Camera Animation Technique

          I went back to see my storyboard and there are lots of things I'm currently thinking regarding my animation. When I drew my storyboard, I was already thinking of how it will be shown on the screen. But after watching the Pixar animation and knowing the different angles and even the path animation, I am imagining loads of things right now. Although I already practiced the camera angles from my previous module, I should also consider how my models will workout with the different camera angles.

          From today's exercise, Path Animation, I'm thinking that it will be helpful for me since I'm doing a war in space animation.

Figure 1 Assign Position Controller

          So far, my baseline will be my storyboard and I will just expand each scene considering the 30 seconds time allotted for our animation.   

Light and Sunlight

          You will not see anything without lights on your project. Here, I both used two different way to add lights on the project; by using Lights (Figure 1) and Sunlight (Figure 2). Both can be useful but I think it is still depends on your animation. As for mine, I think it's better for me to use the Lights because it is easy to set up and I don't need too much light on my animation unless I'll add a sun that is near to my models. With that scenario, I better use Sunlight options then, though for me, I'm still a bit confuse on using this options.

Figure 1. Using Lights

Figure 2. Using Sunlight

          Even though that is the case, I'm still considering the Sunlight option cos it gives a good lightning as seen on Figure 2.

UVW Wrapping Texture Technique

          This tutorial is all about the UVW wrapping texture technique. You can find the Unwrap UVW in Modifier List. Figure 1 shows the Edit UVW's window where you can detach the polygons/faces (not totally detaching it from the model but it is like making a copy of the polygons/faces you have selected) to add texture.

Figure 1. Edit UVW's window

          Selecting the polygons/faces is easy compare to in choosing the right projection (Figure 3). According to the tutorial, we should try the different projection such as the Planar Map, Cylindrical Map, Spherical Map, Box Map and even the XYZ alignment options. So I followed him and tried it to get a proper shape. Unfortunately, some of my selections are not showing a good shape even if I play with the different options.

Figure 2. Cannot find the right form/shape

Figure 3. Projection

          So, I thought of making some parts of it. Such as from the selection in Figure 3 (red coloured polygons; right image), I divided the it into 3 (left, middle and right) selections. As shown in Figure 4, the pie look on the upper-left hand side image is the left selection, the box with white line in the middle is the middle selection while the red lines is the right selection. With this technique, I was able to lay them all the polygons properly.

Figure 4. Set by set selection

          When I rendered my UVW templates, some of the objects are missing. Why? Have you notice something in Figure 4, my objects are outside the box with checkered background. This is when I realised that I made a mistake already. To overcome this problem, I selected all the objects and scale them down to fit in the box with checkered background (Figure 5). After fixing the size and position, my template is ready (Figure 6) for rendering.

Figure 5. Scale down to fit in the box with checked background

Figure 6. Ready for render

          I used Adobe Photoshop to add colours to the objects as shown in Figure 7.

Figure 7. Adding colours in Adobe Photoshop

          Unfortunately, when I added the image to 3D max, it wasn't that good because the lines are visible. So next time, I should also include the lines in designing the polygons.

Figure 8. Final output