The End!

I have thoroughly enjoyed this module.Throughout this module, I have learned many valuable lessons and skills including, the particle system, modelling using reference planes, low poly models and the reactor tool.

I really enjoyed working with my group, we seemed to work well together, and managed to complete the assignment in the given time.

I look forward to having Richard next year for 3D character modelling

The edit

This was one part of this module that I felt very comfortable, I am really familiar with this software so I was able to a lot of the editing. Between Joel and I, we managed to complete editing and complete the final production

PDP - Finished

My choice for personal development was using reference plances to build a complex poly model. I succeded with this task, I used reference planes to build my aircraft (B5N). To begin with I found this difficult, I was unfamiliar with the tools needed and it took me a long while to get the hang of, but with Richards help, I managed to complete my aircraft to a high standard. (earlier posts demonstrate this)

Lights, Camera, Action...

Time seems to be creeping up on us, so even though our scenes aren't all completed yet, I decided to begin placing the scenes we have finished into Premiere Pro with the sounds we have collected to start peicing the animation together and begin editing.

As it has been a while since I had last used Premiere Pro, it took me a while to get back into and I made a few initial mistakes with the settings as I opened the software, after this though, I was well on my way. I will continue this on Wednesday.

Music and sound

I decided to have a look and collect some sounds for the animation. The music we decided on as a group is a track called 'Time' by Hanz Zimmer. This track is from the film 'Inception'. To retrieve this sample, I went to youtube and used a youtube converter site to convert the video into an mp3 file format. The sample is about 4 minutes long, so depending on the length of the completed animation, I can edit the sound accordingly in sound editing software such as Logic Pro or Adobe Soundbooth.

In class Joel and I made a list of all the sound effects we are going to need for the animation, these include:

Sound Track
Planes Taking Off
Plane Engine/Propellars
Radar Noise
Buttons Clicking
Heartbeat
Bomb Click
Air Raid Siren
Explosion Noise

To collect these I used freesound.org. I saved these in a seperate file and will import them into premiere pro.

Scene 6

Another scene I will be animating is scene 6. During this scene we see a fleet of aircraft flying towards the island. For this scene I used some of Dimitars aircraft and some of mine. I placed them in a 'V' formation. I used the same method for this scene as I did for scene 4.

I used the same sphere as an environment, but I used the uniforme scale tool to increase the size.

I used a target camera to capture the scene, this time, though, I moved the camera manually. I used the auto key function to move the aircraft fleet forwards.

scene 4

One of the scenes that I will be animating is scene number 4. During this scene, we see a japanese plane flying, the camera moves around the aircraft so that the viewer can take a good look at the model.

For this I used Dimitar's aircraft and created a large sphere. I applied a cloudy sky map to the sphere and im propertied selected 2 sided. this shows the map from the inside of the sphere, also in properties I selected self-illumination and changed the value to 60. This gives light to the object so no lighting is needed. I then placed the aircraft inside the sphere.

I used a target camera and created two circular splines, one around the fusilage of the plane behind the cockpit, and one infront of the cockpit just behing the propellars. I attatched the camera the the rear spline and attatched the target to the front spline, I then moved the camera and target around the aircraft in a circular motion.

Harbour

For the animation we need a harbour. Pete is working on the environment, however, we decided to build the harbour seperately and import it into the environment. I took on this job. To begin, I created a large box and assigned a concrete material to look like a harbour, I then imported the water I had previously made. I imported various different models that the team had made for the harbour.

The battleship and a small building from Joel, the jeep and aircraft hanger from Dimitar and my prop modells such as crates, lamp posts and buildings. I put these all together to make a realistic harbour.

I used soft selection to change the ground behind the harbour into a more rugged, reaistic ground and applied a grass texture. I made a road simply by changing the colour of the polygons to black.

In the scene that we will use the harbour for, the captain of the battleship looks out of his window and sees the jeep driving past, for this we used the auto key function and moved the jeep along the road.

In the animation environment settings, I used a cloudy sky map in order to give the harbouor an environment

Here is the harbour:

Building

In order to create a realistic environment, buildings will need to be put on the harbor and island itself. as I had never made buildings before I decided to have a go. I followed a tutorial that Richard put on his blog in order to make a low poly model of a building.



