Final Idents

And now, I present to you the final three idents. I will also explain the changes I made to each one, except for the rather obvious inclusion of sound.

SRTV Ident 1 - Ton Weight


Ident 1 now has a background, a detailed grass texture (because hair and fur for grass takes way too long to render), omni lights and some shadows. The camera angle has also been changed, and the camera at one point has been animated so that it moves up and down quickly, so that you can really feel the *THUD!* as the SRTV branded ton weight hits the ground.


SRTV Ident 2 - Curry


The camera angle hasn't been changed much, but you can now see flames coming out of the curry before and after Ste sips the bowl, which hopefully makes it easier to tell that it's super hot. A window replaces the purple rectangle that was there previously, and the wall has also been decorated with wallpaper, replacing the yellow that was there previously. No lightning was included as it didn't work as I wanted it to, although a familiar looking holiday photo has been placed on the table... and for some reason, I also used wood materials for the window and photo frames, which probably can’t be seen too well in the actual video, so it took longer to render than it needed to.


SRTV Ident 3 - Space Shuttle


No major changes here, although the angle of the shuttle was changed in places to make its flight look and feel more natural, as previously it felt more like it was sliding along a surface. In both this and the original version, there is also an omni light. Initially I didn’t think I would need it, but without it Ste, the shuttle and the SRTV logo become invisible near the end of the ident.

And last of all, for those of you who want a better look at the holiday photo in Ident 2, here it is, complete with a photo frame:



It's basically just my August scene from last Semester, with the beach ball moved and Ste added, happily waving at the camera. I've always liked seeing these Easter Eggs in things, as they're always a nice touch, so I decided to add my own. It does seem kind of fitting that I made it into a holiday photo, especially since summer will be on its way soon.

So what did I think of this Module overall? I actually, surprisingly, thoroughly enjoyed 3D Modelling and Animation. I had my initial fears that I wasn’t going to be very good at it at all, especially at animating, but as it turned out I had a lot of fun with it, and my work came out better than expected, despite my modelling and animation techniques being very simple compared to that of other students’ work that I have seen.

Actually, this will probably be the only academic assignment of any kind that I will miss doing. It’s been a good run, and using a blog has been an interesting way of documenting my work as well, and it’s a much more relaxed approach compared to the essays and reports of other assignments. Although I think the most fun I had was seeing Ste, a personal mascot of sorts I have previously drawn on paper, come to life.

Will this blog ever live again? Who knows… but I hope you have enjoyed reading it as much as I have enjoyed making the stuff that has been put into it!

Tutorials

I think it's appropriate that I make the final versions of my idents the last post, so I will instead post the tutorials I used first, while explaining what each one was for:

Fire Material - http://3drockstar.com/creating-a-fire-material-in-3d-studio-max/
Fire Animation - http://3drockstar.com/creating-realistic-fire-using-particles-in-3ds-max/

Both of the above tutorials were followed for the same thing, that is, the flames featured in Idents 2 and 3.

Planet Earth - http://www.wonderhowto.com/how-to/video/how-to-create-planet-earth-in-3ds-max-154076/

That is a 3-part video tutorial on how to create the Earth, Moon, and a Starfield in the background, all featured in Ident 3

Explosion - http://www.the123d.com/tutorial/3dsmax3/explode01.shtml

This tutorial I only partially followed as it later became more complex, although I was able to learn how to make an appropriate material from it. Note that this was for the firey blast coming from the explosion, not the actually exploding of the shuttle, which was the bomb space warp.


Grab your box of tissues and prepare to blub as the next blog entry will be the last one.

Ident 3

This is, so far, the most complete one out of all three of my idents. Using the Space Shuttle featured in my previous entry, as well as a tutorial that helped me to make Planet Earth, as well as a star field in the background, this is what I have at the moment:




Poor Ste.

