I'm back! New college, 2nd brief!

Boy has it been a while! I've now moved onto Dundee College and doing an HND in 3D Animation, it's different in the way we do things but this gives me an ability to adapt (which I'm not doing too great to say the least) still I'm getting along somehow. I've finished my first brief (3d aspect anyway) all that's left is the post production.

We've also received our new brief. With this we need to create the three witches and the ghost of Banquo from Macbeth, this however will be divided between four people in a team so only one model per person. This is an important brief as we are doing it for a chance to have our work featured in a theatre version of Macbeth in front a lot of people, their production will tour the country I've heard.

Now for the witches we've been told the director would like something along the lines of the girl from The Ring or The Grudge, so something that instils fear. I personally would prefer something less along the lines of a horror film but not what would also be considered a cliché witch. For ideas I've looked at the Other Mother from the film Coraline as I like the transition from a normal woman to a creepy and thin "witch" like character.

Here I have my first mood-board, I shall post 

more mood-boards and sketches as they come in.

I do like the design of the character Asajj Ventress from the Star Wars Clone Wars television series, she is part of the night-sisters and witch cult within the Star Wars universe. The most interesting features I like are the strong lines that make up the features of the face, giving her a menacing look.

Asajj Ventress Concept Art

For the ghost of Banquo I've looked along the lines of the ringwraiths from The Lord of the Rings and the dementors from the Harry Potter series. I like the idea of him being more of a shadow with highlighted facial features to gice an ominous look.

Hopefully there'll be more updates a lot more often as I believe a blog is a great way of keeping records of previous work and ideas. If I have the time I'll probably do a video blog, this is me for now. Bye!

Movement Studies, Character and Graded Unit Updates

Hello again, almost a month since the last post but that does not mean I haven't been up to anything, due to my abscence on this blog for a while this post will be rather long and include (almost) everything that I have done since the last post.

Regarding the Movement Studies brief: 
 I have finished all renders and animations for this brief and they have all passed. However I did have to re-do one of the animations as the concept of squash and stretch was not properly demonstrated.

Regarding the Character Animation and Modelling brief: 
This brief in my opinion was somewhat of a failure. I had to create and animate an original character in Maya, however in the end I bacame to frustrated with Maya and the weight painting that I transfered the model over to 3ds Max and re-rigged it and animated it, however this was rushed as it was past the original deadline. However I had done enough to pass along with showing an original render from Maya with its deformities.

 Above: Maya render after lifting arm

Below: 3ds Max renders with no alteration to model or textures

Regarding the Graded Unit:
We are now into the third week of the Graded Unit for which I have decided to create a fly-through of a film set. I have chosen to make the set a night club, the main reason being the many lighting options available. I have gathered a few moodboards with reference images, which will guide me in the creation of the scene. I have also done some basic test renders for volumetric lighting.

Volumetric Test Renders:

Regarding the Introduction to Editing brief:
I shall post more on this in another update.

Character Brief Design and Updates

I realize I do not have anywhere near as many updates and images for my Maya briefs as I do for Max so here is another quick update on my character design which includes some drawings and screenshots. Further work is still needed on the model and it still needs its eyes and mouth, along with rigging and animating it.

Scrapped idea

Emotion ideas

Screenshots of Progression

Movement Studies aka Mechanical Arm

I have completed modeling my robotic arm for 3ds Max, the final result is slightly different to that which was originally sketched, this was only to make it easier to model and animate for example the original ball in socket joint that made up the wrist joint was changed to a hinge as in the animation the hand does not need to rotate horizontally. The joints were changed as well and shortcuts were taken when modeling them, this was done to meet the deadline, however I believe that this has not affected the quality in any way whatsoever.

New Year Updates!

It's been a month since my previous update, I've been busy doing... well other things. I've started work on the new briefs that include designing an organic character and a robotic arm.

For the character brief we have to create an original character and animate it to a song from the 20's, 30's, 40's or 50's. I have chosen Blue Skies by Frank Sinatra as the song that will play along to my animation. The character itself is called Beasty. It has a simple story to it, where Beasty starts off walking in an open field with blue skies around him, then it begins to get cloudy and the scene darkens, the camera zooms into his eyes, the eyes seem to change texture and as the camera pans out we see that a doll that looks like beasty is lying in a carpet in a childs room.

The mechanical arm is coming along well, more modeling is required as it is missing the hand section and the wires wraped around the forearm. I am still unsure as to what I shall be having the arm do, and idea was to have it crawling around the floor as though it had just got cut off, pushing debris out of the way, or if I can kick my backside into working mode and finish the model I am confient I could composite it over footage of a real arm, blending CG and live action (not going to happen). It will be a way to test my lighting techniques.

But most of all I have to work on more design sketches for both the character and arm. Here's hoping I can give myself a little boost and finish the briefs.