To begin, I downloaded the bulding textures provided via link under the video. I created a plane. I then used the material editor to apply the building material to the plane. I used the ring tool to select the edges around the building, I did the same for the opposite edges. I then used the connect tool to connect these edges.

I then used the extrude and inset toold to create the windows and balconies. I used the array tool to create the 3 other sides to the building.

I finally just drew another plane to make the roof. This is the finished building

Water

Using the Tutorial Richard showed us, I set on making some water. I made a sphere as something to drop into the water so I could see the effectiveness of the water with ripples.

To begin making the water, I created a plane and went to Animation > Reactor > Create Object > Water. I then just used the mouse to draw the water out.

I used the reactor tool as shown below to modify the water to create the desired realistic effect.

 

Here is the finished object. I will now use this to create the harbour scene

 

 



Lamp Post Model

For the animation, we will need lamp posts for the environment. My first thought when constructing the lamp post was a thought back to last years 3D modelling class. In one of the first tutorials, we used a tool called the lathe tool. This enables you to use a spline of half an object and it will symetrically encorporate the half shape into a rounded full shape, we made a chess piece using this method

I thought this would be an excellent tool to use for the lamp post. To begin I did some quick research into what lamp posts looked like in the 1940's and came up with this picture as a guide:

 

The first thing I did was to draw half the lamp post in Illustrator

 

 

 I then imported this into 3DS max and used modify > lathe. This left me with a lamp post shape. I converted this shape into an editable poly.

Crates

My next models on the drawing board are environmental props like crates, lamp posts desks etc. The first of these I made is a crate.

To do the crate I willbe using a technique that Richard showed us in a tutorias a couple of weeks ago.

I began by drawing a box, I then selected one edge and used the ring and connects tools to create more edges. I then extruded the middle polygons inwards on all sides.

Finally I applied a wood bitmap as material and added a bump map to make it more textured and realistic.


Here's the finished product:

Plane materials

This is my finished plane. The materials were added using the material editor. I used images I gathered using research to encorporate an accurate portrayal of the colour and patterns on the planes.

For the cockpit I used a raytrace diffuse and added a reflective map, changed the specular level and glossiness to give is a glass type material.

I added a sky picture in the render as the environment just to see what the plane looks like in the sky

plane model complete, (no materials)

After 3 different attempts; I finally finished the model of the B5N. It has taken me a long time as I have never made a complex object like this before.

The propellars I made from a box and manipulated the vertices into a propellar shape. I copied the blade so I had 3 of the same, i then used the link tool to connect the plane and proppelars.

Getting There 2

Particle Systems

Today we looked at particle systems. I've never used particle systems before so this lesson was really important for me as I wanted to learn a new skill.

This skill could also be used in our animation to create smoke and fire in the attack. These were the two things that we learned in the tutorial.

The first thing we looked at was smoke.

The first step of the process was to select particle systems from the create drop down list. I then drew one onto the workspace and was given the object in the above image. I then selected the super spray selection. I then selected load/save presets and selected hose. Moving the time slider allows you to see the effect in mosion, as displayed below

I then went into the particle generation tab and changed a number of different presets until I was left with the effect that I wanted.

The next step is to add materials to the polygons. I used the diffuse selection to add noise, I also added a gradient to the smoke. O nrendering, I added a blue background to act as sky.

To create fire a similar process was followed, however the presets were different. When adding matreials I still added both noise and radial gradient, I used yellow and red for the gradient.

This was the fire result:

Getting There...

Personal Development

During these first few weeks of this module, I have learned many new skills, these include smoothing groups and low poly modelling with help from Richard's tutorials(see older posts), however, the skill that I have learned and used the most is using reference planes to accurately model a complex object. I developed this skill by watching various youtube tutorials (there are hundreds), and reading some written tutorials online.

I have never used this method before and am finding it both useful, and although the method is quite fiddly, I find I am getting used to this way of working and really like the fact that it gives a more acurate portrayal of the model I am creating.

When I first started modelling the aircraft, I was using basic shapes and moulding them into the desired shape. I found this method difficult and it gave an un-proffessional, in-accurate result. I then discovered the reference planes and using the bottom of a box shape, used shift and drag to copy this object to the lines on the bluebrints. I used select and move to move the vertices to where the lines match those on the blue prints, I also learned  how to use the target weld tool. This tool is really useful as it allowes you to join vertices together, I used it when I needed to make a slanted shape, an example being the rear body of the aircraft going down to the tail, I joined two vertices of a square together to make a triange instead. With this, you can use select and move tool to reshape the polygons, as the objects are welded together, they can both me moved.

