Review

Character

How does your final product compare with what you set out to create?

It differs in ways of how much detail went into the model itself. I was very ambitious when I started my product and what I was set out to do, however when actually doing tutorials and starting to develop my character I realised very fast that the overall outcome of my product would be a lot less detailed. However I created a human body with armour and looked real and this was therefore the main objective when I set out to create it.

Is the product appropriate to the target audience you specified in your creative brief?

I believe that my product suits my target audience well mainly because during the pre-production phase of the project, when we were discussing what the human race was going to look like, the target audience wanted a futuristic look however not too outrageous, for example Swords on fire and double the size of the character. Also throughout the production phase I showed my character as I went along to my peers and all the feedback was positive.

What technical qualities work well and which don’t?

Creating the model was a very difficult task from the start; however the technical side was quite simple after a certain amount of practice. For example it took me 3 hours to create a foot, however using the same principals of how I created my foot; I could create a perfect looking leg in 30 minutes. Therefore I grasped the software easily and this therefore gave me the ability to create the model easily. The main extruding was easy however attaching the parts of the model together and to weld the vertices was difficult at times.

What aesthetic qualities are successful and which are not?

When it came to texturing my character I found it simple to do basic aesthetics, however to do more elaborate texturing this would be out of my skill level. Therefore my aesthetics quality was not as good as I hoped when in the pre-production phase of my project. However overall I am very pleased with the result. The main aesthetic qualities worked well, such as the armour texturing; however the skin texturing did come out worse than expected.

Is the content appropriate to the overall style of the finished product?

I believe that my character fits well into my overall style that was set at the start of the project and could be used with other member’s models and environments easily.

Environment

How does your final product compare with what you set out to create?

When I was developing my environment the first main ideas was to do a futuristic city for the human race. I believe my final product is very similar to what I set out to create. I had a rough idea when I first set out to create my environment on what buildings I wanted to create and I believe my final product has everything that I set out to do, including the portal system and turret towers.

Is the product appropriate to the target audience you specified in your creative brief?

When I was given the role of creating the environment for human race, the only criteria I had to meet was to have a futuristic look and for the buildings to be made out of a metal sheeting material. I believe I met these criteria and therefore my product is appropriate for the target audience.

What technical qualities work well and which don’t?

The major modelling parts were easy to do and worked well within the final product. The main flaws within my environment were the lack of skill I possessed at the time of developing the product and also the time we had to create the products. I believe the actual buildings were modelled fine however in some cases, I used simple cube shaped models and simply added bevel and extruded to make a simple yet effect looking building. I believe all my models came out fine within my environment with the only set back is the basic design of the buildings.

What aesthetic qualities are successful and which are not?

The texturing within the environment was very basic however I used advanced lighting skills from using other modelling programmes to make an effective HDRI light which gave a nice lighting effect to the environment and also a good back drop of the environment, instead of just pitch black. I used basic texturing techniques such as applying a bitmap to a model in some cases; however I also used UV mapping and UV Unwrapping to make my buildings seem more realistic. I did this by tiling the images to create a metallic tiled effect that seemed very successful.

Is the content appropriate to the overall style of the finished product?

I believe my environments is fit for purpose and the over style of the finished product has the appropriate content.

Animation

How does your final product compare with what you set out to create?

When I set out to create my animation I was very enthusiastic to create a very advanced animation with many features involved. However it came to actually creating the animation I found Cryptic AR difficult to grasp and use. However I overcame this by making my overall animation less complicated and I therefore accomplished what I set out to create.

Is the product appropriate to the target audience you specified in your creative brief?

When we was discussing our projects I was told of any criteria that I needed to create in my animation, however as I was creating my animation I asked for peer’s feedback and I was glad to hear that it was all positive with only a few peers noticing certain areas to improve on. I then took this feedback and improved the parts that needed improving.

What technical qualities work well and which don’t?

The software itself was hard to grasp at first however once I figured out how to create basic movement and then the software became easy to use. I learnt how do certain poses for the animation easily and the only parts that went wrong was when the software gained a mind of its own and required advanced knowledge of the software to overcome these mistakes. However I overcame them and overall all the technical qualities worked well.

What aesthetic qualities are successful and which are not?

There was no major texturing within the animation however I did create basic lighting and a floor for the character to land on. The final render looked amazing and the character was well lit and looked professional.

Is the content appropriate to the overall style of the finished product?

I believe that my over style of my finished animation has the appropriate content.

25/05/2011 - Finished environment

Today I am finally blogging about my finished environment. I compelted my environment approximately three weeks ago and I have just not been able to find the time to make screen shots of my models and how I created each part.
To create my environment I used the program 3D Studio Max and I used no plug-ins or addons to the software.
The main tools I used where the extrusion tool, bevel tool and using the modifiers edit poly, UVMap and UVUnwrap.

Here is my basic base of my environment. How I created this was that I used a height map which was created in Photoshop. How a height map works is that the brighter the colour on the image the higher that part of the image will be on the plane. The only colours you can use are different shades of white and grey and the default is black and will make the ground flat.

