One week to go!!

We've all been setting up our renders today, and afetr they've all worked there way the the system, from the 28hrs of Tims to the 9 hours of mine etc then we're all set and done, it can then be put through premier pro by the finishers and bo one of the best things ever. :) I believe this and so should everyone else.

Anyways, I've been playing today and adding some final touches to my scenes, Ive added the fire and fog for my enemy ship sinking, and I've animated the Trinidad being blown to pieces and then sinking. These both look awesome if I do say so myself. This picture is a screen shot from the enemy ship sinking. I think it looks really gloomy what with the sky and the fog.

On my Trinidad sinking animation, I made a big booboo, after setting it up, on two computers, to render I realised that I had hidden the holes which react with bombs to represent being blown to smitherines. This ment that the Trinidad was just a ship with holes in it and no other effects. So i stopped this render but will post the AVI videos that I got from them, they also look UBA cool. :) So check back tomorrow maybe and they should be here. But for now...

Tried and Failed

I tried to leave my computer to render out the scene of the Trinidad being blown to smithereens ( apologies if that's wrong), and then sinking. But can't seem to select the purple bits which are linked to the bombs to make them explode, so ill have to wait till tomorrow and the all knowledgeable Tim or Jo can give me a hand, the render shouldn't take too long in class as the only effect are fog and the ray trace for the water. Hopefully it'll be OK.

See you all tomorrow

By the by, I believe once the rendering is completed we're there, we've got the main start and end scenes, everything in the middle is great, and there's quite a bit of it thanks to Tim's thoughtful rendering :) All praise the supercomputer. :D

YAY!

Tim and I were talking on monday about that main enemy ship, Santisima Trinidad I believe, being blown to pieces and then sinking. This is quite a large accuracy within the Battle of Trafalgar and so I have animated the ship being blown to pieces and sinking. I realise that the bits that get blown up are currently purple, but this is only a test render the entire render lasts 1500 frames. Anyway let me know what you think, I have used the angle so that I didn't have to create the scene with the british hips in also, as this would have crashed the computer. :)

AAHHHHHH!!!!!! and I thought I knew stress!!

On Friday, I felt ready to explode with stress, over the project, over the completion date, basically over everything. I was pretty much on the Verge of tears. Honestly, luckily no-one saw my lip quivering. :(
So, now it's Monday and I've been in max for 4 hours nearly, along with some other group members, and once again I want to cry. This time it isn't due to people arguing or just being plain rude and not doing as I as ( I do not mean that as bossy as it sounds, but after all I am the project manager), No this time it is due to the ******* (insert word here) computers. I have managed to set up a camera view of an enemy fleet. This looks quite good, but as i try to move the ships slightly for an animation to show them moving through the water, the computer tells me it has no memory and closes. This has happened about 6 or 7 times and I am unsurprisingly at the end of my tether.

Anyways, I'll ask Tim if maybe he can ad the very small animation before rendering the scene. This will help tremendously. Once the scene is created it can be added to, or maybe just switch the Trinidad for the Victory and change the placing of the smaller ships to indicate the English fleet. These scenes are to replace scenes 11, 14, and 16 to remove the need for the people being injured, purely as this will increase the rate at which we can complete the project.

I feel that the computers in the rooms we use are not really fit for the purpose of our course, but all fingers crossed this will not cause too many problems, and the animation will come together.

So, I feel I should try again at maybe creating an English fleet, that way if it is OK with Tim maybe he can merge the two to great a great over view shot.

Apart from the problems I've been having, I have managed to complete scene 21, other than needing a sky, and maybe some ship bobbing (referred to also as movement but I prefer bobbing!)

For now,

BYE!

Realisation

I realised over the weekend that we have people animating, but we don't have someone compiling the scenes (making sure all the scenes are set up with the required models ready to animate) so I have started to do this, I have compiled scene 8 but need to add the canon balls and then animate it. I tried to start on scene 9 but humyo started to play-up and wouldn't load, so I'll try again later.

website for bost/ship wake

I found this tutorial which I thought would be good for Lara, in creating a wake after the boats as they move forwards in the sea.

http://www.xedium3d.com/tutorials/wakes/wakes.html

Ohhhhh, pretty (rubbish with no maps)!!!

