For this topic we have been asked to produce a series of documents, showing knowledge and understanding of the planning that goes in to creating a media product such as a short film, trailer game or animation. As a group we went to Bodiam castle and the Smugglers caves in Hastings, to analyse these places as possible filming locations. We were first asked to produce a RECCE report based on one or both of the locations. I chose Bodiam castle. While I was on site I made quite a few pages of notes as I went along listing all the noticable hazzards and problems that might occur. I used this document to help me write my risk assesment chart. When I was walking towards the castle from the car park, I noticed that the ground was rather uneven in parts and particularly muddy. I felt that Elderly people or those with a disability may find it difficult to pass this area safely. Just as I began to think of ways around this problem, I saw a Natrual trust transportation buggy fly by with several passengers on board. I then noted the possibility of hiring out a couple of these buggies for our project. Other solutions included filming in stable weather conditions, providing protective footware, and placing boards over the muddy areas. As I made my way to the gatehouse I began to feel excited about the prospect of using this location in my project. The gatehouse itself was very atmospheric and reminded me instantly of the temple of time in Zelda, Ocarina of time.
As I climbed the spiral staircases to reach the roof, to survey the view, I felt a little uneasy as the walls seemed to close in on me. I have always been fine with heights, but I do tend to feel quite clausatrophobic at times, and panic when having to use lifts or the underground. I felt that it might be necessary to employ extra staff on location to offer assistance to those who are unsteady on their feet, or scared of heights or enclosed spaces. Perhaps some reflective material could be placed in areas of the corridoor which may help create an illusion of space to help those prone to panic attacks.
Friday, 25 March 2011
Monday, 7 March 2011
3D Animation
Today we started to look at animation on 3DS Max for the first time. We learnt that the coordinate system must be 100% accurate in animation. To set the frames per second we had to click on the time configuration button.
Here in England we always work in PAL which is 25 frames per second which is the closest to film which is 24fps. In America they use their own variation which is called NTSC, this 29 something frames per second. Not very accurate I know but I cant remember the exact number now. I will find out later and post it on here. We usually need to work with 1X for the speed.
For our first exercise we created simple box shapes and converted them all into editable polys.We moved all of our boxes and observed the results. It is more important then ever to name all your shapes sensibly and uniquely to help with the selection process. It is then easy as pie to use the select by name tab located along the top.
To start animation we turned on the AUTOKEY and a noticable red box and line appeared on the screen. It is also important to check your pivot points aswell. We were shown how to change these if we felt it nessecary. For this we had to go to the Hierachy tab/panel and select Affect pivot only and then move the postion to one that is suitable for your purposes. This panel is also good for grouping objects together. We were told that we must deselect affect pivot only when we had finished moving pivots into position.
With the alignment section you can centre pivots to the middle of the object instantly and automatically.
Next we recorded our motion on the timeline by selecting AUTOKEY.Which I mentioned above, when it is highlighed red, it means it is recording all motion. The key frames are shown with a little green line. You can re-position these keyframes if you like, by clicking and dragging up or down the timeline. These highlight in white when moving them.
With the key toggle button is switched on you can choose to select the next keyframe or previous key frames.
We were also told about the view panel, which in this case must be set to WORLD. Paul also informed us that the GIMBAL + LOCK is a deadly combination. We are to avoid GIMBAL at all costs as this special system locks movement in one direction. The other rotations we learnt were HEADING, PITCH AND BANK.
We then moved on to looking at keyframes, 3DS MAX draws a line between these points and fills in the details itself. There are several types of keyframe.
Straight tangent - A srtaight line, so the object will move equally and maintain the same speed throughtout.
Slow in - key will start at 0 and slowly move forward and speed up
Slow out - Move quickly then slow
Bazier - You can use handles of keyframes and can control curves and bend them yourself.
We then played with the controller panel located to the far left of the timeline, in here you can access all of the keyframe movement lines and change the flow and movement.
Then we looked at parenting objects. You can create a dummy object in the helpers panel.
A dummy object doesnt show in the final render, and will often be referred to as a null object. The dummy can act as a parent (a mummy) and you can link other objects to this mummy (the children) with the link tool, by clicking and dragging the child to the parent. This will allow you to move the parent object around and have the child or children follow. The children can also move around by themselves if they want ( abit like children being rebellious) Paul told us a fasinating story about Johnny and Mummy in the supermarket to illustrate this.
Here in England we always work in PAL which is 25 frames per second which is the closest to film which is 24fps. In America they use their own variation which is called NTSC, this 29 something frames per second. Not very accurate I know but I cant remember the exact number now. I will find out later and post it on here. We usually need to work with 1X for the speed.
