TRIMESTER 2 and a Story!

By James Ball

So Trimester 2 at SAE Insitute Perth Campus has gone off quit smoothly. Again, I'm studying 4 units which are as follows:

- Fundamentals of Animation
- Production 1
- 3D Character Design and Animation
- And lastly the Unit I'm writing this blog post for . . . Creative Industry Unit.

I'll begin by giving a quick overview of what we are to do in the next 11 weeks.

Fundamentals of Animation: in this unit we study the basic principles of animation by creating a flip book with various animation techniques and a walk cycle.

Production 1: We are put into teams and are asked to create an Animatic for a new pilot show based at 12 year old's that would watch ABC3 . . . Look out for update posts about this in the future.

3D Character Design and Animation: For this unit, our main objective is to design a concept for a human character model it up with clothing on, in 3DS Max. UV Unwrap, texture, rig animate and make a final show reel.

Creative Industry Unit: This is the Unit where we have to begin to make a name for our selves and begin to network with peers, staff, local and international people related to our field of study and finally go to expos, events and meetups.

Okay so as I promised in the title . . . A Story!

What kind of story you ask?

A real life story person who is reading this.



So I was on the train going up to Uni reading a concept art book as you do to pass the time of the 50 min train ride and woman who looked to be in her 30's comments on the book I'm reading.

Her: Aren't you a little to old to be reading picture books

Me: Nope

Her: Why not, what are you studying then?

Me: Animation.

Her: *Gasp* That must be one lazy course your studying then because isn't it just picture?

Me: Sure, It's just Pictures! . . . Do you know how many "Pictures" there are in a second of film?

Her; Yeah 24.

Me: So If I wanted to make a 5 min animation then how many Pictures would I need to draw?

Her: Um . . . i don't know.

Me: Well there is 240 frames for 10 seconds of animation and there is 300 seconds in 5 minutes.

Her: *Thinking* So 240 times 6 is . . . 1440 frames, then I would times that by 5 right?

Me: Right!

Her: So 1440 times 5 is . . . 7200 frames for 5 minutes of animation.

Me: So do you still think animation is lazy?

Her: Well it's still just pictures isn't it?

Me: *Face palm*

I was a bit annoyed after that and lucky for me she hopped off at the next station and could get back to my book.

Why do people always have to think this is to do right.



As always, this is James Ball Signing Out!

3D Ship Asset - Part 2

By James Ball

Just a quick thing I forgot to mention in the previous post before we begin. The wings of the 3D Model are different to the wings in the model sheet. Yes I know this and my reasoning behind this is simple. Balance, the ship looked to off balance with its wings that far back in the 3D view. Okay, back to it.

In this post I will discuss a little bit about what I went through during the UV Unwrapping, Texturing, Lighting, Rendering and Exporting Stages of my 3D Ship Asset.

UV Unwrapping

To prepare my model for UV Unwrapping, I first broke my ship into separate objects so that it would be easier to work with later on down the track. In the end after about 8 hours of work I ended up with 7 separate UV Maps and various off shoots to work with.

Texturing

Then it came time to do the Texturing. I spent about 2 and a half days or about 26 hours computer time on the texturing and if I had more time I could easily add in more detail or more of a story if you would to the weathering process. But I didn’t have any more time and I had to stick with what I currently got, which all in all is really not that bad I feel.

Back Thruster

Left Thruster

 Right Thruster

Cock Pit

Left Wing

Right Wing

Main Body

Lighting

When it came down to the lighting, I decided to play it safe and go with a slightly modified 3 point lighting set up and add a bounce light underneath the ship as well. In order of brightness I will start with the rim light which in the case of this scene acted as the sun. This light was very bright and was in fact a light yellow tinted free spotlight to save on render time. The second brightest light was the Main Light or the light behind the camera that had a tint of Blue as if it was artificial light coming from a window of another ship and the third light was the Bounce Light to take out the harsh shadows on the right hand side.

Rendering and Exporting

I used the Mental Ray Plugin for 3DS Max and rendered the final animation out into 240 individual Targa Files at the resolution of 1024px wide by 720 high, ready for use in Premiere Pro. Once I was in Premiere Pro, I placed the files into the time line and set it so each image was set to 1 frame. I then exported tho movie out as a H.264 MP4 file with audio turned off, frame rate set to 24 frames Per Second and 720P HD.

Please enjoy the final result.

I hope that you enjoyed Part 2 and I hope to see you soon in the future. Feel free to leave any questions/comments in the comments section below. :D

As always, this is James Ball signing out.