I will provide a link to the Planet Earth tutorial later, but now I will go through how I made the star field. Instead of using Render to render the video, I used the Video Post function: in that window, I clicked on a button labelled “Add Scene Event”, which allows you to choose the viewpoint or camera from which the video will render, and also allows you to apply settings such as a motion blur. Next, I clicked on a button labelled “Add Image Filter Event”, which then brought up this window:



I selected “Starfield” from the drop down box, and then on the setup button which allowed me to edit settings such as the star brightness, size and count. Next, the “Add Image Output Event” button was clicked, allowing me to select a save file and location. Finally, a button that looks like a running man, “Execute Sequence” was clicked, which then began the video render. This ident took the longest out of the three to render, and yet it also has the smallest file size...

While I’m at it, I may as well go through how I made the space shuttle explode. Basically, it's a funtion within 3DS Max that's called a Bomb Space Warp. To make an object explode, you simply look for the Bomb in the space warps menu under the create panel, drag it into the scene and link it to the object to make the object explode.



In the above screengrab, I've labeled where I've placed the bomb. It doesn't need to be placed directly into the object to blow it up.

It sounds easy, but you can't just put it straight in without changing the settings: to get the explosion to look just how you want it to, you need to adjust the settings, for example the detonation time, otherwise the object will blow up straightaway, like in this video for example:



As for the fiery blast in the ident itself, that's actually a sphere with a specially made material. I attempted to follow a tutorial which demonstrated how to make a nuclear explosion, however, only the making of the material proved to be useful in the end.

Now I need to go and get my other assignments done as well, but in my next entry, I will post videos of the final versions of the idents, complete with sound!

Space Shuttle

In my third ident, Ste will be exploring the Final Frontier... in this:


This space shuttle was fairly simple to make, as all I really did was recycle my plane from last semester, making the neccesary changes to make it look less like an airplane and more like a NASA Space Shuttle... or at least, something closely resembling one.

Immedietedly after making it, I made a couple of simple animations of the shuttle in flight. Here's the first one, where it flies down and pulls back up:



And in this second animation, it's going to "Do a Barrel Roll!"

Ident 2

Based on another random idea that entered my head, here is Ident number 2, in its early stages of development.




Here, Ste is shown happily sipping a bowl of curry/chilli/whatever your interpretation is of what's in the bowl... until he discovers that it's super hot and spicy, resulting in him running up and down the room breathing fire.

In this animation, there are actually two versions of Ste, with the one breathing fire acting as a sort of "stunt double". Here's a screengrab showing how the scene has been laid out:



Ste 1 is initially shown in the foreground, sipping the bowl. As he disappears off-screen, Ste 2 starts to run from left to right, with the flame moving at the same speed, making it look as though the flames are coming out of his mouth.

If you look carefully, you'll notice that Ste 1 has the original, motionless pair of legs, which you'll see if you pause the video about 6 seconds in... so he's basically sliding away from the table before Ste 2 runs in with the moving pair of legs.

More test animations

Here are some more test animations, showing the facial expressions as featured in my previous blog entry.

Firstly, the happy face:




And here's the other test animation I made, which is of Ste running. I previously attempted to use bones to animate his body, but that was difficult to master, so instead I've just adjusted the pivot points of a secondary pair of legs I made for him, and used key frames to animate the legs.




The legs are both moving at the same speed as each other, so they create a motion blur for a humourous effect.

But wait... what exactly did I mean by a secondary pair of legs?

Basically, the legs of the original character model are one solid object, which I initially hoped to animate using the 3DS Max bones. As previously stated, I had difficulty learning to use that function, so instead I replaced the legs with a pair of cylinders and adjusted the pivot points, making them easier to animate. Here's some screengrabs showing his two different pairs of legs:



The first pair of legs is (are?) used when his legs are not moving, for example, when he stands still for most of the first ident. The second pair is used when I need to make them move, like in the above test animation.

Facial Expressions

In my second ident, Ste will be displaying more emotions and facial expressions than his standard blank stare, blink, and the wide-eyed, surprised facial expression seen briefly in my previous test animation.

