Final few days

I spent last night writing my self evaluation. I wrote about which tutorials I found the most helpful and how I could improve my work in the future. I also wrote about my final pieces, and which images worked the best and which ones worked the least well. On tuesday I had a terrible day. I saved all my 3DSMAX files and got them ready for print, but things went from bad to worse when the printer kept printing single lines at the end of each print out, which confused me. I wasted alot of expensive glossy paper and printing credit trying to sort it out. The moment I got the printer working again and got organised, the printer started to run out of ink. I managed to get some print outs of my final tippy's elsewhere, but they are not very good quality, and I was not very happy with them. I managed to print two best quality tippy's which looked great, but the rest were a dissapointment because they appeared too dark and not as sharp as I would have liked. It is apparent from my images and 3DSMAX files loaded on my hand in disk that the images I created, are much stronger then they appear in the prints in my sketch book. I am going to spend today writing more annotations in my sketch book and messing around with rendering on 3DSMAX, in order to improve for my next project.
 

Lighting

Today we looked very closey at the effects of light. We had to find images from films or paintings that show good use of light to show horror, suspense, sci-fi futuristic and romance. Most horror movies conceal the identity of the character by hiding the eyes and features with unfamilar lighting, or conceal information in some way, sometimes by cutting out life forms completly. We learnt about the inverse square law. I noticed how a lot of Sci Fi imagery uses blue lighting or bright lighting to create a flat clinical environment. Suspense lighting is very suggestive, so the audience can wonder what is going to happen next. Romance was an obvious one, the use of red and warm colours was evident in the pictures I found and an interesting use of depth of field. An almost soft effect seemed to appear in many of the images collected. Eyes are oftern focal points in romantic imagery, as you can see a great deal of emotion inside of them. This is a complete contrast to the horror imagery, as people are scared of the unknown and consealing the eyes especially, makes the audience worry of the personality and temperament of the character. We then placed our tippy trucks inside a box and used different lights, like the spot light and omni, to create these topics. We added shadows and switched on absolute mass basis. I also learnt that the higher the sample range the softer the shadows and the lower the sample range the harder and sharper the shadows

Snow day, college closed!

Today the college is closed due to the great amount of snow, that covered east sussex over night. I decided that I would spend today, adding annotation to my sketch book. I managed to get some images printed for free, of my tippy truck being created. I also have a few showing the use of the omni light in an environment I created by dragging a box over the truck. I have stuck these in to show my work in stages. I might also add a few sketches of faces or people expressing the five emotions we have been asked to convey, to inspire some ideas of how to manipulate Mr Tipster.

Tippy has legs

Today I have added the wheels to my tippy truck. I took a template of the initial wheel shape and used the cylinder shape and gave it 6 sides, which turned the shape into a hexagon. This is so all polygons will become quads, and these are much easier to work with then tri's. I measured the dents in the wheel and used the inset and extrude tools to create them. I then added a black diffuse colour to the main outer part of the wheel and added a little glossiness too. I gave this section of the wheel an ID and, did the same thing for the inner part and selected a cream colour for the inner wheel. I used the align tool to help me get the four wheels to line up with each other.
I also re-sculpted the top part of the truck by adding more line detail and selecting and adjusting the vetices. I modelled the back of the truck aswell, in the same way, in order to keep measurements accurate I used the tape tool in the helpers panel.
To expierement with light, I placed a box over tippy, and flipped the sides and tried using the Omni light and changing the colours to suggest different emotions. I added a few lights in various places. These gave quite interesting effects. 

Happy Day

I feel very happy today because, I can see that my tippy truck is coming together nicely. I created the side panels, by using my illustrator template measured to the correct size and imported it into 3DSMAX. I then converted this to an editable poly and selected the boarder and placed a cap on it. I cloned this object so I could have the same panel for the other side. I manipulated the seat panels also, by adding extra lines using connect and adjusting the vertex to create a dip. I think next week I will concentrate on getting the wheels accurate and as detailed as possible. 