Here is an image of the height map I created for my environment. Each grey shape is where my buildings were going to placed onto my environment and the white parts are for the pylons that are protecting the human city.
Also with my environment I used a simple texture from google to give the ground the visual look of plasma and that the floor is dangerous and would kill any form of life.

Here is an image of my first model that I created within my environment. I created this model by simply creating a cyclinder, changing the cyclinder into an editable poly and then selected the top face of the cyclinder and scaled the face down to make it seem like the reference image below.

Here is the reference image i used for my power plant image.

Here is my weapon tower with textures and with texture turrets and texture portals. I create this by simple extrusion modelling. I then texture the main building by UV mapping the model with the box choose ticked. I then UV unwrapped the model which gave me each side of the model laid flat in the UV editing tool. I then added the texture onto the model and scaled the UV model outlines upwards to add more tiling on the texture, to make the texture look more realistic. I then created the turrets by simple extrusion modelling and I simply added the texture onto the model and it worked. The portals were similar to the turrets where I created the model very simply by making a box and moving certain vertices and extruding the top face to give the sharp edge look.

Here is the reference image for my portal design. I simply thought about the blade on the top of the robot and tried to re-create this on my portal model.

Here is the model of my fusion reactor within the middle of my environment. I simply used the same texture for all the parts and UV mapped each model to make the texture seem more realistic. This was a difficult model to texture because some parts of the model were attached to other parts on the model and the texturing in some places look stretched.

Here is the reference image for my fusion reactor model. These are preset models within UDK and I liked the look of the far left model and decided to make a similar model for my fusion reactor.

Here is my walk path model which is similar to the weapon tower however this is just a simple building with the purpose of access to the other buildings and used a way point for the humans living in the city. The texuring and the creation of this model was made exactly the same as the weapon tower.

Here is my main building within my environment where the human's live within the city. The creation of this model was quite difficult to try and get the middle part of the building right. I used the extrusion and bevel tool together to create this cool looking building plan. Then once I created the main building I decided to add two lifts on the top for show how the humans move through the building and also added a small spire which could be used for communication to other cities. I then create a bridge which was textured to have a light beam futuristic look to it. I then added a large lift from the ground to the bridge to show how humans from the ground can access the city. The texturing was relatively easy and I used a muti-sub object texture so that I could have certain faces on the model a certain texture.

Here is my watch tower model where the human scouts can see out to outer parts of the city and into the wilderness to spot possible threats to the city. I made the texture on the portals bland and made the textures quite bland because this building would not be lit at night and therefore remain hidden from attack from the invaders.

I decided to add another weapon tower to defend the other part of the city.

Then i designed my tesla coils which would create an energy defense shield. These tesla coils would be the main defense for the entire city. I created this model by using the torus primitives and by extruding the base and rotating the face to give the base a twisted look. I then added a sphere on top to finish off the look. I then textured the tesla coil by UV mapping and UV Unwrapping the model and scaling down the UV mapped texture so that the textured looked realistic.

Here is the reference image for my tesla coils.





















I then finally added the camera to fly around the outside of my environment whilst following an object that flied through the animation to certain buildings. I then linked the camera to this object so that in the final render the camera would be following the object.


I could not get a decent image of when I added the lighting however after I added the camera I added a HDRI light and followed a tutorial to create a nice shaded final render lighting. I also added various lights around the environment to bring out certain areas of the environment.


This is my final post so I hope you have enjoyed my progress. I know I have.

Alec Dilkes

23/05/2011 - Links to final environment and animation

23/05/2011 - How to create a polygon

16/05/2011 - Finished animation

Today I worked on and finished my animation and environment. I simply rendered out images and tweaked little parts in my environment and my animation and I am really happy with the outcome.

How I created my animation:

I used the program Cryptic AR which is an plug-in to the 3d Studio Max software. Cryptic AR has the same user interface as 3D Studio Max and simply when you open up Cryptic AR there is a fully rigged character who has movable joints that can be moved to create simple animations.

 This is the start view when you open up Cryptic AR. As you can see the character starts in a fairly weird position and for the start I just moved certain limbs to get used to moving the character. I figured out fairly slowly how to move the character and it took me several ideas before I found an idea that I would be able to create within the time limit.

My basic animation that I aimed to do was to have my character fall from the sky, land in an iron man action and have it look like the character hits the floor. The character will then go to a stand up position and have a standard standing pose. Then the character will prepare to fly again by leaning down to the ground. The character will then fly off screen to save the day.

 In this screen shot is when my character begins to fall. I wanted my character to land in an iron man fashion (link below to what I mean). I moved various joints such as his arms and legs so that it looked like the character was preparing to land.
Iron Man Landing Reference Video
This video is my reference image for the first part of my animation (the landing). I researched into interesting ways of landing, including a flip once landing such as in free running videos.
Park our landing reference video
Here is another idea i had for my animation. In this video as you can see the person falls and then rolls to not break their bones and damage themselves . I decided not to do this mainly because the roll would be awkward to make in cryptic AR and mainly because I wanted the iron man landing.

In this screen shot i am showing him landing on the ground. As you can see from the screen shot the left foot is going through the floor however this is because I added the floor after I created the animation and therefore the character would not fit perfectly onto the floor.

