Overall Evaluation

When I started this module, I had no existing knowledge what so ever of 3DS Max and now, I feel that I have learned more from this module than from any other one so far. The models that I have made I am very happy with and feel that they are to a high standard - I would not have changed anything in that respect. The animation I feel similarly about, however, had I had more time, I may have chosen to expand on it slightly to make it longer, or to make the special effects (fire, smoke, explosions etc.) look slightly better. However, considering that this is the first 3D animation that I have ever produced, I think the quality is very good. Managing to stick to my storyboard is something that has been achieved too - planning out the animation through the storyboard beforehand really helped the visual of the final animation.
My confidence has also increased a lot throughout this module. I now feel that I have the skills to make more models and short animations, and will continue to practice making models etc. over the summer.
If I could change something, it would be timekeeping. Although I allowed over a week for rendering, as I had heard rumours of how time consuming it can be, I would allow some more time next time, due to the amount of times that I had to re-render particularly big and detailed scenes, taking up several machines in the process.
Rendering was definitely the part of the module that I found the most difficult - the errors that were involved and the amount of time it took where I could do nothing else was quite stressful. However, the end result still came out looking good and luckily I had allowed some time to re-render in case things went wrong. The part that has been the most enjoyable for me was creating the models. Allowing my creative side to come out for the brief to design and make the models to be in my animation was very fun - particularly for the buildings and the scenery.
Overall, I have enjoyed this module very much and am looking forward to creating more models, more animation and learning new techniques next year.

Almost Finished

For (hopefully!) the final day of working on this animation, the final clip has been put into Adobe Premiere along with the background music that I am going to be using. The final clip has once again rendered only as one second long when it is meant to be much longer, so is being re-rendered over several workstations to hopefully take the strain off a bit, as it's a large file yet quite a short clip, but a vital part to my animation's story. The song chosen for the background music is the Halo 2 Theme by Steve Vai. This song has been chosen because the track begins being quite calm and fairly relaxed then suddenly gets very fast paced and crazy, which fits in well with how my animation goes. The song is going to be cropped down to the right time and fade out at the end, once the final clip has been put into the animation.

Using Adobe Premiere Pro

To combat the issue of not being able to view and edit my .avi files properly, the MAC operating system is being used instead of Windows.

Due to some rendering issues, parts of two particularly large scenes have had to be re-rendered in separate sections of about 200 frames each in order for them to work properly and not cut any bits out. Although the animation looks okay without these extra parts, as I have made them and am on track time wise I have decided to spend yet more time rendering them out to ensure that they are included, as I feel that then it will make my animation complete. These are being pieced together with other scenes in Adobe Premiere Pro, and I am trying my best to get them exactly on the right frame so that the video doesn't look choppy and glitchy in places. A plain black title screen with my SID no and the title of the production have been included at the beginning of the animation, and an ending screen which will be plain black when the tank flies into the camera.
The next step after all of these files have been pieced together properly will be to pick a song for the video, edit it if needs be and then add the final sound effects.

Final Scene

To finish off my animated short, the final scene includes an explosion while the tank is still spinning out of control and while the fire is still spreading to the barrels loaded with gunpowder. The tank flies at the camera and the scene ends with a black screen. Once again, one of my most valuable tools has been used: the super spray. This created the explosion, as the only other way I could find to create a decent looking explosion was using a plug-in, for which I don't feel familiar enough with to use yet (maybe something to try out over the summer ready for next year).

With this final scene finished, all that is left to do is render my scenes. I have been trying to render scenes as I go along, but I have had difficulty with this, so only one has come out successful (due to the machines hibernating when I've had to leave them unattended overnight or the program freezing and corrupting the render). I have decided on using HDTV 720 x 1280, uncompressed, default scanline renderer for every frame.

Once these renders have been finished, I will get the video finished in one session using Adobe Premiere on the Macs (I will do it in one session because as my files are so large, they have to be copied to the desktop to even play and then they still need to buffer to do so, so to save copying and pasting files each time I login, it would be preferable to just finish within one sitting). But until the files are completed, I will try and re-familiarise myself with Adobe Premiere Pro and look up the sound files and music to be accompanied with my video. Hopefully there will be no more rendering issues in the meantime!

Camera Path

Using a camera technique that was learned in one of our tutorial sessions, I have made the camera follow a path that the tank is following. When practicing this technique in lessons, it gave a roller coaster style effect, which I found to look very effective. In lessons, I found it quite difficult to get to grips with as the end result always looked too fast and jolting for my liking, but I have managed to get the timing and the camera angles to the right settings that I would like for this scene, without hopefully giving the viewer motion sickness! Using a camera with a more narrow depth of field I think has helped to make the difference with it this time.

More Super Spray

To add some more flames and smoke in my next scene to show the fire spreading, more super sprays with mesh particles have been used. I have cloned the fire and smoke that was used for the first flame in my previous scene but adjusted the settings appropriately so that the fire is larger and looks like it is continuing to grow as it spreads. The same is with the smoke - it is proportional to the size of the fire that it is emerging out of. Once again facing particles have been used and the same materials as in the previous scenes.

Creating Fire

For the final part of this scene, I have been making a small fire, which will eventually spread and grow bigger in the next scene. A super spray has been used again, but with slightly different settings to the smoke. Mesh particles have been used again so that it can be seen what the fire looks like and for the particles to be facing. I have changed all of the paticles on my other super sprays to facing because no matter how you look at the super spray, you will always be able to see the fire particles as they were meant to be.

The rotation and collision drop-down in the modify panel has had its settings slightly changed for the fire. Although I originally used an online tutorial to create smoke and to generally get the settings needed for the super spray, through making smoke a couple of times I have learnt what the settings are and how they effect the spray. So now that I am creating the fire, I have managed to guess by looking at the settings what digits roughly I need to input to get the desired effect.

For the rotation and collision tab, the variation option is particularly useful for fire. When playing through the fire on the timeline, each time the particles move and change, they never do so in exactly the same way, just like real fire. The particles also spin in 180 desgrees, once again adding realism to the fire.

The frame settings have been adjusted so that the fire starts growing when the smoke has been growing for a few frames, then it suddenly grows bigger and brighter. The amount of frames it grows for should be about 20, but this may be changed later, as well as when the fire ends.

To create the material for the fire, a face map and gradient has been used. This allows for multiple colours to be shown in the fire. Orange and yellow have been used because although many people think that fires have red parts, you can never really see red in a flame.

The texture has had it's glossiness decreased and its opacity increased and the diffuse colour changed. The diffuse setting has been set slightly higher as well.

The gradient type has also been adjusted to radial and noise has been added to make the fire look more realistic. These settings make the particles look more vivid and separated, instead of just a chunk of particles put together. Like when noise was added to the floor texture, the texture itself looks more rough and 3D.

Here is the final result of the fire when it gets going. It can be seen how the particles have been adjusted so that it looks more like the burning embers of a fire, compared to the smoke where the particles are more transparent and merge together.