I spent most of my day reading the how to cheat in 3DS MAX book, It gave me some ideas of how to construct different objects, and showed me how to place a picture reference onto a plane, to use as a building guide. I also learnt how to assign poly's an ID and place different bitmap images on the sides of a simple box shape using the multi output channel option. In today’s lesson we learnt how to create a pear shape, using a simple sphere shape and turning on the soft selection and clicking the vertex sub selection tool and adding edge constraints. We then selected vertex lines and moved them upwards to even and smooth out the shape. We then went to our material editor by pressing M and made sure we were in compact mode and clicked the grey square next to the diffuse colour and selected a gradient map. I then added three different colours which I felt were appropriate, a dark yellowy brown, a bright green and then an orangey brown, then I played around with the colour position and the noise very slightly. Then I selected the fractal option and played around with the phase levels, to create my desired effect. I then dragged my texture map onto my pear and the results looked quite good. 

Texturing 3D Models

Today we learnt how to texture our 3D shapes, and how the use of diffuse, specular and ambient tools can make a huge difference to the appearence of our textures. Diffuse is the intial primary colour of our material. Specular is the highlight colour, where the light hits the object and Glossiness varies the highlight strength. I played around with these settings and found some interesting combinations. I also tried adding my own bitmap image of a woman singing onto a simple box shape, which was amsuing. By changing the diffuse colour, specular and glossiness settings, it changed the definition. I also made some of my shapes opaque, and played around with the specular and glossiness to add a realistic looking shine, almost like a glass.

First blog entry

I have never had to write a blog before, but here goes. To be honest I really dont think that 3D modelling is my area. The 3DSMAX layout really scared me when I first took a look, but I am starting to figure out what everything is for. I believe that students who have mathematical brains may find this easier, and unfortunatly I have always struggled with this subject. I have had a mental block about numbers since I was in high school. It all started when I was in year 8. I had a teacher, who I wont name, and his teaching method was rather intense. He would constantly try to catch people out. He would point his dumpy finger and spit questions at you and expect you to answer them instantly. He had a hard glare, and his eyes widened when you hesitated to answer. I found this extremely pressurising and failured to respond to many of his interrogations. My head froze, and I struggled to think properly. I used to go into his classes sweating, and my hands would always shake. I would dread the moment when he pointed at me, and it made me feel so stupid and insignificant when I couldnt work out the answers. He asked me what 2x6 was and I couldnt speak. I still remember the laughter of my class mates. I know this might sound infantile but I feel it has damaged my confidence when it comes to learning anything number related. 
Firstly we learned about basic polygon shapes, quads and tri's. The class split up into groups and defined 1D, 2D and 3D. We then investigated cartesian space. I learnt that it specifies each point in a plane by a pair of numerical co-ordinates. Paul introduced us to scary 3DSMAX, and demonstrated how to turn a primitive shape into an editable poly and how to select certain areas of a shape using vertises, edges, ect. We experimented with the extrude tool and the bevel tool. These are very similar although the bevel tool, has an extra added bonus, it allows you to extrude and then to close the shape inwards or outwards. I managed to make a desk playing around with the shapes in 3DMAX and exdruding and beveling them. I created an environment for this desk aswell by using a box shape and dragging it out over my desk and deleting some of the sides and flipping them over. I managed to follow this tutorial but I found I really had to consentrate. I really dont find it easy.
We were introduced to tipsy or tippy the toy truck, I personally think tipsy sounds better. He is going to be our first model. How on earth am I going to mimic tippy on 3DMAX and then make him emotional aswell! Its a scary thought, but i'm going to try my best! I started to draw tippy and then placed him into adobe illustrator. It was like pulling teeth, but I got there in the end! Dan helped me alot with this, thankyou Dan!
I tried importing some of the shapes I had drawn in illustrator into Max and manipulated them. I used the beautiful NURMS, which Paul loves alot. I am not going to lie, so far I am finding this topic very difficult, but I am really determined to learn and create the best emotional tippy's ever!