Project done

On Friday 5th of Dec. we finished the whole project. Now everything is ready for Tuesdays presentation.

Tasks I have done for this project:
-Modelling of the character (there is only one character but many sets of clothes)
-biped & kinematics
-Animation (drummer)
-Clothes for character 1 & 2 (guitar player & drummer)
-Modelling of drum set
-Editing, cutting & sync

Editing

Finally we got clips ready, so now I can import them to FCP. The editing process was easy task, because I have used Final Cut so many times before. Basically the video starts with guitar solo followed by a drum section. At the end of the video we have keyboard and some text.

Camera, lights, action!

Today I made 28 different drum clips for the YMCA video. First I rendered 20 clips and after that I imported all clips to Final Cut Pro for editing. After few hours of editing I found couple of mistakes so I switched back to 3Ds to do some final adjustments. I listened the song about 50 times so I knew how the drums should play so it wasn't too difficult to make them sync with music.

The animation is quite simple. Pretty often I just copied&pasted the animated frames to make it look like a movie. Even tough animation is simple it does not matter because the clips are so short.

First animation

Now I have reached the point where is good to do some testing with animation. My second character (drummer) is ready. He is basically same guy as guitar player, but t-shirt is bit different and he has also cap. All textures are also different form previous one. I built the character so that it is easy to modify because we are supposed to have 3 different musicians (guitar player, keyboard player and drummer). So basically when you want to change clothes you need to enter .PSD file and change the textures and nothing else.

So far animation looks ok, but I'm not 100% satisfied with movement. I guess I could adjust the envelopes to make it bit more smooth. This animation is only 50 frames long (about 2s) but it is duplicated so that you can see the movement more better. I didn't you any specific tricks by doing this animation, it's basic keyframe animation. Im still searching for some motion capture files to make the animation more realistic. I't is almost impossible to create flowing movement if you don't have option to use proper motion capture files. By using biped you can get pretty nice results, but still it is really difficult to replicate human movements.

Textures and animation2

Now I have completed textures for first character (guitar player). I used same techniques for the clothes as I used for texturing the head. UVW Unwrap modifier is really handy tool when you want to add proper textures for big surfaces like clothes. By using this modifier I can also edit the textures really easily just by opening Photoshop I can add more details or remove them. Im especially happy about jeans I made for this fellow. The jeans are actually Women's Jeans, but by doing some Photosopping I made them look like men's jeans.

I also tried to use wind modifier with t-shirt to make it more realistic. I managed to make it work, but I couldn't figure how prevent the t-shirt not to puncture/penetrate the skin. I guess there must be some solution for this problem, but couldn't figure it out.

Textures and animation

I have just finished building the character and combining it with biped. First I though that you are supposed to link character with biped, but soon I realised that it actually works, but it wont give any flexibility I need to make the character look realistic. After seeing couple of tutorials about skin modifier I learned how to link envelopes with biped. When using envelopes you should adjust the strength of each envelope really carefully to make the arms and legs bend as they should. This took me about 2 days to build, because I had to do it 3 times. First 2 times character was positioned in wrong place or the fingers were too close to each other.

This short animation was done by using motion capture files. Motion capture files contain information about biped movement and you can add them to you own modelling. This makes animation realistic but usually the clips are really short and difficult to find. I guess they are so expensive to make that you don't usually find those for free. In this modelling you can still see some problems with both wrists. If skin doesn't flow properly it is usually caused by too strong envelopes/badly adjusted envelopes.

Week 6

FINALLY the character is ready. I built the front part some weeks ago but I didn't finish whole modelling at that time. Actually this was much more easier than modelling the head, this is because there are not that many details in t-shirt or jeans. Modelling the hand was really slow process because fingers are so close to each other which makes it more complex. I modelled each finger separately to make it more detailed. First I tried to model all fingers from same plane, but it was almost impossible. Now I know pretty much everything I need to know about 3ds modelling to create what I want to. Of course there must be much easier ways to build 3d characters, but at the moment it is not important to study other techniques.

Hair modifier is REALLY cool tool, but it takes amazingly much CPU power to calculate even one picture. That is reason why we are not going to use it in final production. (YMCA) Due to the fact we have absolutely no experience about 3ds animation we don't want to make it any more difficult by using complex hair modifiers.

