More Animating - Snake

Snake - Bone Tool:

I began to try and manipulate my snake asset by attempting to animate a slither.

In order to achieve this movement I attempted to use the bone technique which can be applied from the systems menu in the create panel, and then selecting bones.

The Bone object is created in segments, by dragging and clicking until the required number of bones are met, then right click which stops the bones from creating more. I attemped to try and structure my bones as close to the shape of my snake as possible, this may have been better attempted by initially creating my snake asset in a straight line, though my model was actually curved during the production of it, which made it slightly more tricky to amend the bone structure to it, but hey, you live and learn. I have never attempted anything like this before, so it has been a good practice exercise.

One the required shape was satisfied the bone is attached to the snake, and the movement is manipulated by moving the parent bone "front" and also the children bones can be modified by movement, which helps to try and achieve the slither effect.

Snake with Bone Attached:




Basically once the Snake bone is assigned you can then further manipulate the animation, by setting the autokey and slowly modifying the movements, so for example I attempted to move the snake forward a little by pulling the front bone, then tried to adapt the "slither" by moving the other bones within the body by slight movements left and right - essentially trying to re-create a slither movement.

I need to work more on this, though a video of what I am attempting to describe can be found below:

Snake moves across floor:



Snake moves across table:

Animation - Tutorial 10

Biped and Physique:


The purpose of today's tutorial was to implement the use of bipeds to help control character movement.

Firstly, a man was created (or downloaded), and then a biped was selected from the tool panel using the systems panel.



The idea is to manipulate the biped as close to the shape of the man you have created. It is moved inside of the "man" character using the figure mode and placed as effectively inside the mesh as possible.

The biped is adapted to try and place the bones as close to the shape of the character as possible, basically trying to emulate the proportions of the biped in relation to the character.



Deactivate figure mode and apply the physique setting in the modifier list, select "attach to node"and click on the pelvic bone on the biped which acts at the pivot point for the character.

In order to manipulate the biped as closely to the model for the parts of the biped that need to be animated, you need to select the individual parts of the biped that need to be controlled. In the physique modifier increase the radial scale which basically wraps the biped leg size into the characters trying to make them the same or slichtly bigger so that no stretching occurs when it comes to the movement.

An example of what this looks like below:




After you are happy that you have attached the biped correctly to your character and feel confident that the limbs will all move correctly then move to the motion panel with your biped selected and crete some footsteps for him to travel along using the footstep creation tool. Select the desired amount of footsteps required for your character and he should follow the pattern of steps.

Footsteps:




A Video of the Character Walking:

Creating a Room Scene...

Room:

My final animation is going to feature mainly through the eyes of Solitaire, the fortune teller / tarot card reader from the Live and Let die movie.

I wanted to try and recreate a room in a similar theme to the room she sits in for her readings in the movie.

It is not the most aesthetically pleasing room, which is why I decided to add a few more details to my room, and I probably will create more as the scene progresses, but I wanted to post a "in progress" visualisation of my room so far.

The Room Image sourced from the movie is below:



http://www.hedgedruid.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/janeseymour_solitaire.jpg

Basically the main considerations that I wanted to try and convey were a silver/metallic finish room, with a big black table where her cards are read from. I re-made my table from my earlier attempt, as initially the table I had made with my Tarot cards could have been made better from my inital prototype.

The room was created simply by creating to thin boxes for walls and applying a metallic texture which I lined up to try and create the indented effect on the walls provided in the image above, I simply created a chequered floor through the inbuilt effects in the material editor, and ramped the tiling right up to increase the floor tile effect.

I recreated the table and added some candlesticks, simply made out of some cylinders, to add some detail effect to the table. As I mentioned in my previous posts, I incorporated the voodoo theme by adding a voodoo doll and stabbing it to the wall. I also added a picture of a day of the dead skull, to add a bit more aesthetic detail to the scene. Again the day of the ded skull symbolising the day of death and keeping with the voodoo - death themes recurring throughout the movie.

I will probably add some more detail - though at this stage this is what my room is currently looking like:

Room Screenshot Overview:



(Here is the room with some selected items, tables, chairs, candlesticks, doll)


Render of Basic Room:



Above View:




I then imported some more of my items into the room scene, my tarot cards, ppk and hand through the merge options in 3Ds and I also added a camera to begin to play around with movement and the logistics of how my idea could work.