I took the liberty of trying a mist effect, kind of an after math look is what I was trying to achieve, on one of the ships. Looks OK, could do with some tinkering, but at least it gives a view as to what could be achieved. I apologise for the back ground but I had no other options from what WAS on my computer.

I think with sea, and a better environment map that the top effect may be the best. It looks like puffs of smoke.

Ive been playing...

Ive been playing about with the two main ships and put them in to a scene with a sky and an animated sea, theres no textures on them, but this is just to show what we can achieve. Let me know what you think. Its a little short at the moment. Also I realise that the ships are not moving along with the water but this is just a test.




Blogger won't let me upload my vidoe so ill store it on the joint storage if anyone is interested.

OK, so this week, its 11 o'clock and there is a fair amount of people here, we've just had our meeting and the following has been decided,
We're sticking with all the scenes but were going to concentrate on getting the main ones done so that we have a complete film, were pretty much on time at the moment but we only have 3 WEEKS left so we need to keep focused, and knuckle down, Lara and Richard are going to the library today to try and get hold of some sound effects to add to what Marc has already found.
Most models have been made at this point so were passing them onto the animators and mappers and should start seeing some good results soon. I'm going to have a go at one of the animation scenes today using Richards Victory ship. James W may be leaving, which we'll all be sad to see, so we need to reassign his work to other people. So... we need someone to do the nelson animation, and other people animations. This is a major job, anyone who feels they have nothing to do, or maybe wants to try doing some animation then please let me know so that we can get this underway.

For now that's all I got to say.

Keep up the good work, those who are contributing on a regular basis, and can we all please a try a little more punctual, we need the entirety of Friday lessons to get this work complete.

Also, we need to communicate with each other more, the minute a model is finished/mapped/animated we need to pass it straight over to the next person. Either contact through the blog or through someone who has the persons phone number. We need to contact each other more regularly than just seeing each other on a Fri.

Group Blog

Hey Guys.
I know we each have our own individual blogs, but i thought it might be useful to have a group blog where we can all post stuff for the group work. this means we can keep all the information together and it'll be easier for all of us to see whats going on, this can be our main battle of Trafalgar blog. any concerns, suggestions, and recommendations. We can still use our individual blogs to document methods used for modelling, animations etc, but i felt that this could be a place for us all to post stuff so that its easily accessible. We can also post all team decisions, meeting minutes, and final products.

So the e-mail to log in is:
samantha.holdaway@student.anglia.ac.uk
The password is:
battle07
and the web address is:
http://battleoftrafalgar07.blogspot.com/

I hope we all find this useful. And as I said in my last post, we're all going to sit down at the beginning of the next lesson and talk through what we've got, and where we need to head.

Plan for next week

Next week before everyone seperates out to do there own work, I want us to all sit down and go through what we've got finished, and what needs to be finished. Anything not completed will need to be finished by 4 o'clock at the latest on the day. The finished models will then be given to the mappers and animators. Whilst the mappers work on gettting a final product to use in the film, the animators can finalise there techiniques so that when the mappers are finished the animators will know exactly what to do, and thus speed work along.

Any suggestions for speeding work up are all welcome.

I would really appreciate it if everyone could turn up on time, we are a team and need to work as one. Also when we are working in class I think we all need to sit together, rather than spread ourselves out across the room.

Ill post more ideas as they come to me.

Friday 9th

Today I have been looking into creating explosions. One the second to last post you can see all of these tests of exploding a barrell, I then moved onto exploding a room of barrels, I've got two vids for this, one is half the room exploding, and the second is the whole room exploding. This took forever to render but looks awesome if I do say so myself. I then got to thinking about where else there would be an explosion, the canon would emit a slight explosion when the canon ball fires. Ive also created and animated this, this is the last video.

Tutorial websites.

