, but R2D2 was animated by using the auto key function, the reason for that was because the directions R2 be moving in would not be that suitable to use a path. I linked all the different parts of R2’s to R2’s body, so all the parts stay together when it‘s body is animated.

First of all I did about 3 to 4 basic key frames for R2 hitting the wall, then bouncing of to a different direction. I used the curve editor to make the movement more realistic when R2 bounces off the wall then slows down and slides across the floor. I added a bit of rotation it the curve editor to show R2 trying to gain back control of it’s movements,. I uses off set movements to turn R2’s head before moving it’s body, what is seen in other animations.

Animating Scene 1

I thought the best way to animate the mouse droids was to have them follow a path, animating the droids this way will take less time and will look more realistic as the movements will be smooth. A good thing about having the mouse droids following a spline is that I can move the spline and it updates the current key frame, this help me to make sure that none of the droids go into each other.

On the curve editor I change the percentage of the droids, so they slow down and speed up at certain times, this makes the droids look more realistic when its moving.

Render Engines

I decided that I was going to use the metal ray render, as I prefer the end look compared to the default render. Although the mental ray render will take a lot more time to render, I worked out it will take about an hour to render each scene with the mental ray render, and this is not really a problem for me. From my understanding mental ray does calculate bounce light, unlike the default render, although I still put my own bounce light in the scenes to strengthen the bounce light effect slightly, as it was slightly to dark.. From the image you can see a real different between the two renders. There are lots of different render engines like V-ray that could make the animation look a lot better but from what I read, the rending time would be to high.

Bounce Light

I was checking round the internet when I came across an interesting article about lighting. Bounce lighting is where you have one spotlight at the top pointing downwards and another at the bottom pointing up. The bottom light is darker and the have a slight tint of the colour of the floor. Bounce light help to create a more realistic feel to the environment.

I made one render with out bounce light (1 Omni lights) and another with bounce light(2 spotlights ). I find the top shading for the bounce light to be a bit more realistic, although I think the bottom lights needs to be a bit brighter. I will use bounce lights as I’m going for a realistic approach to match my models, although having more lights will take a bit longer to render, but it should not take that much longer.

Week 10

This week I learnt about controlling object though attributes. This first thing I did was make a custom attribute called Turn, The Turn attribute ranges from 0 to 100 and will be the controller to rotate the 3D box.

In the reaction manager I selected the spline and chose the custom attribute Turn, so when value in Turn changes something will happen, but I need to tell the reaction manager what is going to happen.

I then made the 3D box a slave of the spline and created two states. The first state is when the Turn attribute is 0 and rotation of the X axes for the 3D model is be 0.0. The second state is when the Turn attribute is 100 and the rotation of the X axes for the 3d model is 0.360.

You can see when I change the value of the Turn attribute, the 3D box rotates on the X axes. This techniques can be useful in controlling object or multiple object more easily, A good example would be a car, you can use one object to turn both front wheels and the steering wheel just by changing a value, instead of changing each object individually.

Princess Leia's Ship Materials

Same with the other models, I applied the material to the polygons but did some things different this time. I used a Multi/Sub object to store all the material for the walls, then changed the material ID for the selected polygons for the material I wanted. I found doing multiple materials for objects much more organise by using Multi/Sub object.

This material is a bitmap that represents a control panel on the wall. Before making the bitmap in Photoshop, I exported UVW map of the polygon where the control panel will be, so I could get the correct size, the reason I did this was because the bit map would stretch to fit the polygon, and would not be the correct size/ would look out of place.

Most of these materials are very basic and there is nothing really special about them, I will mainly talk about the important one, as I don’t want to go on and on about the same thing.

With the floor material I wanted a bit of reflection as seen in the star wars films. From test renders, that slight bit of reflecting help in noticing the light hitting the floor.

As there will be some low down camera angles, I put a dent bump map on the floor to add some detail. The bump map with the reflection creates a nice look to the scene. I find the mix of the plain walls and the dotted floor really works together.

I used a self illuminating material for the top part of the ceiling as that’s the light source, I gave the material a tint of yellow, as no lights are pure white.

R2D2 Material

I don’t need to create materials with a lot of detail for R2D2, as the materials will be one colour, because of that I will not be using UVW mapping. The First material is A metal/silver material, I chose to put a hint of blue in the colour so it doesn’t look completely gray but more silvery.

The plastic template in in the Architectural was exactly what I was looking for, for R2’s body. I needed to turn down the reflection as it was two strong.

Originally for the head material I wanted a stainless steal effect, and for that I need to stretch the reflection. The only problem was I need to download V-Ray to do that, and using V-ray would make the rendering time to high. There were some other method that I saw like using a black & white photo and stretching it, but I could quite understand how to do that.

For the stainless steal effect I chose to use a noise procedural map and stretch it across one of the axes.

For R2’s orange glowing eye, I set the material to Self Illumination. I did some experimenting to make the orange glow but it put the rendering time up and the glow was not really noticeable, so I dropped the idea, and just kept the Self Illumination.

Mouse Droid Materials

I chose to texture the mouse droid by applying materials to the polygons, the reason why I did it this way was because I wanted to use procedural maps instead of bit maps, as I could get a better looking random material for the body. The current material that is shown in the image is used for the body of the droid. I used a Smoke procedural map what is a mix of two types of grayish blue, this gave the body a stained look so it did not look bran new. I applied a bump map to the material to give the body a rough look to it. From images online Mouse droid don’t look bran new or very old, I wanted to make the droid look respectable but also make it look like it been warned out slightly over the years but been taken good care of.

With the tilling I set the Y axes to be slightly larger than the others, this will stretch the smoke to give it a metal grain look which will make it more realistic.

I chose not put a lot of detail into this material, as there will never be a close up of that part of the material, so it be pointless to put a lot of detail into it.

The next material is very or exactly the same the body material, but has slightly darker colours so it stands out slightly to the body material.

I applied a bump map to this material as there is a close up of this part of the body in one of the scenes. The bump map is used just to give the exact bit of shading to the animation on the close ups, I’m not to sure if its going to be noticeable, but I’m just adding it in case.

From a bit of research I learnt about material Ids and that they have many purposes. I found that its useful for keeping materials organised. If I had more time I would of made Two Multi/Sub object, one to keep all the body materials in, and one for the wheel materials. The Multi/Sub object for the wheel contains two materials for the wheel, the tier and rim.

The colour of the material is not 100% black as it would be to dark and unnatural, so I chose to keep the material only slightly lighter than being completely black.

For the rim material I used a Architectural, the reason for that was after experimented with some reflections I found using a architectural to be easy to get the effect I want, although it is a bit limited on what I can edit on the architectural material.

Week 9

This week I learnt about rigging bones to objects. Once I made the bones and add a HI solver to make the bones move realistic, I my a short animation of the bones moving/bending, the next step is to rig the bones to the object.

I added a skin modifier to the object and added the bones which will control the object. When I watched the animation some of the polygons are going into each other.

I edited the envelopes what controls which bone controls which polygons, Although the polygons are not going into each other now, the object is out of shape.

To fix the shape of the object I selected a section of the polygons and added a joint angel deformer, this allows me to change the bumps to make smooth curves. I made 3 separate joint angel deformer for the 3 different joint areas.

The end result is a much smother and better looking transition when the bones move the object. By using the different tools you can simulate muscle movement what be good to make realistic character animation.