Friday 26th of November

 Finaly another update that is actually based on the course. I have finished creating my lighting scene which I believe came out amazing. I had taken the model that our course instructor had made and textured it and lit it. Here are some pictures that follow the texturing to the final product.

The Final Product

 

Design Stages

Monday 15th of November, My Biggest Post Ever!!!

Thought I would do a quick update on my post, as I thought it would be interesting to show the equipment I am using for the course and explain some of the parts and give help to those interested in a new machine. Remember this is a brief tutorial please do further research on components.

This PC system was built with 3D design and rendering in mind. It is based around an AMD Phenom II X6 (~£169) six-core processor. Now with games you want less cores with more power (this is because at the moment games can only utilize four cores), but with rendering you want more cores with any power you get for example mine are currently running at 2.8 GHz, I hope to overclock this to 3.5 GHz in order to squeeze out more performance. On top of this I have placed a third party heat sink and cooler, this disperses the heat away from the chip giving it a longer life (I would highly recommend this as when rendering the machine will be running at 100% for a long time and thus generate a large amount of heat).

On to the RAM, now again with this the more the better, where games can only utilize 4 GB of RAM your design program has access to all of the memory, at the moment the sweet spot seems to be 8GB. I went for some Patriot Sector 5 DDR3 memory in an 8GB kit (~£65 each kit of 4GB). However if you own or plan on buying one of the new i7 cores you can utilize triple channel memory which allows you to install up to six RAM sticks. With any other you are currently limited to four. A named brand is good to go for here as they are reliable and usually come with built in heat dispersers (A note with these, make sure that the third party heat sink and fan will fit if you have filled the RAM slots with sticks with heat dispersers).

The graphics card will do a lot of grunt work while you are editing and creating your 3D models, and not a lot while rendering that's the job of the CPU and RAM. I selected an AMD HD 6870 (~£240) for my card as it had achieved good benchmarks with rendering live 3D and is the newest of the AMD line-up. Now when choosing a card you have to look at all the different models out there. I'll save you the work and give you a few of the best ones out there. The ATI HD 5850 1GB (~£215) won last years graphics card of the year. 'Nuff said, and it won't break the wallet (trust me cards can get very expensive). The new generation AMD card to pick is the HD 6870 1GB it runs faster than the 5850 and comes stereoscopic 3D ready. Now on the NVDIA side of things is the 460 GTX 1GB (~£160) and that's it really until the new line up is released. Their 470 and 480 cards run too expensive and too hot. Expect to pay anything between £160 to £260 for a decent card, some even come factory overclocked. Most new motherboards come with a feature called SLI (NVIDIA) or Cross-Fire (AMD) which allows you to run two graphics cards allowing for future expansion of the system.

Now this is the bit most people skimp on, but a good power supply will last longer and provide your components with the right amount of power. Preferably it is best to buy a modular supply, that is one that allows you to choose what cables to run from it, thus helping with cable management.I picked up a Xigmatek NRP 700 watt power supply, named brands are always best yet again for reliability. Also look at the wattage a power supply between 700 and 1000 watts is a good choice to go for as newer graphics cards require power direct form the PSU. It also gives you enough power to run SLI or Cross-Fire.

When choosing a mother board choose one that works with your selected chip. My choice was a Gigabyte 870A-UD3 (~£85) board, now the two best brands to go on here are either Gigabyte or Asus, there is also MSI however I've heard of some issues with their boards. The preferred size of board would be an ATX board I would only recommend a micro-ATX board I you have case restrictions, but if you are building from scratch you shouldn't have any. I you wish you expand to two graphics cards ensure that they are SLI or Cross-Fire ready. Yet again ensure they are compatible with your chip you can always ask at the store on online.

This is the generic parts of the computer. I have a 1TB (~£60) hard drive and since the price of 1TB drives have gone down this is the best choice as it offers massive amounts of space for less money. In my computer I have included a Blu-ray drive this is not recommended for most people and I have chosen this for watching films. A standard DVD-RW drive will do and these are cheap at around £19. I don't have to tell you about the keyboard and mouse as you obviously know how to use these if you got here. The screen is also entirely up to your own personal choice.

The last part of the build is the case, I have chosen a medium size case as case sizes go in the form of the HAF 922 (~£90) from Coolermaster is a big thing make sure everything is tidy not only does this look nicer but also allows better airflow through the case.

                                                   Before and after cable management.

So there you have it a quick tip on a 3D design PC. If you have any questions or queries I and available at gaucho2mark@yahoo.co.uk, I am also available for PC builds. There is also a store on Holburn Street called Everest Tech they sell components and build systems, they will also answer any queries you have (by the way if you purchase all the components to a PC to build yourself you can ask for discounts as they are a small store). Thanks for reading and until the next time.