 

Smoothing Groups

Another tutorial we took today was looking at smoothing groups. Smoothing groups are handy when using low poly modelling as it adds no extra geometry to the shape, no extra fuss. To start I created a sphere, lowered the amount of segments to 24, so I could see whats goin on, The sphere currently has no smoothing groups assigned to it. I then selected all the polygons in half the sphere, and selected a smoothing group of 1. When rendered Half the sphere is smooth, and half the sphere isn't.

I then selected the other half of the sphere; polygons without the smoothing group, and added another (different) smoothing group to these polygons, I chose group 2, when rendered I'm left with one sphere with two different smoothing affects.

 I did one more change, I selected some polygons from the top half of the spere and gave those a smoothing group of three, this gave the sphere a different look, as seen below:

Low Poly Tutorial

Today we looked at some low poly modelling techniques. We had to make a shed. I started with a box from the create tab; we then converted it into an editable poly. The next step was to make a door; to do this we selected on edge, and used the ring tool, this selects all the parallel edges to the selected one. Then I used the connect tool to connect these edges. We use the settings menu to change the number of edges to two, then change the pinch and move the edges to where we want them. We then do the same for the other edges, but instead of having two edges, we only have one to make the top of the door. I then used the extrude tool to extrude a door frame, then the inset tool to make the door effects. I then made a window, using the same technique.

Main body

 

The main body of the B5N is long and slender, perfect for manouvering. The nose however is more bulbous. in order to create this, I made the body in two parts, the main body, and the nose.

 I started with the nose, I created a cylinder as it is the closest shape to that of the aircraft body. In the Modify tab I went for an Editable mesh and selected the vertex selection. I used this to mould the nose into the desired shape using the blueprints.

 



When I felt happy with the nose; I moved onto the main body. I again used a cylinder as a base point. I also used the same technique as I did with the nose, editable mesh and vertex selection. I made sure that I aligned the body with each blueprint to ensure that everythin all lined up and was the correct size. I then used the attach tool to join the nose and the main body together:

 

Propeller

The First Part of the plane that I am going to make is the propeller. At first I thought that I would make each blade individually, and then animate the rotation of the blades after completion.

However, after some thought, in the interest of rendering time, and RAM usage; I decided to make a circle shape, (made using the cylinder tool in the create tab) shape it to the thickness of the propeller using the blueprints and applying a materiel to the propeller that gives the illusion of moving blades,
like in the image below:

As you can see, the moving proppellers just look like a whooshy circle shape.

This is the tactic that I will apply when creating the propellar on my model.

The first step that I took to create this was to create a new cylinder shape, I then converted it to and editable poly and under the Selection menu selected the Vertex tool. I then used the select and non-uniform scale tool to align the thickness of the propeller to that of the image on the blueprints. I then added a Turbo smooth.

I then needed to make the tip of the propeller. To do this I made two more cylinder shapes, one smaller than the other, and centred them on the propeller (smallest on the outside). In order to bring thr outside nut into a point, I again converted them it into an editable poly then used the vertex selection tool and descaled the end to a tip.

Blueprints

Today I used some of the blueprints I found during researching yesterday. As the the different views were on the same image, I cut and cropped the different views in photoshop. I saved each individual view in a folder.

I then opened a new folder in 3dsMax. I am going to import each view into the software and use these as a base of my model, and then I will use poly modelling to begin making the plane.

When I had a new 3DS document open, I first created a new plane, I ensured that the dimensions of the blueprints (visable in windows explorer) matched the dimensions of the plane. This was done by changing the length and width of the plane in the object perameters.

When I was happy with the dimensions, I opened the material editor, I selected the diffuse box then selected bitmap, this opened a window that allowed me to browse the files on my PC. I selected the first blueprint and dropped the material onto the plane to apply the material, I then selected the 'show map in viewpoint' so I am now able to see the blueprint on the plane.

To save confusion, I gave each plane a sensible name, corresponding to which blueprint was on the plane.

I had a slight issue with the front view of the aircraft. when I applied the material to the plane, the material was the wrong way round, so I went into the modify tab and added a UVW map and used the gizmo to rotate and re-size the blueprint until it was in the correct position.