Hair

This week I tried to build the hair to make the character look more realistic. First set was to build the "skull" for the hair and after that styling the haircut. Well this was actually really difficult because tools for cutting hair were not that good. Hair and fur modifier is actually pretty good but cutting and styling is really difficult. Cutting tool works like "garden scissors " so if you use it it will remove your hair really "efficiently". First two cuttings were pretty rough.

YMCA

For this project we are going to model only one body and probably few different sets of cloths for the dummy. It does not make sense to model many different characters because 3D modelling is quite time consuming. I guess most difficult part is to animate whole production, because it is supposed to last for 25-30 seconds. At the moment I'm much more confident that we can actually complete this project. Beginning of the module it felt almost impossible to learn that much about 3D modelling & animation.

Week 4

So far I have completed almost all steps of the tutorial. At the moment my modelling/textures look fine but there is still one minor problem with the UVM Unwrap Modifier. For some unknown reason the modifier does not allow me to fix one vertex without crashing whole bitmap texture. I'm bit worried that I need to redo the texture to fix this minor problem. If you look the nose closely you will notice that one vertex is in wrong place.

Week 3 part 2

Wednesday 8th October
Today I continued modelling my own face. So far I've done the front part of the face (tutorials 1-6). Parts 7 and 8 were quite difficult especially mouth and ears. Somehow my face looks bit weird, but I guess it will be just fine after the textures are done. During the past 3 weeks I have learned pretty much about 3Ds max. I can model pretty much everything if I've proper images and enough time. Of course there are many ways to do things in 3Ds max and I know only one way to model so there is so much to learn, but at least I have some knowledge of basic polygon modelling.
During the weekend I also tried to model cartoon character (racoon), but it was bit difficult for me because I couldn't find proper images and cartoon characters are usually done in 2 dimensional techniques which makes it more difficult to convert it to 3D model. Another issue is fur/ hair, but I haven't seen or done any tutorials about making hair so I didn't even bother to try that.

Week 3

Tuesday 7th October
We (me, Steffen & Melanie) had long discussion about the YMCA 3D video. We all agreed that Thursday Rock night is the event we want to promote. The way we are going to do it is quite straight forward. Three instruments (Guitar, Keyboard and drums), one 3D character and Dire Straits, Money for nothing song. At the moment it does not make much sense to create very detailed storyboard/ shoreline because we don't have much experience about 3D animation. The problem is, if we make too much plans about video we might end up in situation where we need to go change whole storyboard because we don't know how to do it.

I also started to model the character at the same day. We decided to use Steffen as our template. The whole idea is to create one character and the modify it little bit, so that we have 3 different characters (pianist, drummer and guitar player).
So far I've done only the front of the guy, so there is sill lot to do. One thing I learned today is that Illustrator in such better tool than PS for drawing topology lines.

Introduction of the second project (YMCA)

On Monday we had introduction to new 3D project. The basic idea is to produce multimedia production to Chelmsford YMCA (Young men's christian association). During the introduction we got some information about YMCA's weekly events and target groups. YMCA is targeted mostly for the kids, but their wish was to attract more older people to join their association. I think one of their problem is that the place looks like kindergarten, which makes is awkward place to have "rock nights" and "Drum'n bass" parties. What I mean here is that they are struggling with image/credibility issues. It is really difficult to please everybody, so that's why it's important to choose target group. 

Anyway our group (Me, Steffen, Melanie) decided to to promote either Fridays Club event or Thursdays Rock event. This was one of their wishes that we could promote some of the music events they have every week. 

First couple of days we spent searching information about YMCA and doing brainstorming about the video we are going to make. One of the big issues we have is lack on knowledge towards 3Ds max. Because of this we need more time for planning, so that we don't decide to do something we can't produce in 9 weeks. 

First week+Monday 29th Sep

I spent first 4-5 days just to install Windowos and 3Ds max, so because of this I couldn't start the actual work before Friday. During the weekend I spent about 10h to finnish topology lines and modelling front of the face. At the moment I have done about 50% of the whole project.

Thoughts About Virtual Environments module

Well my thoughts vary between horror and depression, but complaining doesn’t help anything. It’s easy to be smart afterwards and say that I should have been studying 3d during the years in Denmark. Anyway my skills towards 3d animation are not that great but there is only one way to learn…study, study and study.