This is a great website for a large amount of tutorials, have a look see if anything is useful.
http://www.tutorialfanatic.com/tutorials/3D-Studio-Max-tutorials_1.html

Exploding Barrells

I have taken one of Ben's very good barrells and decided to explode it to test out some effects, I've used several different particle sizes, and only managed to use the map on one of the models. These 6 short videos show each test, I think that the last one, test 7 is probably the best.

OK, So.

OK guys, from the people I have talked to about Friday's 'meeting', and from what I have read as well, it seems to me that some things got sorted out and some didn't. I apologise for not being able to stick around on Friday, and would like to apologise now to anyone that reads this before Friday that I unfortunately will not be able to attend this week either. I understand that this will not amuse some people, but after this week you can rely on me fully, and I will be at every one's disposal whenever I am needed.

OK, so according to James T he feels that the 'meeting' was more of a shouting match, this is not going to get us anywhere and will only cause more problems than are necessary, I would also like to comment on the fact that he feels that some people may take longer to do some work than others and that this will set us back. I feel that, as the project manager, I will be set to ensure that everyone works when and how they should be working. There will be deadlines set to each piece of work, and if these are not adhered to or anyone has any concerns as to the progress please let me know and we can see if people need help. If the case becomes that someone is not pulling their weight so to speak and are just taking advantage of being a modeller and thinking that they have all the time to create their work, then we can address this person, and if this does not work, please be aware that I will bring this to Jo's attention.

I believe that we can complete this project the way that it has been set out, as long as everyone understands that we need to help each. As James also pointed out, we are all adults, why do we have to scream and shout over each other, we need to listen to each other and stop being a bunch of children.

Thank you to Leah for taking an account of the minutes, as much as this has helped me I feel that this will also help anyone who has become confused. Leah has said to me that she will take notes again for me this week, which I will be reading through. I will get feed back off of everyone so please lets all work together.

I have looked into people's blogs as well and it's really good to see some work coming together already, we have Tim starting to create a ship, although slightly ambitiously, I feel that with the skills he has, and his dedication to max, he'll be OK.

Also Ben's barrels that he has created look great, the smoke effect is brilliant, defiantly something we should use.

On James W blog, if anyone fancies a look, you can see a brilliant short video of a smoke test, that looks great, and a water scene with a boat that also look really good.

These techniques are really good, but I realise that these and the ship are being created by people who are brilliant at max, with all of us working together it's going to look great.

SO, FINALLY, were all adults, lets all have some faith in our abilities and the abilities of others and get this made

Again I apologise for my absence but I will be back, next week.

Sam

So far.

So this is where I'm upto.

Second method.

I’ve been trying to do the second method of head modelling, using the sphere as a start point, with the convergence points as the ears, and I would like to say that I thought it was going to be easier.

WELL……

It’s not, it is actually just as tricky.


TIP!
When you attempt this method I will advise that all caution is taken;

Make sure there is nothing breakable near by
Make sure you are not near loved ones, people who you don’t want to get angry with.

All jokes aside, in the hand out from the book that Jo knowledgably recommended, the methods are related to modelling Carlo’s head, you will find that when this is applied to re-creating your own head it is slightly more tricky and takes a lot of thinking about.

This is because:

1. We do not have perfectly aligned heads that pulled out and forward sphere’s fit into. ( When modelling one of the first stages is to select the front lower polygons, this means select the ones that are on line with the centre-cutting rings, not including the ones that are immediately touching the centre pole. Hope that makes sense.)

2. Our faces do not align, topology or no topology, exactly with the rings of a circle. ( I have so far found that aligning the vertices and lines is tricky as there are not necessarily as many to play with as on the first technique.

My last piece of advice for this, at the moment due to me still playing about with it, is to completely forget the 1st method. Trying to use both methods together will become very confusing, I keep finding myself moving vertices to where I feel they should be, as we did with the 1st method, and this is not how this method works.

I hope something from this comes in useful to someone, I will post some pictures soon to show what I’ve been up to and how far I got before tearing my hair out. ( Please do not laugh if when you next see me I have bald patches.)

Went a little bit further than expected.

In my last post I said I was going to add some eyes to stop 'me' being so freaky, but, I kind of got into the tutorials and ended up starting to model my skull.