For our first exercise we created simple box shapes and converted them all into editable polys.We moved all of our boxes and observed the results. It is more important then ever to name all your shapes sensibly and uniquely to help with the selection process. It is then easy as pie to use the select by name tab located along the top.
To start animation we turned on the AUTOKEY and a noticable red box and line appeared on the screen. It is also important to check your pivot points aswell. We were shown how to change these if we felt it nessecary. For this we had to go to the Hierachy tab/panel and select Affect pivot only and then move the postion to one that is suitable for your purposes. This panel is also good for grouping objects together. We were told that we must deselect affect pivot only when we had finished moving pivots into position.
With the alignment section you can centre pivots to the middle of the object instantly and automatically.
Next we recorded our motion on the timeline by selecting AUTOKEY.Which I mentioned above, when it is highlighed red, it means it is recording all motion. The key frames are shown with a little green line. You can re-position these keyframes if you like, by clicking and dragging up or down the timeline. These highlight in white when moving them.
With the key toggle button is switched on you can choose to select the next keyframe or previous key frames.
We were also told about the view panel, which in this case must be set to WORLD. Paul also informed us that the GIMBAL + LOCK is a deadly combination. We are to avoid GIMBAL at all costs as this special system locks movement in one direction. The other rotations we learnt were HEADING, PITCH AND BANK.
We then moved on to looking at keyframes, 3DS MAX draws a line between these points and fills in the details itself. There are several types of keyframe.
Straight tangent - A srtaight line, so the object will move equally and maintain the same speed throughtout.
Slow in - key will start at 0 and slowly move forward and speed up
Slow out - Move quickly then slow
Bazier - You can use handles of keyframes and can control curves and bend them yourself.
We then played with the controller panel located to the far left of the timeline, in here you can access all of the keyframe movement lines and change the flow and movement.
Then we looked at parenting objects. You can create a dummy object in the helpers panel.
A dummy object doesnt show in the final render, and will often be referred to as a null object. The dummy can act as a parent (a mummy) and you can link other objects to this mummy (the children) with the link tool, by clicking and dragging the child to the parent. This will allow you to move the parent object around and have the child or children follow. The children can also move around by themselves if they want ( abit like children being rebellious) Paul told us a fasinating story about Johnny and Mummy in the supermarket to illustrate this.
Monday, 7 February 2011
Digital Graphics topic
Unfortunatly I have only just managed to get around to writing a blog for this topic, so this entry might be abit long. I started the topic researching different games company logos. I really liked how Santa Monica Studios logo reflected the game title God of War. I felt it looked like they created the logo after the creation of the game.
For an unknown reason a dog popped inot my head yapping away. Yes I am an animal lover, but I could really visualise this yappydog popping its head up before the start of a game.
I expieremented with different coloures and drew many different dogs, but decided on using a Chihuahua, and having only the head visable. I used the Santa Monica Studios emblem as inspiration, taking the idea of using a larger less clear font in the background and a bright white font in the foreground, with the added bonus of the chihuahua head design. Then I decided that the chihuahua would morph into different personas depending on the game genre, for example, a zombiefied Chi in a zombie kicking bloody button bashing game to a crown wearing diva in a princess designing game for young girls.
I wanted to add a catch phrase to my design and came up with quite a few ideas including:
A gamers best friend
Yappydog Software, a friend for life
A pedigree of the industry
A pedigree to be proud of
A companion for life
Lead your imagination to the park, back and beyond.
A dog can be anyone you want it to be.
Dog Damm good games
A yap above the rest
Wag your tail with Yappy games
My chosen final phrase was "Here at Yappydog Studios, creativity is a walk in the park."
After writing a mission statement over 500 words I started to brainstrom my game idea. I had chosen the Metropolis title, as I really enjoy creating environments. A whole storyline seemed to flow effortlessly from my brain.
Winky City was under the attack of the deadly T1ZY virus, offical name streptococcus vactosis, of the rouge kind and strange, mutations were occuring, and Vambies were born, a mix between vampires and zombies, with very different characteristics of cliche nasties. With a strong scent of fruit, specifically apples, and the ability to detect a human from eye movement, blinking can be a scary prospect. I did juggle the idea of having a male character as the main feature of the game, but becasue I used Zayed Ali, in my first project I decided this time to have a young lady. A kickboxing pro named Kanti Douglas who must fight her way through endless crowds of vambies to catch the winky cruise ship overseas to a utopian dream. I came up with statements such as Your friends and family, you meet along the way may develop the T1zy virus at some stage, but will you have the heart to kill them to get to your upotian dream. I want this feature to be heart renching, and emotionally draining, unlike any other game. I want the audience to be ingrossed and emotionally connected to the characters and relationships.
