Conclusion

The module was perhaps tricky but easy at the same  time. Since it was group work this time round, I guess it can be hard to get the idea across if one member of the team isn't as committed as the other members are. I think that we had done an alright job at the end of the day, there are some things that I would have done better if I had to render the scene or placed the camera in a different position....either way, it came out good.

Modelling the landscape...using reference images did help a bit but it was tricky. I know for a fact that I will have to improve my skills on creating mountains and terrain...especially if I want to create my own web series in the future. The Maps came out pretty...maybe I should have added some water to make it a realistic looking map or gone a different direction and based the maps on the original World War Two maps. The fire...I thought that my fire attempt was quiet alright for my first attempt with the particle system, maybe I should have blogged more on it but learning the PF Source will come in handy...I'll just have to edit the settings slightly more so that the fire would look less smoky. Luckily, I didn't have any problems with the Unwrap UVW, the terrain was laid out simply enough so placing the materials within the mapping area on Photoshop was quick and simple. I do kinda wished that I could have modelled the terrain slightly better though to go with the realistic textures.

Leanne's Buildings were....AWESOME. The unwrap code on those things...I would have struggled slightly. I'm glad that she had done the buildings. Scott's ships turned out fine...though there was times where I suggested to add things to the model as well as telling him multiple times to use the Unwrap UVW tool. Dan....*sigh* Sadly, he didn't follow the script when he drew his storyboard for his scenes so he placed the camera in the wrong place. His planes seemed too box like as well, we had tried to advise him but it didn't look like he listened to our advice.

When it came to animating, it seemed that there wasn't much problems. Though there was multiple times when our renders became 200 hours long, we managed to pull through. Scott's water came out well, which is great for the fact that we needed water. Leanne's explosions was a BLAST!! Get it? Blast! Because it blew up........I'm not sure on Dan's lighting, we had sorted out the daylight system for the Pearl Harbor scene and his blog doesn't say much on his work with the daylight system so I'm not entirely sure if he did it at all and just stole the one that I had done.....oh well, at least the sky looks great.

This time around, I didn't place a material plane to block the line between the ground and the daylight system so...that bit didn't look great in some of the renders, it was only when we had placed the camera in a certain angle that we got awesome pretty shots.

For our group project, somethings came out good...somethings came out wrong. I guess that's what you learn while being in a team. If we work together and most of us are committed then it shouldn't be a problem when looking for projects in the real world. I'm just glad that I have a better understanding for some landscape modellings and the partical system. It will be great for future projects.

Sound, Music and Film.

With most of the clips done, me and Leanne have started putting the scenes all together. Slightly glad that some of the more....shall I say....rubbish clips....are flashbacks so that we can throw lots of effects on them. YAY FOR EFFECTS!!! Though Premier is a bit of a pain, we are slowly making process of putting everything together.

I did make some sound but I can't blog music on here....sad days.

I had used Logic Pro and had used piano and a number of Japanese instruments to create the music needed. I used loud orchestral kit for the battle scenes. We are just waiting for Scott's scenes to be rendered and all of the animation will be completed!!

Flashback Settings
Noise: 31.0%
Brightness: 31.0
Contrast: 50.0
FX Black & White

Dock Fire....Week 11

AH HAHAHAHAHAH I have fixed the minecraft problem.

From the picture, I have added a diffuse colour to a fire texture by selecting particle age. As soon as I applied the settings, I copied the settings into Self Illumination. After than, I opened up opacity and added another layer for particle age, placings the settings 0,30 and 100.

I've messed with the settings after that, trying to get the right height and the number of particles seen before moving onto the smoke. I had made another texture and do the same thing for the smoke as I did for the fire. This is what the particle view looked like once all the settings were in place.

There were moments where the texture wouldn't apply and I ended up with minecraft problem again, I eventually came out with this!

Work on scenes and research on fire

I have completed the two map scenes, clips will appear on nere soon as soon as Blooger decides to show the videos. With my research to fire, it got slightly annoying finding tutorials of fire that didn't look realitisic and then find fire that was realitisic but in need of a add on in order to work. I soon found this video from youtube and followed it instructions....