I think it looks quite good at the moment once i've tweaked it, it should look great.

I currently feel quite proud of myself for the progress i've made as I felt I was going to struggle.

TIP

On the tutorial where our wonderful tutor tells us about creating the back of the head, he does not mention how to actually make the shoulders etc, I used the method of copying the lines down and following the topology that you have to draw for the neck. This is the process of selecting your lines, and then when you have selected the move tool hold the shift key down at the same time and it produces new polygons.

You can then play with the vertices and lines of these, and move them to where you need them.

Well, I hope that was slightly helpful.

Enjoy.

I'm going to start on the second method this evenin, so expect some new pictures from that showing it as I update.

Here is my neck so far.

Lips!

I feel that i'm starting to get that hang of this which is a good feeling, so i've used the same method as for the nose and the eyes, the tutorial is given to use from the web site with the American guy. I really like the way the lips have come out, and because it didn't take as long as i expectd i'm going to have a look into either some eye sockets or some eyes. It's kind of freaking me out at the moment.

So please leave your comments, suggestions on improvements are more than welcome.

Thank you.

Eyelids

I've played around with the model some more, used the same method we are given for the nose to creath the eyelids, im going to move onto the lips next and try and model those, once that's done I may move onto the next method of modelling a head, using a solid, starting from a sphere and then pulling it out to create a face.

Nose!

Ok, ive been working on this for a little while, came back to it after making the computer crash twice the othr day. This bit is quite fun, bit of aristic licence to be used I believe. So, without further adu, this is my nose.

I want to say to some people who may not have kept the space clear for a nose, all you need do is look very carefully at your lines and where they are, which ones you could possibly remove the make room for the nose. I originally hadn't done this but with careful consideration you can see the result I got.

Ta Da!

Working hard, too hard for my computer!!

ok, since i last posted i re-drew each of the polygons on my face, pulled allthe vertices out, then applyed the turbo smooth mentioned in tutorial 5 to see how it looked, noticed a couple of flaws so i played around with the vertices some more and got it looking better.

*Note to others, i found the eyes quite tricky so make sure you take some time to make sure your placing the vertices in the right places, and hopefully it wont be as tricky as mine was.

*When your playing with the vertices i personally found it easier to work with the back ground solid so you could see all the shadows.

*Finally, sounds dumb to say but i paid today for not doing so, SAVE REGULARLY.

So once i had done this, was happy with what id done, i watched the nose construction tutorial, i want to say, be careful when you contruct the nose because he leave the nostrils and the sides of the nise with no polygons until this part. i had actually filled mine in but left the nostrils empty and had to do alot of playing about with the vertices afterwards to make this possible.

SO, id played withhe vertices and max crashed, not good, i hadnt saved and it had taken me a while to figure them out.

so i started them again, played with the vertices actually got round to constructin the nose, which i found difficult cos i got a wierd shaped nose ive decided. HaHa, oh well.

i was just about the start modelling the nose canals and max crashed again, guess what? i hadnt learnt from before and hadnt saved, by this time, about 45 mins ago, i was utterly frustrated and near to ripping my hair out, so left it.

Ah, damn it!

I just flipped my model and realised that iv made a quad that has one side that is joid to nothing and so it makes a hole in the mesh, i no how to do it now so im gona go back a few steps and re-do the quads, pull my face out again should look better this time although im proud of the forst attempt. ill post my new pics throughout the day.

DONE IT!!!!

I have done all the vertices bit, and it looks really good, only took bout an hour or so which I count as being really good for a first time try.

I wanted to add, when i took the see-through of of this i was a hideous green colour, any one seen the film The Mask.

Quads completed

I've just finished placing all of the lines onto my face, following my topology. Needed to modify a couple of areas but not majorly, have joined all the quads together now so I have a complete face to start pulling about.This is the bit that i think is gona be a little more confusing, but should be good.

(deep thought) ... what can i change, oh the possibilities of realising what i could look like!!!

Spider-sam,Spider-sam

MEEEEEE!!!!!!!

