Location! Location!

This project entailed us to recreate a scene from a book description.  I chose The Hall of Elrond from The Lord of the Rings.  I had changed this from The Hobbit Hole from The Hobbit and then from the Dragon's lair from the same book.  I then went on to sketching ideas as well as a perspective sketch {to both be scanned in and added} of what it would look like from my imagination rather than from the films which helped me design everything in 3D.  I knew that the setting was from the fourth age so I looked at old styles of buildings, furniture and cutlery which helped me again to design objects to place into the interior.  I created mood-boards of my findings.  The description included things such as the great chair for Elrond sits on a dais, a chair where a woman sits under a canopy, against woven cloths upon the wall and at the time, they were at a feast therefore I set it just before the feast.  The interior would be fit for a king therefore I included other aspects such a large painting of the king, fire places behind the great chair and candle chandeliers.  In another scene, they were entering another room and it describes the type of doors.  I also put a theme of red and beige marble to fit this theme.  For more inspiration, I looked at church interiors as I decided that it would replicate this quite a bit.

At first, I had practiced modelling several things and some of these such as the vaults and the columns which I then developed into the rest of the interior and I included in the design as these were very similar to what I had designed for my interior.  I then looked at the design of the chairs I had created and modelled these as well as the cutlery.  The modelling of objects I found very easy to do as I've had a lot of practice to do this.  I used other techniques from previous projects to model these such as the lathe modifier for the goblets and plates and new techniques such as the loft tool for the chairs. 

After modelling everything, I applied textures.  I used the textures which I had photographed myself apart from the painting of Elrond.  I had used the channel mixer on Photoshop to apply different shades of the same material such as the marble and the wood.  I found the texturing easy to do although I feel I should have perhaps altered the marble effect on the stained glass frames and fire place frames a bit more to make it accurate.  I also feel I could have made my own stained glass design as I used one from the internet.

For the lighting, I wanted to achieve an evening glow with mainly firelight.  I feel I could have used more of a moonlight feel through the windows but this wasn't so much of an issue.  I had used a lot of lighting and I should have used a volume effect for a natural glow.  I should have also used Final Gathering which I had applied on my still renders rather than the clip as this showed better lighting and it looked more finalised.  This however would have taken a long time to render and it was already taking between 3-9 minutes per frame depending on the scene.  I reduced this problem by reducing reflectivity on the marble effect as this caused it a lot.  I feel by doing this, the reflections looked more realistic and I compared it to my own fire place at home which is where the texture was taken from initially.

The rendering of this project took a long time and I had to use 2 machines and cut some scenes short so that it would be done on time.  The end result however was still visually done well and I am satisfied with it.  I will need to find out ways to shorten rendering times but maintain a high quality for future projects of a similar nature.

Silent Comedy!

This project was to create a character rig.  First I had thought of two characters being a baby and a boy and then had written a beat script which allowed me to create a storyline around it:

                            

Silent Comedy Beat Script

1. Boy and baby watch telly in a cardboard box;

2. The cartoon on the television is of a rocket in an asteroid belt;

3. Boy imagines that he is in the asteroid belt with baby so they start to pretend that the box is a spaceship;

4. They are avoiding the asteroids;

5. Meow!

6. A cat is strolling around the living room;

6. Baby becomes fascinated by this;

7. Giggle!

8. Baby attempts to come out of the box/ rocket;

9. Rocket wobbles and goes out of course in the imagination events;

10. Baby is determined to come out;

11. Baby walks to the other side of the box;

12. Boy realises baby is about to fall out and is scared

13. Baby slides out of the box

14. Crash!

15. Spaceship is toppled over and hits an asteroid;

16. Boy looks over with a frown;

17. Baby is over in front of the cat;

18. Giggle!

I felt that the beat script helped me a lot in shaping out my project.  I designed the two characters.  The character of the boy had been originally been designed by my friend then I changed it a bit so that it would work for the project and the theme.  I had added a mouth, nose, hands and shoes.

My second character I completely designed myself which was of a baby.  I wanted to give this character a cute feel as I feel these work more successfully and can more of a feel of humour into it.  I feel I should have made the eyes larger to achieve this even more.

Using Mudbox I feel was very useful if I wanted to change clothing styles.  I decided to use this rather than use the material editor in 3ds as I could add a bit more detail onto it such as the nappy without having to edit the polygons too much.

After that, I modelled both characters in 3ds Max using a T-pose which is standard to be able to rig it to a good standard.  This was the part I felt comfortable with doing as I had practiced this a bit over the Summer for a few other projects.  I rigged the characters using CAT rigs and shaped the bones within my characters.  I had to do this twice as I did not shape the bones accordingly the first time.  This worked out well but when it came to editing the envelopes, I found this to be troublesome and judging from my final piece, I didn’t do it very well as there are parts of it that are still creasing wrong such as the shoulder of the boy towards the end when he falls over.  I feel I may have had to edit them further during the animation process.  I think there are other things that needed further research which make the bones attached to the muscle better as my arms and legs for my character are quite wide.

I started to animate the characters and create my storyline.  I was comfortable doing this as I think some of the timings could have been smoother and I should have shortened the length between some of the actions to make it flow better.  At certain points such as the blinking, I did these parts well.

Although the brief says to add only two characters, I also added a CAT rig to the cat as I needed something mobile to be a distraction for the baby.  This didn’t at all look smooth even though I had mesh smoothed it and edited the envelopes.  The envelopes on this for some reason were flat therefore did not cover the whole mesh properly.   To make the cat mobile around the room rather than in a straight line, I had added a standard walk onto it and then I needed him to pause in two places and start moving again.  I had to add both a standard CAT animation and a normal animation layer then play around with the Global Weights for both which allowed me to start and stop the rig.  I had to do this for the baby too so that I could have two styles of action.  I also added a path node onto the cat which is what allowed for the cat to walk around the room rather than in a straight line. 

Both the baby and the cat have both CAT animation and normal animation layers as they needed it.  The boy was mobile in the box and he was imaginary driving.  I should have had him gripped onto a toy wheel to show that he can pick an object up.  On the boy’s cape, I had used a wave modifier and attached it to one of the bones.  I should have used the wave and moved the cape as a separate element to make it more fine-cut and so that it did not go through his arm or the box.  The wave itself worked well by making it look like it was flowing.

My environment I created was all parts of my old pieces of work.  I had just imported them and used some of my own textures I had taken and quickly applied them which allowed me to spend less time on the environment but still make it work successfully.  I used After Effects and Illustrator to create the outdoor scene and the space/ alien part by using the skills I have used previously.

In conclusion, I feel that I need a lot more practice with character rigging and I think it will be useful for me to know as the gaming industry and film industry use this a lot and having skills in all areas to a good enough level is probably required in industry in case you have to change what you’re doing.  I would fine tooth the actions and sort out the envelopes to a better degree.  Some of the positions of things I would have also fine toothed such as the cape, the baby and the boy all in the box.  The parts I did achieve successfully in this project were modelling the characters, rigging the baby, creating a good flowing storyline, the path node, the morphing of the baby and the boy and applying sound effects in the right places.