Screenshot with more Assets Imported:


Zoomed Room View Render Preview:




Camera Added:



Camera View Render: (FPS View)

Knife

Knife:

Again, essentially an incidental item rather than an actual working model in my scene, though it is intended to add detail to my scene in an attempt to make my room look a little more interesting.

This is a simple model created from a box, where I selected the face of the box and used the inset technique to create a smaller thinner box within a box. I then extruded the thin box "blade" out from the knife handle and once happy with the length and scale of the objects extruded and scaled the end of the knife into a point to try and achieve a sharp point effect.

It was a very simple model to create and I just applied a silver and black colour to it to give it a bit more of a realistic feel.

I didn't want to get too caught up in the material of it, as I explained it is merely for room decoration.

Knife Screenshot:




Knife Render:




I came up with the idea of stabbing the voodoo doll to the wall using the knife to add something interesting to the room. This idea was inspired from Modern Warfare 2 (see below) where the mythical zombies teddy bear is stabbed to the wall in one of the bathrooms.


http://images.wikia.com/callofduty/images/8/8b/Teddy.jpg
Infinity Ward - Call of Duty - Modern Warfare 2 - Teddy Bear


While wandering around Call of Duty you can often find teddy bear's as a subliminal reference to their zombie games where the teddy bear is featured, again using this kind of subliminal symbolism I felt it could be an interesting way to incorporate into my animation, and encourage the voodoo theme in a different way.

My Voodoo Doll Stabbed Through the Wall:

Tutorial 8 - Havok's - Reactor

Further Animation Techniques - An Introduction to Havok's Reactor

Basically this is an alternative way to animate objects. 3Ds max has Havok's Reactor inbuilt that allows the user another way to animate objects.

Here simply a shelf was made from a box and two spheres were added to the scene.

By selecting the rigid body collection in the Reactor control panel, then selecting the items that you wanted to animate (i.e. the spheres), then adding alternate masses to the objects, which determines the rate that the spheres drop and selecting the items as concave mesh, the end result is the objects falling down onto the shelf and rolling off all in one smooth animated move once the animation is applied.


Screenshot of Animation attempt:




Video of Animation:

Voodoo Doll

Voodoo Doll:

Voodoo is a prominent theme throughout Live and Let Die, so i wanted to try and incorporate this theme to my animation.

This object is essentially going to be an incidental part of my animation, probably more for decoration in my room scene, though I like the idea of adding subliminal elements to my animation and is something that I would enjoy exploring further given time..

Basically the voodoo doll is a very simple model. I created one sphere and five cylinders to create the doll and scaled them appropriately to give a good perspective and size of the doll.
I then added two more cylinders for the eyes and used the pro-boolean technique to create the button holes and applied a shiny texture to the buttons to try and create a more realistic effect.

I then added a thatched texture to try and give a doll/scarecrow feel to the object. I added small red cylinders to attempt to create the threading technique to the doll, in order to try and give the appearance of a "sewn" doll.

I created some needles which had been stabbed into the doll, again simply by creating a small sphere and cylinder then bevelling then ends of the cylinder into a point to give the sharp end of a needle feel, then simply grouped the item, and made clones of it to add more pins "stabbed into the doll".

I'm actually quite impressed with this model, even though it is probably a little insignificant for my actual scene, it provides a nice but of detail for my scene.

Voodoo Doll Screenshot:



Top View of Doll - Buttons and Pins:



Final Doll Perspective View:





Rendered Voodoo Doll:

Hand Asset

Hand:

Creating a hand proved quite difficult. I had to make about three different attempts at a hand before I was close to being happy with the object.

Initially my first design was far too complicated, I had put too many segments in and my polygons were getting stretched and lost inside each other. For my second attempt I tried to think more about how the hand would actually look and tried to extrude the fingers in segments so that the polygons would join more effectively at the bends in the fingers. Though again, the model wasnt looking right and was too blocky, again when the mesh smooth or turbosmooth teqnique was appliued to the object, it came out very lumpy and had had too many indents in it where the polygons had obviously got a little twisted within each other.


Second Hand Attempt:



For my final attempt at the hand I imported a plane as an example to work to and started with a small box. I made it with very few segments, one along the top face and four through the main body of the shape so that i would be able to extrude four fingers from the shape.

Basically the model was made by extruding the fingers in segments to the joints in the fingers, which grabbing selected vertices to model the hand - trying to keep to the hand shape, pulling and manipulating the vertices to keep to the required shape of the hand, eventually the shape looked effective so i added a turbosmooth modifier to the object to smooth it out. A skin tone texture was added to try and give the appeal of skin.

