Work Handed In!

Today I handed in my assignment and I just wanted to add a couple of things about the DVD content and the way the assignment is presented.


The DVD includes:


- A folder with the Textures used in the animation.
- A folder with the Sounds used in the animation.
- A folder with the Scenes I set up to get the whole animation (the textures will be missing though as 3ds Max will not find them because the path has changed)
- A folder with the Models used in the animation (I made sure 3ds Max could find the textures for all of them)
- My Blog in PDF format (being Blog 1 the newest posts and Blog 3 the oldest) in case the link does not work.
- A text file with the link to my Blog in it.
- The animation in AVI format.
- The credits in WMV format (windows media player files)


Playing the animation from the DVD:


It is possible that the animation frame rate is not completely stable since it is read from a DVD and not the hard drive of the computer. If this happens the link in Youtube for the animation is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tK3KBrCehAU


Assignment Presentation:


To present the assignment, like with the models assignment, I used a plastic folder with a pocket for the DVD. Unfortunately, the guy from the iCentre told me that I was not allowed to hand the DVD plastic case open so he stuck it into a piece of paper and put it inside the plastic folder. To open the DVD folder you will have to rip a plastic tab so you can get the DVD out so I hope this is not too tedious but it was not my intention to hand it in like that.

Credits For The Animation

I just decided to make a short clip displaying the credits of the animation. I simply used one of the scenes of the animation and set it up so the rests of the X-Wing are scattered around the snow, with some smoke coming from the engine and my name as a Text shaped with the extrude modifier.

Week 10 Exercises. Reaction Manager.

This is the last technique we have covered in the lessons. Basically this technique allow the user to control one or more objects (slaves) from a single object (controller). In the tutorial I will control the Z rotation of a box (the slave in this case) with a rectangle spline (a spline is used to save memory because it will not be rendered).

Week 9 Exercises. Skinning.

Bones


They are a great technique to animate limbs and anything that work as a limb such as a mechanical arm. The objective is to use the bones system to create as many bones as joints are needed. Then use the HK solvers to make the movement of all the bones similar to a limb. Without the HK solver the bones could also be animated but it will take much more time because what the IK solver do is to tell all the limbs to move accordingly with the bone the user selected and animated.

Skinning


In this skinning tutorial I learnt how to attach a bone system to a mesh in order to animate the mesh. Once the bone is attached to the mesh (a cylinder this time but it could be an arm or a leg from a character for example), when I animate the bone the mesh follows all the bone's movements. I did not sue this technique for my assignment animation but I found it extremely useful for character animation, which I plan to work on at some point.


This is how I attached the bones to the mesh:

This is what happens when I animate the bone. As you can see, when the cylinder bends there is a big gap where the "joint" would be.

And after moving some vertices this is how it looks like. Not perfect but at least the gap is gone.