Animation Storyboard

This is the storyboard for what I plan to make in my animation (excuse the poor quality). I am going for more of a comedy value in my short animation, but showing a variety of camera shots and techniques.

Panel 1 shows, quite simply, the model of my tank moving throughout the city, with the door, which starts off being open, closing as the tank moves. It will use a birds eye view and will gradually zoom in and rotate to show a side view of the tank, following it as it moves. The city itself I need to expand upon: as I have already created a small set of buildings, I can repeat these in certain parts of the city, however, to make it look more realistic, I am going to make more buildings. However, as it would take too long to make a complete city from scratch, I am going to use parts of the buildings that I have already created and mix certain features together to create new buildings. These buildings will be a part of my scenery throughout, so I need to ensure that there is a sufficient number of these modelled. This will be the part that I will start next, before the actual animation process, as well as finding a decent texture for the ground.
Panel 2 changes the camera angle to the front of the tank as it is moving throughout the city. The camera stops when the tank does, which is when the tank begins to shake. A gradual zoom-in occurs while this is happening, until smoke starts coming out of the peep hole.
Panel 3 uses a high angled shot, looking down at the tank as it begins to spin around out of control, on a pre-set path.
Panel 4 shows the tank eventually hitting the pile of barrels that contain gunpowder, so this shot is a close-up of the barrels and the tank is it hits them and knocks them over. One of the tanks is hit at an angle so that the cork falls out of it and gunpowder pours out over the street. As the tank moves away, a small flame is left near the barrels, that immediately starts to get bigger.
Panel 5 uses the target camera and path constraint technique that was learnt last week. This will make it appear as though the camera is inside the tank and the destruction being left by the tank will be seen from this viewpoint. As the camera goes round, the flame by the barrels is getting bigger.
Panel 6 goes back to using a high-angled shot with the tank spinning out of control on a set path again. The size of the flame by the barrels is still increasing and getting closer to the barrels. On the second loop around the path, the tank hits the barrels with more force, which causes them to explode in an expanding flash of white light expanding from the barrels. As the light spreads, the buildings are engulfed into it, while the tank flies into the air.
Panel 7 (the final panel) is the tank flying into the air, spinning as it goes, and getting closer to the camera. It eventually hits the camera and everything goes black, signalling the end of the animation.

I shall try and add appropriate music and sound effects for this animation to expand on the idea slightly, as I appreciate that it is fairly simple. But I am mainly focussing on getting the camera angles and techniques right rather than going for a longer and more detailed story, as this is my first animation. I have already begun to research in some 3DS Max books how to create the flames of the fire and will progress on to researching and practising the other techniques that will be needed to create this animation.

Evaluation

Over the past six weeks, I have learnt more than I thought was possible in a such a short amount of time about 3DS Max. I have learnt many techniques that have proved very useful when making my models and should be just as useful in future projects.
When this project begun, I wasn't at all confident in using 3DS Max, due to having no prior experience in using the program, but now I feel confident enough to model pretty much anything to a decent standard - as long as the time and effort is put in on my part. Now being familiar with the program interface and it's features, I look forward to creating some more models again, and would definitely consider being a character modeller as a career path. I have already been doing some additional reading and tutorials in my spare time to try and learn some more complicated techniques and other things that may be useful when modelling, especially for humans, as they are a popular choice of character in many games/movies, yet seem like one of the more difficult forms to create.
Overall, the models that I have achieved for this part of the model I am very happy with - especially the building, which I feel definitely has the look of a group of buildings from the 15th century. This is mainly due to the amount of pre-production research done to ensure the authenticity of the models made in the project and to make sure that they looked historically accurate. The other two models I am also very happy with - I have used many techniques to create them and feel that they work well for the project. However, if I was to do anything differently, if I had more time, I would have experimented with the lighting of the models, make the interior of the tank and create some more buildings to create a small market square. I may still make these improvements in my own time in the future, to get some more practise using the program. But, overall, I have enjoyed this part of the module immensely and would happily do it again in the future.

Third Complete Model: The Tank

This is my third and final complete model: Leonardo Da Vinci's tank. Although I expected this model to be the most difficult (which was why it was the last one to be made), by the time that I had gotten to the stage of creating this, I understood the techniques that were needed. All of the techniques used in this model had already been used at least once over the past six weeks: learning them in lessons and on my previous two models. I am very happy with how this model came out - it definitely looks like Leonardo Da Vinci's tank, not just shape wise, but the textures as well are accurate.