The following two screengrabs show the two new expressions that will be showcased in my second ident. First of all, here's a "happy" face:



Continuing with his Anime-influenced design, Ste is shown here with two "n" shaped closed eyes, which in Japanese Anime is used to show happiness. To make them, I used a Torus shape, which is basically like a ring, and manipulated it to suit my needs.

Secondly, here's a more... well, not-happy-at-all face:



Here, Ste is shown with his eyes squeezed shut and his mouth now open. This kind of facial expression, unlike the happy one I made, is not used exclusively in Anime, but has also been seen in American cartoons such as South Park. It could mean any of the following: anger, pain, fright, frustration or despair.

Test animation - Ident 1

Here's a short animation I made, which was produced mainly as a basis for me to follow while making my idents. I'm pleased with how it turned out, so it will be enhanced later to be made into my first ident.



It's kind of a throwback to older Looney Tunes cartoons, so a sound effect from those cartoons... you know, the long, whistling sound that's made while Wile E Coyote falls down a cliff, will be used in the final version of this ident.

There are actually two versions of Ste in this Ident: one of them, the first one you see before he gets squashed, is moved underneath the surface as the anvil hits the ground. The second one was actually squashed to begin with, although he is invisible until the ton weight is lifted from the ground.

Before I finish this post, here's an unused version of Ident 1, with a slightly different ending...



This one, in my opinion, does feel more cartoony, but as you can see there were a couple of slight technical issues with the character model, where the hands were slightly removed from the arms, and the closed eyes for some reason appeared, making him look as if he has eyelashes. These problems could easily have been fixed, but I prefer the ending I went with.

Moodboards

Unlike last semester's project, these moodboards will not be related to the idents themselves (mainly because I feel doing it like that might be awkward, since it's difficult for me to translate the ideas swirling around in my head into a photo collage or something), so instead they will be related to things within the idents, like the mascot, Ste, and the company logo.

First of all though, here's a moodboard which actually features moods:


This first one describes the emotions people might experience while watching one of my idents.

Secondly, here's one going into deatil about Ste's design a bit:



And finally, here's a bunch of prototype versions of the SRTV logo, showcasing different fonts that I liked and played around with.

Research Board

Before producing my idents, I need to know how to put one together in order to make the channel recognisable, and the idents easy to remember. For reference purposes, here is a Research Board that I threw together, showing a few iconic TV idents that channels have used in the past.



The idents above are good examples for me to follow. Some of them are recognisable because the logo takes centre stage, being manipulated in interesting ways, while others feature a mascot character doing funny things.

The ones featuring a mascot character have more influence on my ideas than others, so my idents will be designed with my mascot character, and a sense of humour in mind.

My channel

I've decided that it's time to introduce the fictional TV channel that my three idents will be produced for. I present to you... SRTV!




I felt it would be easier to make up my own channel rather than use an existing one, as it allows me more freedom to do what I like. I even made up a company profile for the channel:

Founded by owner and CEO Steven Reeves in February 2009, SRTV currently has no other staff, or for that matter any scheduled programming other than three idents starring the company's mascot, Ste, with all three idents being produced by the owner himself.

It's currently not known what kind of channel this will be. Unfortunantely, due to the current financial crisis that the world is in, it is estimated that SRTV will cease operations by May or June 2009, ironically shortly after the apparent deadline for all three idents.

Character model - final version

I just finished modelling Ste, adding more detail to the head, as well as giving him a body, arms and legs.



The ears, like the eyes, were made using flat spheres and placed on either side of the head. The body is a box which has had meshsmooth applied to it, and the arms are each made up of two cylinders - one for the sleeve and the other for the arm - and a sphere for the hand because I'm lazy.

The legs were also made from a box, with two parts underneath extruded before applying the meshsmooth modifier. The feet are made from a sphere which had one half deleted.

Here's another render, showing the detail I've added to the head:

The earlobe and hair are both materials made using Photoshop. For the earlobe, I simply typed in a letter 'S', flipped it upside down and modified it slightly, deleting parts where neccesary. I then flipped it around for the other ear.

