Modelling - Splines

Modelling - Splines

Today we had a go at moelling using Splines, I think there a very useful little tool to use and will make the whole Rollercoaster a lot easier to model.

First we made a room. which was really simple to get the basics done and then add things later. It brought back memorys of trying to do this last year for my narratives project but doing it a really long way. That's what I've found so far this year everything I thought that I knew about studio max is rubbish and there's always a much shorter easier way to do everything. Which is good but annoying at the same time.

I also made a simple chair, this was really easy to achieve again

using

the spline tool to get the metal base and then adding a few shapes on top just to make ti look nice. I think that using splines could be the way forward for working to get a quick and simple effect that I can add stuff to.

Roller Coaster Design

Roller Coaster Design
I think that it's time I started thinking about designing a weird and wonderful rollercoaster, the trouble is all I can think about is this...

All I can say is that cadburys make good adverts and that this reminds me of when my mum used to make me watch coronation street, bad times. It's a cool advert though and I like the look of it a lot. I think that I want to mix things up a bit though with this project, I seem to be going for a very serious look with my Robot project so I think I'm going to go for a more cartoon looking idea with this. And give it a very interesting style, so influences....Banjo-Kazooie has always has a really cool look I think and with Nuts and Bolts on Xbox 360 they've used the next gen graphics amazingly, while everyone else seems to be trying to get everything to look as realistic as possible Rare seem happy doing what they're doing. What I love about the look of this is how everythings stitched or stuck together, it's hard to explain but it makes everything look a lot more detailed than just flat surfaces.


Futurama's a pretty good place to start aswell, I think I'm going to go with space as the theme for my rollercoaster because of the things that I can do with it, a vast expanse that I can stick anything into. Got so much work to do....

Animation Research

Animation Research
Like an idiot I managed to go to a lecture that didn't exist today, but it's ok I spent my time in the library instead and found some really useful books that I think will definately come in handy with this animation project.

First I found a book called 'Computer Animation' that was written by a number of different authors and editted by John Halas it's good but focused mainly on how 3D software works and wasn't that useful. I also found 'Animation Design' which was a compilation of lots of different artist work.

The best books I found though were 'Timing for Animation' written by Harold Whitaker & John Halas, but also featured a foreward by John Lasseter. It's a very specific book that looks at how the timing for animation works and how to do it right. The best book by far though was 'The Animation Survival Kit' by Richard Williams, this is a really good book focused mainly on 2D work but the ideas will still work for 3D. I've borrowed it out anyway, what I like most about it though is that it looks at how to give life to your characters, using subtle techniques to bring them to life, really really good. I'm glad I got up this morning.

Why Can't I Render!

Why Can't I Render!

It's annoying when you do some work but you can never actually show it, Anyway I've finished my Orrery but for some reason I can't render it as a movie. I don't know I'll work it out later hopefully so heres a few picks just to show that I actually did it.

I bet this comes back to haunt me around deadline time.

Robot Moodboard

Robot Moodboard

A quick moodboard for my robot, not the greatest piece of work I've ever done but it's good to get an idea of what I'm looking for with the design of my robot. I've focused more on characters that inspire fear than classic robots, so I've got big bad characters like Sauron and Darth Vader.

I'm going to look at how the directors identify these as the bad guys straight away within minuites of seeing them. I've also thought about armour as an interesting way of approacing designing a robot. I think that the gundam series does this best basing their designs on samurai armour. I think this is a good way to approach designing a robot instead of only looking at robots. So I'm going to do some designs and get this project done because I've got a lot of work to do this term.

Work and Organisation

Work and Organisation
Well now that I've had all of my work for my seminars for this year shown to me I know that I'm going to have to work hard, very hard to stay on top. On the plus side though I'm very happy with all the work thats been set, it looks fun and interesting. My tutor for games design work on diddy kong racing though how cool is that the first game I ever had, but yeah lot of work to do should be cool though.

One thing I can do though to make things much easier for everyone is keep my blog organised, its all well and good posting stuff up all the time but not so good if nobody can find it. So to sort this out I'm going to tag every post I do. Also I'll use some colour coding my usual blue for Andy's animation work, green for Simon Wallet's presentation work and yellow for Brad Warrens games design seminars. Oh I'll also do Jool's Successful Principles and Practices lectures in red.

Train - 3D Studio Max Modelling

Train - 3D Studio Max Modelling

Just finished a small bit of modelling in my seminar of a toy train. It's pretty cool and good practice, I've also had a bit of a play with the lighting trying to make it look moody and atmospheric, I think I'm going to have to keep trying with the lighting systems because there is so many of them. So heres the model I made below, the first image is without lighting the second is with.

I also animated it moving but for some reason it won't render properly so I'll stick this up if I get chance. So yeah I'll hopefully post up some more random modelling projects soon, and I'll hopefully have some robot designs to post up aswell.

Of Bots and Bananas

Of Bots and Bananas
New brief, 'Design, build and animate a model of a complex Bipedal Robot that can walk slip trip and fall.' I think it's pretty cool and I can hopefully use this task to build up my modelling and animation skills. The only problem is making it funny!

For me the slipping on a banana routine is probably overdone and represents an old type of comedy, so the problem remains how to make this funny? The idea that I have at the minute is to build up an aura around a character, almost like the first scenes of Star Wars.

From the first scene Darth Vader appears in you know automatically that he is important and a bad ass. What I would like to do is create a character or a robot in this case and make him look cool and scary maybe even using music to add to the aura. As we know though 'pride comes before a fall' and I think it would be more comic to build up a character before knocking them down to earth. It's just an idea anyway but I quite like it and I think its a more interesting way to use the tired old banana gag. It would be interesting to see how the animation of this works mainly having a very serious tone then imediately switching to a very silly and stupid. Anyway I've got 10 pages of designs to get on with so we'll see how it goes.

Greatest Animation I've Seen

Greatest Animation I've Seen
Ok This is hard because I'm a huge fan of Pixar and everything they've ever done however the best piece of animation I have ever seen has to be the epic Final Fantasy 7: Advent Children, the movie sequel to the best selling playstation game.

This is for two reasons; 1. I am a huge Final Fantasy fan and even though FF8 is my favourite I've always had a special place in my heart for FF7, basically this film is purely for the fans satisfaction it answers none of the questions you may have with the story from the game, its a standalone story that to be honest is very heavy going and hard to understand.
So what makes this so great?

The animation is superb, from the second you see it your literally blown away, no 3D animation I have ever seen looks so realistic, pixar may be the kings of 3D animation but they always use a very cartoon like style that is great for their target audience, however Square Enix use realistic looking characters. The same amount of care has been put into this game as Square Enix put into any of their games, it looks superb and sounds great, the music in particular is epic in everyway. But what makes this film truly great is the way they use animation, because the characters look so realistic it is possible to wonder why not just make a live action film? It's in the fight scenes that the reasons behind the animation truly shows.

Everything is so over the top characters jump miles (literally) into the air swinging huge weapons with all the grace of a ballet dancer. It's hard to explain but take for instance 'Flying Tiger Hidden Dragon', although a great film you always notice the fact that the charcters are on wires, however Advent Children through the use of animation makes you believe that the charcters are capable of such gravity defying acts.

What makes this film a great piece of animation is not only that it has amazingly detailed characters and enviroments but also that it uses this animation to do things that wouldn't be possible in any live action film. Anyway I can talk forever about Final Fantasy so I think It'd just be better to watch a clip.