Progression Of Model Three: The Tank

To start off with the tank, I have been using simple shapes such as the cylinder and the cone to create the basic shape of the invention, then converting each part into an editable poly and extruding by polygon. This makes the shape look more textured and 3D, even before I start adding textures. As I have already used this technique on the barrels, which are made of wood (just like the tank) and the technique looked very effective, I am using it again for the tank.

Next, as I want the tank to appear as though it has it's door open, I have selected the polygons necessary and cut them away from the main object, rotated as necessary and converted it to a single object and vertex in order to edit it as one whole object. I plan for this part to be animated later so thought it a better idea to leave it as though the door is open now, so that I can model the hinges etc. holding the door up (as is shown in my sketch of the tank) before it needs to be animated. I have, however, left the bottom polygon out of the door because there needs to be a way to identify which panel leads into the tank, so this will be the distinguishing feature.

For the cannons that are on the base part of the tank, I have used the torus object to make a doughnut like shape for the end and middle segment of the cannon.For the other two segments, I have once again made use of the cone shape tool. This object is then cloned and rotated around the bottom part of the tank. Alignment and symmetry is once again an important factor in the tank, so it has taken a fair amount of time to ensure that everything is aligned and that there are the right amount of everything on the tank. As I did my sketching and a substantial amount of research beforehand, I have been well prepared for this.

This is the tank finished apart from the textures, materials and rendering. I have made use more of the Orphographic top view as a wireframe for this model than any others, as it has helped to ensure the accuracy of the angles and alignment of features (alongside me using the align tool). Using F4 to turn on polygons has also been a tool that has been used consistantly throughout making this model.

The main texture that is being used for the majority of the tank is a dark, wooden texture. I have gone the normal way for applying this: used a bitmap image, add the same image as the bump and raising it to make it more textured. However, the wooden texture came out in the way as shown above. To combat this, I have used UVW mapping to change it from a Planar Map to a Spherical Map, which makes the lines of the wood fit in with the planks of wood that make up the shape of my tank.

Cameras

The next part of animating that I have learnt today is how to work some cameras. Firstly, we used a target camera and a path constraint for the camera to rotate around a set of objects. Then, we made a rollercoaster style line, and used a free camera to follow the line around, in a way that it looks like you are on a rollercoaster. The camera needed to be rotated so that it followed in the right direction and the timing needed to be adjusted, but it is a good technique to know when wanting a camera to follow a direct path.

Animating

Animating has been a lot easier (so far) than I thought it would be, although the only other program that I have animated in has been flash.

The first thing that I have animated is a teapot and a box. Each object has been animated seperately using the Auto Key (I have experimented also with using the set key, but due to there being a lack of complicated animation among many objects, there isn't really a need for this tool yet, however I am still aware of it's purpose. For this animation, I have animated the teapot to look like it pours (using the rotate tool) then moving it up and over using the select and move tool on the x and z axis. The box has also spun around the table and moved slightly.

Next, I have animated a ball to look like it is bouncing. To do this, I simply moved the ball to the appropriate places on the timeline, then used the curve editor to put the animation on a loop. Then, the balls were cloned (which meant that the animation sequence was cloned with them) and used the dope sheet to adjust the timing, so that they were not all bouncing at exactly the same time as each other. The amount of keyframes was then altered, so that the balls didn't look like they were glitching, and then the animation looked like it was on a constant loop.

Second Complete Model: Buildings

This is my second completed model: a small group of adjoined buildings, made in the style and using features of buildings found in Florence, Italy, in the 15th century.
I am very pleased with how this model turned out; it may have taken a bit longer than I expected, however I have been able to make use of the techniques that I have learnt in lesson, as well as expanding on these skills further. It also gave me a good oppurtunity to use realistic looking bitmap images as materials, which made me appreciate the amount of time that goes into adjusting and applying materials to objects. It has definitely been a learning curve making this model, but it turned out almost exactly as I wanted it to be and contains all the necessary detail to make it look like something out of a scene in Florence in the 15th century.