Modelling 3rd Hand Attempt:



Full Hand Model:



(I made this model in much smaller easier to manage segments, and was able to extrude the fingers much more effectively in doing so, I feel that I kept to the shape of the hand really well and this was a much improved model from my earlier efforts.)


Final Hand with Turbosmooth and Skin Texture Applied:



I still need to add more detail to the hand, but at this stage I am pleased that I now have this asset to work with for my animation. I will aim to concentrate on the further detail once I have progressed a little further with my final piece.

Tutorial 7 - Animation Techniques

Path Constraint:

The Path Constraint is a very simple and easy to achieve first animation attempt.

It is a simple movement technique easily created with a number of small steps.

A circle is created in the viewport which will act as the path for the animated object to travel along. The object created is a small sphere, simply made from the standard primitives toolkit.

Once the sphere is selected, the Animation Tab is selected and within the Constraints sub-menu, PATH CONSTRAINTS.

Once this technique is applied is small dotted circle appears in the viewport, when you click on the circle the created sphere will jump to the dotted circle, this assigns the object to the path that the object will travel along.

Selecting Play Animation will now allow the sphere to travel along the circular path created and move around in a circle.

Video showing technique:





The next technique was to take the movement a step further by creating a propellor style object (by adding 4 thin boxes to a sphere in a cross shape) which was set to rotate while the autokey was turned on.

In the rendering set-up options, In the "Renderer" Tab the option was selected to add a motion blur to the animation in the object properties. Motion Blur was selected and the multiplier was increased which determines the rate at which the object spins.





Videos of these techniques:


Propeller Spin:




Motion Blur Test:

Live and Let Die

Tarot Symbolism

THE FOOL:




Meaning:

The beginning of a cycle or an adventure; a risk must be taken.


Description:

The Fool represents the child in us. He stands for spontaneous new beginnings and an open-mindedness free of prejudice. He is the symbol of playful lightheartedness, full of the joy of living, and free from care. The Fool shows us that we can enter a new area of life with wonder and without great expectations, and often without previous experience. He therefore can represent a childlike innocence, the result of which can be recklessness, foolish naivete, playfulness, as well as tomfoolery. The Fool can symbolize the simplicity of a wise and humble insight that we achieve at the end of a long and often tiring search. The Fool can also stand for the joker and the rascal in the traditional sense as well as the one and only honest adviser at the court as the alter ego of the king. In any case, he lives totally in the present, is the symbol of openness and spontaneous honesty, always ready for new experiences. Whether this stance is the result of our refusal to grow up or of the wise realization of our spiritual maturity cannot be decided by the card. The Fool always indicates refreshing experiences that sometimes may have chaotic traits but do not represent true danger, even when we fall flat on our faces.



THE LOVERS:





Meaning:

A relationship or love affair with a trial or choice involved.

Description:

This card combines two topics. It indicates a great experience in love, yet also presents us with the perception that this step is connected with a necessary decision: the renunciation of the previous framework of life (the parental home, the bachelor existence, the many flirtations) and the clear avowal of one love. Only this step will lead to the overwhelming experience shown by the Lovers. This card therefore used to be called "The Decision." It can also indicate necessary decisions that have little or nothing to do with love. In such cases, it means that we must decide with our whole heart, without rancor, and without keeping an escape route open. Which of the two themes this card emphasizes can only be determined according to the background of the question asked. In any case, it means the great unconditional "yes."



DEATH:



Meaning:

Changes: the end of the old and the birth of the new.


Description:

Death means parting, the great letting go, the end. It then also prepares the way for the new, for that which is to come. However, the card itself first presents us with the end. This can be positive when it relates to a long wished for, liberating ending, yet it is also natural that we have our most painful experiences with the theme of this card. In contrast to the 10 of Swords, which indicates the random and thereby premature ending, this card always stands for the natural end. This means that it is time to let go of something. The Death card is unjustly one of the most feared. The eternal embellishers, who do not understand it, read the card only to be the proclamation of something new and want to deny us the deep experience of parting and the related life-accepting experiences. "We have separated living from dying and the interval between them is fear" says Krishnamurti, and: "You cannot live without dying."



Reference: http://www.mysticgames.com/mysticgames_cfmfiles/tarotinfo/majorarcana.cfm?DeckID=2&Arcana=major