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.