For this tutorial, I have covered my dock in a noise texture within diffuse colour and self-illumination so that it looked like this. Selecting black and yellow for the colours and changing the settings of the noise parameters: High: 0.63, Levels: 3.0, Size: 3.0, Low: 0.549, Phase: 0.0. Here is the dock.

PF SOURCE

For this tutorial, I began to use a partical system selection called PF source.

Particle View

• Birth
• Position Objects (Select docks)
• Shape Facing (Select Camera)
• Display (Geometry..thought I've changed it to diamonds)
• Force (Select Wind)
• Delete

The birth was placed as 0-300, the rate being 2000.
The position is surface with grayscale
Life is 8 and Varitey is 3 in Delete.

I added to wind so that the parictles would blow upwards. Changing the suggested sugesstions from the video as my object is slightly larger that the sphere. The Force is -50, its placed in spherical, the turbulence is 10, frequency is 0.5 and the scale is 0.1.

These are the materials made:

I followed the instructions to make the fire/smoke material before adding it to the particle view by using Material Dynamic. I've increased the particle size and this should be the part where it looks like there is smoke coming from the docks....

Oh if only it was that easy.......

It seems the fire texture doesn't want to apply itself.......
It's a slightly scary scene so far.....

Problems

WHAT THE HELL!!!

The Island is floating, the fences are off balance, the textures on the buildings are going everywhere. It's week 10 and our model are having a flying competition!! *slam heads on desk*

I quickly fixed the problem, replacing the fences before sendings the new copy to the others. I am currently working on my scenes. At the moment, I am not needed for the smoke effect but I have started to look into tutorials. It's a shame that this 3DMAX doesn't have FumesFX...that effect made realitistic smoke and fire....I really want it. But the scenes of the maps are coming along, I have done a test run on the first half of one scene and am currently rendering that scene again. Here is the test:

Week 8 and Week 9

Oops! Forgot to update.

Most of the models from the others have been passed over to me, including the water effect, making the scenes more pretty. I had re-done the air base island because my first attempt was just....horrible. Here are the sceneshoots of the work. The screenshots will include the water effect with to boats and buidlings in place and shots of the new island...YAY! New islands.

Daylight System
Since Dan is behind on the Plane Models, I thought I would mess around with the Daylight System for the main Pearl Harbor scene, just so we had the right idea to how we would like the lighting to be like. We applied Mr sun light and put in the time, date and location so that we could get the right sort of angle for the sun to appear. With the sun in place, I messed around with the softness of the shadows and how strong the sun was, making the scene all pretty with the boats and the island reflecting in the water. During this, I had quickly removed the border style off my mountain to make it looked more natural.

With the equator line, we will have to be careful with some camera angels but it would be every interesting one once we all start animating.

Making Pearl Habour

After finishing the maps up, I thought that it was time to start work on the actual island and the base itself, which I thought would be interesting to see what I come out with since this will be the first attempt in making terrain.

Websites looked at:

http://www.dxstudio.com/guide_content.aspx?id=053aadd0-0b13-45c3-b8a8-834f646015ba

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VK6nCZUzYDI

 

At first, I had made the base the same way I had made the maps, by using displace. The only problem was that when I had finished making it, I realised that I will properly need to make some of the landscape that would be seen in shots from the view of the camera, something that a simple plane wouldn't be able to cover up.

Terrain
When I was looking for a way to create terrain, I came across the first site. The way to texture caught my eye so I thought that I could give it a go. For some reason though, 3DS Max didn't have the Garment Maker Modifer that it had mentioned so I came across the second link to explain how to us the Terrain tool in Compound Materials. Using lines, I was able to create a basic island look to go with the base, with the Oahu Island mountains.

After messing with the terrain for a bit, I continued to follow the tutorial from the site that I was looking at when it mentioned Vertex Painting, seeing that it was on 3DS Max. I gave it a try.

Using the tablet, I shaded the island and tried to texture the island.

Following the instructions, I managed to get a as as the material part when the mixing of textures didn't seem to want to work and only show one texture. It was fixed for about two seconds when I added UVW Mapping and changed it to a box but the problem couldn't be fix. In the end, I thought that I should try out Unwrap UVW since the island wasn't a complicated shape like houses are......

Unwrap UVW

With the image plane behind the Island, its slowly coming along. It should be ready to place buildings and models on it soon ^^ Hopefully I can get water going......I should have really picked to learn water....my bad.