Finally, a very small yet annoying problem I found with the sleeves: they look fine within 3DS Max itself, and yet when rendered, the insides of the sleeves just disappear for no reason. Here are some screencaps for comparison:



I have no idea why it does it, but it is quite a nuisance, especially since I cannot find any way around it.

Character modelling - head

My TV idents will mainly feature a character, acting as my made up channel's mascot, having mini adventures or whatever I plan on doing with him.

So far, all I've done is his head:



I've named this character "Ste", taking just the first three letters of my name, as I normally would after getting a high score on a videogame.

Before I started on this, I looked everywhere for a character modelling tutorial of some sort, and also one on how to make his hat. After giving up that search, I decided the best thing would be to learn how to do it myself.

Basically, for the head, all I've done so far is used a sphere, applying materials to colour the top half red for his hat and the bottom half his skin colour. Then, I converted the sphere into an editable mesh, and selected an area of red at the front to extrude as the peak of his cap.

For the eyes, I've taken inspiration from Japanese Anime and Manga, particularly a character style known as "chibi", or alternatively "super-deformed", and have given him a pair of big, black, cute eyes and a blank facial expression. Originally, I planned to use bitmap materials for the eyes, as I initially felt that making the eyes in 3D would be difficult – ironically, modelling the eyes turned out to be far easier, and they look much better than I anticipated.

I have also done a test animation of sorts, but all I've made him do is blink:



Basically, I made him blink by adding two boxes which appear when the eyes disappear: I simply right clicked on the objects, chose object properties and adjusted the visibility for each key frame of the animation.

I'm pleased with how this is turning out so far, hopefully by the end of this week I'll have done a bit more to him.

Week 3

During this week's lecture, we learnt how to change the appearance of a shape by morphing it, and taking the form of another shape.

The video we watched was a bit too fast for me to keep up with, so after watching, I had to play around with 3DS Max on my own to see what I could get. I'll probably end up not needing to use this for any of my idents, but I'll explain how this works anyway:



I started off by making a box (the purple one, as shown above) with two height segments, and then cloning it twice. With the first copy (green box), I converted it into an editable poly , and then using the edge selection and scale tools, changed the shape of the top segment. I did the same with the second copy (silver), except I changed the shape of the bottom segment.

Next, I selected the purple box, and then Morph from the modifier list. I added the green and silver boxes as seperate channels, changed the number (which represents morph percentage) for each channel to 100, and the purple box could now take the shape of both of the other boxes, as shown in this video:



So that is how the morph effect works. As I said earlier, I may end up not using this function of 3DS Max, but that will depend on what I want to do with my idents.

On a side note, if anyone reading this knows me well enough you'll probably know why I picked those particular colours for the boxes. :p

Tutorial 2

Today we learnt how to assign an object to a path as a way of animating it. The way to do this is to insert a spleen, like a line or a circle, and then click on the object you want to assign to the path. Go to the animation menu and click on the Path Constraint button.

This can also be done with cameras, so that you can have the camera follow a path. The screenshot below shows a camera that has been assigned to a spleen.



When animated, the camera will follow the spleen, and move around the inanimate objects I have placed around it. Here is the animation:



Admittedly the camera's movement is very twitchy, and this is because of the way the spleen was drawn. When I come around to using this function in future, my spleen drawing skills will need improving...

Back to work...

After having a month or so off, I'm now back to 3D Modelling, or rather, 3D Animation. Admittedly I've been dreading this a bit, but after learning some very basic stuff during today's lecture, I'm feeling a bit more confident.

Our assignment for this semester is to create 3 different TV idents, with all three sharing a similar theme, for example how Channel 4 currently has objects floating in the air to form a 4, and how BBC 2 used to have a number 2 on wheels.

Today's lecture mainly revolved around learning how to use Key Frames, much like in Flash, as well as a Curve Editor to aid us in animating an object. We were shown how to bounce a ball, in order to start off nice and simple, but I decided to take it a small step beyond that...




So yeah, this is my first ever 3D Animation. Go me.