Just finished topology

Ive just finished mapping the topology of my face, bout an hour, hopefully its kinda easier with a graphics tab, ill try again when ive picked mine up at home. gona go grab my laptop n load up max, i wana be able to work in our norm room on max cos i know im gona need the help.
Mappig the topology has been hard enough im a little intimidated with this max step but by looking at what james t has already started to produce im looking forward to the final thing already.

Researching the battle of trafalgar

Ok,
So,
i went to the martime museum last weekend whilst i was home, saw a very good interactive video which is much similar to the one that is on leah's blog, only 5 mins long but it gives alot of useful information, such as nelson dying at 4.30pm on the day of the battle just as he had been told that the battle had been one. His last words were "i have done my duty". I thought this would be quite useful as we can use this as a time scale for lighting etc.
I also saw the 'jacket', i think thats what i would be called, that is the mythical reason he was killed, if you remember the vidoes we watched in the 1st week you'll reme mber that the myth was he was shot because of the metallic adornments on his coat, the guy on the vid said this didnt work because the adornments were stitched on not badges, im guessing in my opinion the guy hasn't seen the jacket because, although they are stitched on, they are stitched with metallic thread which still would make them shine.
Again this is something i feel we can take forward to use i our modelling so that we ccan make it as close as possible.
Unfortunately the museum does not let you take pictures which i feel is unfair but i dad visit n found it very useful.

Darn it!

I went home over the weekend and was going to have someone take some good pictures of me with really good light balance etc so I wouldn't have to fiddle with them too much, and I forgot. So, I took some here, there not all that good but hey they'll be good enough for now till I remember this weekend. It'll give me something to work with for now. Ive been to the library too and got some books on max, 3ds max 7 BIBLE, its big let me tell you, Ive also got a copy of max 9 bible on my computer so Ive been going through those trying to keep up. During my library excursion I also found a book called Modelling a character in 3ds max, so thought i'd get that to browse. My boyfriend also managed to get hold of some tutorials on the basics of modelling and animation for me, there much like the one we used in class.

I think im preparing well im looking forward to fri, hopefully we'll get onto max and start pulling our own faces about, and also look into this second method of modelling. Being as we had s couple opf techinical hitches last week and couldn't get that far.

So as for my pictures so far, there they are....^^^

Face modelling, techinique 1

Ok, so, first lesson over and the whole face modelling things wasn't quite what I was expecting but was really good. Got confused at first with all the lines but got there in the end.

Topology is confusing.

The tutorials that we used are really good, and although the face of the guy got a little complex I think it was good for our first run. I found the tutorials easy to follow, even with the American guy, who I will say explained every well what we was doing.
Starting with the blue lines to mark out the areas that fall in or raise off of the face was relatively easy, guess you just think about where your own face creases when u smile etc. But the red, the actually topology marking, now that was hard, but after a little bit of concentration and thought, and forgetting that triangles ever existed, it came together.
Little annoyed about our room not having 3D Studio Max, but thats the techs' for you I guess. Hopefully we'll be able to get into a room next week n start making 3D us's.
So this weekend I plan on getting some pictures done of my face in the views needed and having a go at giving myself some photoshop aided war paint, or topology as its technically known.

First thoughts

Upon hearing the idea for this project I was a little scared, b ut i think its going to be a good challenge and with a little hard work there's going to be a great outcome. First thoughts are that I would like to concentrate on possibly animation side of it but being as there are others in the class with a lot more skill than I have it would possibly be better to concentrate on something I am more suited to, as time progresses im sure ill make a choice.
This afternoon were looking into face modelling and my first impression sitting here waiting for the lecture to start is that its going to be so good, im really looking forward to discovering what can be made, could be a little scary i guess making a 3D me, or person.
...more at the end of the lecture i guess........

1st lesson in Sawyers

Sitting in the first lesson of the year for 3D studio Max. Looking forward to some challenging work, but a little scared about all the work being set this year and being able to get the grades.
So...modelling our own faces should be fun being as i have some new piercings and a new hair style to be able to really emphisis and make it definatly me. :) as if it could be anyone else.

YAY bring on the modelling (I sound confident now, ask me at 5)