After my character has landed I made my character go back to the standard/standing position. I simply moved the pelvis up wards to make the character's legs almost straight. I then moved the feet to the standing position. I also moved the shoulder and elbow joint to make the arms straight and moved the wrist joint to make the arm seem like a normal standing character and not having a broken wrist. I also moved the arm outwards to add more realism to my character.

I then decided to make my character fly away from the scene and therefore the character needed to prepare himself to fly. How I did this was use similar frames from when the character landed to make the character look like he is preparing to jump away. I did this by slightly rotating the pelvis and lowering the pelvis to make the character go lower. I then moved the left foot forward to make the character read to jump off the group with his left foot forward. I then moved his right foot really far back so that when he jumped he would have propulsion from his right foot. I also moved his right arm forward and made the arm straight to simulate the character is about to jump or lift up. I also moved his left arm back to again make the character have more propulsion when jumping from the ground.

After making him ready to jump i moved the pelvis back to make him have some movement before the jump, to add more propulsion when moving.

At this point in the animation my character has just lifted off the ground and is moving into his flying stance. The pelvis is still rotated slightly and the feet have been moved closer together. Also the toes have been rotated as his feet will be straight and pointed for a more fluent and realistic flying state (if there is one). As well as this the arms are both bent and are moving towards the side of his chest for a more aerodynamic stance whilst flying.

Here is my character once he is in his flying stance and is flying. As you can see his arms are down by his side and his feet are pointed down to give the character a more realistic and aerodynamic look.

This is at the end of my animation and is one of the final frames in my animation. In this screenshot you can see that the character is flying away from the scene and to save the day! the character is in the same position as the screenshot before this one except that I simply moved the character higher and off the scene.



9/05/2011 Environment modelling

Since the last post there has been a lot of progression and a lot to update on. Firstly since the last update I have been working on my environment and am pleased to say am in the process of rendering out the full animation. The modelling was made by using the box modelling method. With some of the buildings I used the bevel tool and the extrusion tool to add a more three dimensional look. Within my environment there are two weapon outposts, a look out post, a fusion reactor within the middle of the environment, a power plant, the main structural building with built in lifts to the surface and to within the building and a walk way system to link up the city. There is also a portal system all the way around the city mainly because within my idea the ground is nuclear reactive and is deadly to any human being. The lift within the environment is for supply vehicles and for the army vehicles to use. Also around the entire city is a barrier of tesla coils which are set to defend the city and to stop any form of attack. All of these models have been placed onto the height map ground and therefore looks more realistic. I made the ground by having a basic sketch drawing of what I wanted my environment to look like. I then made this image in photoshop and made the places where I want the raised areas to be lighter and to have the level ground as black. I then placed this photoshop image into 3ds max and this created the basic start for my environment.

After I placed all the models onto my basic height map I then started to texture my environment. I got all my images from either google images or from cg textures. I decided to go for a futuristic theme to go with the style within the game. I therfore decided to start by making the ground a crazy nuclear colour and found an image that suited this idea well.

I simply added this texture by making a material within 3ds max and placing it onto the ground plane.

I then moved onto my main weaponry towers and wanted to have a tiled metal that made the towers look strong. I found a material that suited the part (no picture unfortunately) and I placed this as the main material for the strong pillars that are holding up the buildings and as the main texture for the weaponry towers. How i applied this texture was that I selected the entire building, UV mapped and UV unwrapped my buildings. I then create a multi-sub texture so that within the object I could have various textures and this one texture could be used over all of the environment. I then applied this texutre to the buildings and then scaled the UV unwrapped image until the tiled effect looked decent.

I then moved onto the main structural building where the humans survive. I decided to have a different material then the tiled metal texture and found this image.

I tried this texture over the entire building however it did not look right and I therefore only used this texture on the top part of the building and this look decent. I then put on the top spire of the building a shiny metal text and on the lifts a darker metal texture to make the objects stand out. I then added to the main structure a nice simple metal texture that was slightly shiny and because of the chocolate bar style on the image, the texture distorted however it looked fine.

I then added on the bridge a light blue wave texture to make the bridge stand out and have a more futuristic theme to it.

I then added onto the power plant a dark metal texture which made the power plants seem old and rusty. I believe this texture suited the power plant model very well.

I then added for the fusion reactor the same material as the power plants, mainly because i wanted the fusion reactor to have the same style as the power plant.

Then for the tesla coils around the outside I have a shiny metal texture just to make the model stand out from the floor.

I will get a link up of the environment animation where you can the entire environment with working lighting and texturing.

Within the next few weeks I will create a full working animation of a walk cycle by using reference videos and by looking at youtube videos of current walk cycles created in cryptic AR.

28/03/2011 - StoryBoard Design for Animation

The main focus of today was to get a  story board design for my animation that i am going to create. I particularly found this challenging to do because I wanted to do a animaton that looked very well made and was a challenge to make however make an animation that could be done in the very tight schedule. Also seeing how I have never done animation within 3D Studio Max so therefore i am going to do a simple animation.