I thought of a science laboratory called Park view, which in undertaking expierements to try and cure this evil plague. I pictured posters dotted around the city asking the citzens for donations, reading "Give a little today, live a little tomorrow."
I started to draw, ideas for the vambies and Kanti. I then started digital paitings in photoshop and experimenting with blending modes. I have been trying to design the environments, and I am still yet to make a decsion on which ones I am going to use. I have tried developing the utopian dream land, a beautiful paradise island with The villa of Aria pearched on top of a mountain. I have also designed a dock, for the escape to sea. I found drawing the city the most challenging. Perspective drawing has always been difficult for me. I painted, drew in pencil and scanned them in, using photoshop to manipulate them. I like using the lens flar effects to give realism to my pieces. I also found that experimeting with blending modes was excellent in order to change the unscathed city painting into a scary vambie infested derelict and dying city.
I also used textures in my digital paintings, for kanti's clothes and environments. I found I could get great effects from lowering the opacity of that layer.
For an unknown reason a dog popped inot my head yapping away. Yes I am an animal lover, but I could really visualise this yappydog popping its head up before the start of a game.
I expieremented with different coloures and drew many different dogs, but decided on using a Chihuahua, and having only the head visable. I used the Santa Monica Studios emblem as inspiration, taking the idea of using a larger less clear font in the background and a bright white font in the foreground, with the added bonus of the chihuahua head design. Then I decided that the chihuahua would morph into different personas depending on the game genre, for example, a zombiefied Chi in a zombie kicking bloody button bashing game to a crown wearing diva in a princess designing game for young girls.
I wanted to add a catch phrase to my design and came up with quite a few ideas including:
A gamers best friend
Yappydog Software, a friend for life
A pedigree of the industry
A pedigree to be proud of
A companion for life
Lead your imagination to the park, back and beyond.
A dog can be anyone you want it to be.
Dog Damm good games
A yap above the rest
Wag your tail with Yappy games
My chosen final phrase was "Here at Yappydog Studios, creativity is a walk in the park."
After writing a mission statement over 500 words I started to brainstrom my game idea. I had chosen the Metropolis title, as I really enjoy creating environments. A whole storyline seemed to flow effortlessly from my brain.
Winky City was under the attack of the deadly T1ZY virus, offical name streptococcus vactosis, of the rouge kind and strange, mutations were occuring, and Vambies were born, a mix between vampires and zombies, with very different characteristics of cliche nasties. With a strong scent of fruit, specifically apples, and the ability to detect a human from eye movement, blinking can be a scary prospect. I did juggle the idea of having a male character as the main feature of the game, but becasue I used Zayed Ali, in my first project I decided this time to have a young lady. A kickboxing pro named Kanti Douglas who must fight her way through endless crowds of vambies to catch the winky cruise ship overseas to a utopian dream. I came up with statements such as Your friends and family, you meet along the way may develop the T1zy virus at some stage, but will you have the heart to kill them to get to your upotian dream. I want this feature to be heart renching, and emotionally draining, unlike any other game. I want the audience to be ingrossed and emotionally connected to the characters and relationships.
I thought of a science laboratory called Park view, which in undertaking expierements to try and cure this evil plague. I pictured posters dotted around the city asking the citzens for donations, reading "Give a little today, live a little tomorrow."
I started to draw, ideas for the vambies and Kanti. I then started digital paitings in photoshop and experimenting with blending modes. I have been trying to design the environments, and I am still yet to make a decsion on which ones I am going to use. I have tried developing the utopian dream land, a beautiful paradise island with The villa of Aria pearched on top of a mountain. I have also designed a dock, for the escape to sea. I found drawing the city the most challenging. Perspective drawing has always been difficult for me. I painted, drew in pencil and scanned them in, using photoshop to manipulate them. I like using the lens flar effects to give realism to my pieces. I also found that experimeting with blending modes was excellent in order to change the unscathed city painting into a scary vambie infested derelict and dying city.
I also used textures in my digital paintings, for kanti's clothes and environments. I found I could get great effects from lowering the opacity of that layer.
Thursday, 16 December 2010
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.
Monday, 6 December 2010
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
Thursday, 2 December 2010
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.
Monday, 29 November 2010
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.
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.
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