SWOT Analysis

Strengths:

In this module I have found one of my most notable strengths is the attention to detail when animating a biped. Here I have been able to animate a realistic looking run sequence from a kneeling down position which I am extremely proud of.

I have also found that my 'architectual' observation skills has definetly aided me when creating the festival leisure park scene. I find modelling buildings to be challenging, yet fun and straightforward which is a major attraction in terms of choosing something to model in 3ds max

Weaknesses:

One of the biggest weaknesses that have shown up in this module is my inexperience using the reactor feature in 3ds max. I was unfortunetly not able to create a working bowling pin knock down animation when attempting to use reactor.

I feel this may appear again in the future so I will need to improve my skills using reactor to prevent any dead ends when creating an animation.

Opportunites:

Last year I touched on Bipeds and lighting techniques briefly, along with the use of cameras. These have played a major part in the animating side of 3DS Max and have proven to be some of the most useful tools to be used.

I have been able to try a new method of skinning a biped called 'physique' which I have to be a much more effective way to skin a biped personally. Using this method has saved a great deal of time and effort before the animation process and will definetly continue to use this feature in future for my animation projects.

Finally, having the chance to use a Bipeds properly has given me an opportunity to understand realistic movement with human skeletons. I have been able to create a more realistic looking run from kneeling sequence without having to refer to animation sequences! This was done through personal experimentation and careful observation with help from other members of the team.

Threats:

My biggest threat currently is my inexperience with the reactor feature in 3ds max. I will need to research and practice using this feature to understand how it works and what it can be used for properly.

Cameras

Festival Leisure Park
In this Scene I have used a free camera which follows a spline via a path constraint. This animated sequence occurs over a period of 300 frames.

Paintball Scene 1
In this Scene I have used a target camera which is static during the animation that occurs over 330 frames.

Paintball Scene 2
In this Scene I have used a target camera which follows a spline via a path constraint. This animated sequence occurs over a period of 200 frames.

Lighting the Scenes

Festival Leisure Park
In this scene I have used:

1. 'Photometric' light to simulate skylight with an intensity setting of 1590.03. This is positioned:
   X - 35.29
   Y - -118.127
   Z - 126.821
   
   
2. 'Photometric' light to illuminate the interior of the nando's building with an intensity setting of 1500. This is positioned:
   X - -22.126
   Y - 88.418
   Z - 17.573
   
   
3. 'Photometric' light to illuminate the interior of the frankie & benny's building with an intensity setting of 50. This is positioned:
   X - 81.457
   Y - 38.882
   Z - 4.798
   
   
4. 'Omni Light' used to illuminate the interior of the bowling alley with an intensity multipler of 0.5. This is positioned:
   X - 39.606
   Y - 151.674
   Z - 26.215
   
   
5. 'Omni Light' used to illuminate the interior of the bowling alley with an intensity multipler of 0.5. This is positioned:
   X - 61.865
   Y - 149.885
   Z - 26.314

Paintball Scene 1
In this Scene I have used:

1. 'Omni Light' used to illuminate the entire scene with an intensity multipler of 1.0. This is positioned:
   X - 7.689
   Y - -385.88
   Z - 613.763
   

Paintball Scene 2
In this Scene I have used:

1. 'Omni Light' used to illuminate the entire scene with an intensity multipler of 1.0. This is positioned:
   X - 7.689
   Y - -385.88
   Z - 613.763
   

Animating paintball part3.

The next part of my paintball scene features target shooting. Here I have designed a new environment where my character is positioned taking a firing stance behind some crates, during the animation he aims and shoots at two target boards which are basically planes with a material added to them.

The camera will be positioned behind the character moving in a horizontal direction to the right, this allows us to see whats going on in the scene and clearly see the motion of the character taking aim, shooting and moving to the next target.



The shooting sequence was done by moving the gun and hands upwards on the second keyframe and down again to its original position on the third. This was repeated a few times to simuklate multiple shots.

To change targets the biped is simply rotated and the shooting process is repeated here with some minor alterations to reduce and visual errors.

The target boards also 'fall-down' after being shot, which was done by simply rotating the the boards 90 degrees downwards so it is hidden behind world objects such as the crates or the floor plan.

Animating Paintball part2.

Animating the biped can either be a tedious or fairly easy task, depending on what type of animation you are aiming to achieve. In this scene I will be animating my character to run from a kneeling down position towards / past the camera view.



First the character is postitioned kneeling down - this is done by moving the joints into position and lowering the overall height of the character. To stop the character falling through the floor, I added a planted key to the feet and selected the floor plane as the base. By doing this the biped will not pass through the floor and will instead bend his legs.



Using the built-in run sequence under the motion panel was not able to produce the run sequence I desired so I had to manually animate the biped, one position at a time to create a suitable run from kneeling animation. unfortunetly this took a good amount of time regardless of the end result.

Animating Paintball part1.

To animate my paintball player, this will require the use of a biped which will be used to move the character during the scene, performing different actions.



To begin, a biped is added to the scene and positioned according to the character model using the front viewport. in order to manipulate the shape and scale of the skeleton, the biped must be set in 'figure-mode' which allows you to scale and reshape each bone to suit the model.



the trickiest part of the task was the fact that alterations has to constantly be made to the skeleton in order to get the right scale / size when each limb was positioned which proved to be quite annoying at times but fortunetly didn't cause any major problems.

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Once the bone rigging was complete - I can now begin to 'skin' the character, which attaches the bone to the model so when we move the bones, the model moves also..



Previously I had some difficulty in skinning and found it takes a lengthy amount of time to get the desired effect, especially when you define the manipulation strength of each bone manually. So I decided to try a new technique using the Physique modifier in 3ds max.

This method begins by adding a node to the existing model to create the link between bone and skin - if successful, a series of 'veins' can be seen running down the limbs and throughout the bone structure.

These veins are basically selection points which allows you to focus on each individual bone to manipulate - I found this to be a much more effective way to focus on what effect bone movement has on its surrounding areas.



The process is fairly straightforward, playing around with the strength and range settings allow you to quickly see which areas are 'pulled' out of position or are being affected too much by joint movement.

Animating Festival Leisure Park

I wanted to begin this scene with a 'fly-in' view of festival leisure park - which will be done using a camera attached to follow a path constraint..



I first created a suitable path using the line tool, adding vertices where necessary create a smooth curve. Following this I added a free-camera to the scene. To make the camera follow the defined path, this can be done by adding a 'path constraint' to the position setting under the motion panel.

I then altered the timing settings of the keyframes to ensure a suitable speed was applied to the camera when following the path. Here I have used 300 frames with an fps setting of around 10-15.

HOT TIP - It's extremely important at this stage to test your animation over and over again to ensure you have made the desired effect.

The camera will follow the path into and through the entrance to hollywood bowl where the bowling would roll up the alley to score a strike.

In order to animate the ball rolling, I created several keyframes from frames 201-300 which displayed the ball at different locations up the alley. I also rotated the ball 100 degrees at each keyframe to simulate a rolling movement.



At this point I wanted the ball to hit the pins and hopefully score a strike, which would require the use of the Reactor feature in 3ds max.



By using a tutorial I defined the collision objects and walls which would be affected by this event. Unfortunetly when testing the animation the ball simply passed through the pins instead of knocking them over!