Summary...So how did I think it went?

All in all, I'm pretty proud of the finished animation and what I've achieved with the software.

One issue that the majority of students struggled with in the animation process was with the render quality.
We weren't told up front, the correct settings to use so most of us had to find our way and ended up with poor quality animations.
I asked for help with this issue from both the Module tutors and neither could suggest the most appropriate settings.
I finaly found out from a third year student one week before the deadline, that we should be using the following settings:

3dsMax
Output Size: HDTV 1980 x 1080
AVI Compressor: Cinepac by Radius.

Premiere
Available presets: HDV1080p30

Unfortunately, it didn't leave me enough time to render out to to the higher specification as the renders take an awful lot longer. (some students render to 6 hours a scene)

If I could do the whole exercise again, I'd deffinately render to the higher standard as I think it befits the work I've put in.

Another issue, mentioned elsewhere in the blog, was with combining the Look At, Morpher and Physique functions. This would of made things so much easier if all that functionality could be combined in one model.

In one scene, the polygons between the beak split when it fully opens so I would of liked to work on that a little more.

Other than that, I'm pleased with how it went and proud of myself for pressing on with finding out how to do things when the tutor wasn't around instead of just giving up.
Pat on the back for me :o)

Following the storyboard..

Now the animation is complete In am plaesed that although I embelished it a bit, the original storyboard was adhered to.
Although the storyboard is only composed of 8 key frames, it does tell the rough story.
I struggled to think of a way for Dippy to 'learn' that the water level in the glass rises when a marble's dropped in, but kicking a marble in anger and it bouncing back into the water works well.

More camera's....

In total, I used 6 different camera's. One was attached to the Dippy's head in the opening sequence which gives a nice unusual viewpoint. I had to adjust the clipping as the focal lengths were not suitable and focused beyond the bottom of the glass.
I used a Target camera in the scenes where the camera pans past Dippy too which is quite effective.
For close up shots, I used a 24mm lens to crop in nice and tightly to see Dippy's facial expressions. Experimenting with various lenses and clipping planes led to a nice variety of scenes.

Even more materials....

For the wall, I've created quite a textured surface with some coarse Bump Maps. This contrasts nicely with the shiny finish of the plastic Dippy Bird and the glass.
The wooden shelves have similar maps but slipped along using the UVW mapper so they have a slightly different finish to each other.

Managing the scenes...

In total I created 31 scenes and used 27 in the final cut. The other scenes I decided to leave out as they were a little slow paced and may of lost the attention of the children watching.
To keep track of where I was, I listed down scene info eg:

Scene 1 - Dippy Scene Assembly - Frames 0-300 - Camera 1 - Selection set cam4

I made sure that I worked on seperate sections of the timeline for each scene and utilised different camera's to capture the action.

Sound effects.....

As well as the music I wanted to add sound effects at key points like for instance when the marbles drop onto the book and table.
I was lucky enough to find a few freebies online but the majority I needed to create myself.
the Uni Library loan out MP3 recorders so I used their Roland Edirol to record various effects like Dippy's plastic feet walking on the table and the marble hitting the glass. I also recorded a few noises I made like Hmmmm and Grrrrr.

Once recorded I needed to trim down the clips to leave just what was relevant and I did that in Adobe Soundbooth.

The effects were then dropped into the corresponding position on the Premiere timeline.

So that repeated effects didn't sound like they were just copied and pasted, I altered the individual duration of the tracks and adjusted the sound levels where required too.

I'm particularly pleased with how the clip with the marble falling into the glass sounds. I recorded a marble striking the glass then overlayed the sound of a water droplet on a separate Audio Channel which is pretty effective.

I can't hear you! ;o) .......Adding sound...

Ok, I'm pleased with how the animation is going but I feel that when you play back the whole movie, it seems a bit flat. It really needs a little something else.
I've experimented with playing different music as I reviewed the animation and most didn't suit the scenes in terms of tempo or mood, but I finally found one that suited it quite nicely.
It's called 'You've Got A Friend In Me' by Randy Newman.
I kind of see the Dippy Bird as feeling deep down like he's a friend of the owner but has been a little neglected and quite literally left on the shelf.
The pace of the music suits the animation too as the Dippy Bird rocks serenely back and forward.
I bought the track from Amazon.com and added it to Adobe Premiere as an MP3 Sound File. A little adjustment will be needed to get the volume levels to rise and fall at appropriate moments though such as coinciding with a sound effect.

Stunt Dippy! :oD

I had a problem with combining the Biped, Look-At and Morpher functions so I needed to find a way round it.
I think the problem may have been that the Physique was struggling to capture the Look-At Dummy within it's Envelope?
The way I side stepped the issue was to have two models that performed different functions..... The 'Stunt Dippy' could move around controlled by his Biped and a 'Close Up Dippy' had the Morpher and Look-At functions.
In most cases I was able to swop out one of the Dippy's during a scene change but a couple called for seamless changes which were pretty tricky.

Stitching scenes together.

I'm now well into animating the scenes to tell the fable and have rendered each out. The scenes are then stitched together in Adobe Premiere Pro CS4.
I've not used Premiere before but using it's built in tutorials I was able to find my way around ok.
I've also added some basic effects like blending scenes and an intro title.
The software seems pretty user friendlty and intuitive which is handy ;o)
If I get time, I'd like to use it to add sound effects too.

Expressions...

We did a tutorial some time ago that animated a head by making multiple copies and changing each to a different expression. These new heads were then referenced back to the original and could then drive that particular change.
I used that process known as the Morpher Tool with Dippy. Here you can see the dummy expressions that are then hidden out of scene.

Filling out the scene..

I've been trying to think of a way to make sense of having marbles on the shelf. Having a Ker-Plunk box on the shelf justifies that as they may have splilled out :oD

Alternative modelling tecniques...

Once I'd modelled the window, it looked pretty sparse without the curtains so I wanted to model something that looked half decent.

I tried several tecniques using the standard primitives but couldn't get anything to look right so I finally used a wavy Spline then was then extruded using the Sweep Modifier. Although this looked like gathered up material it didn't hang right so I converted it to an editable poly and scaled down the vertices on the top to give a more realistic curtain form.

A pole and rings were added and a Polished Metal Material added.

The bigger picture..

The fable takes place in a relatively small area in upstaors room so I only needed two sides of the room for my scene.

To set the scene, I wanted a couple of establishing shots to give the viewer a feel for where the action will take place, so I've textured the walls, modelled a abasic window and put an image of houses across the street out of the window.

Lighting the scene

I've used the Three-Point Lighting approach in the scenes which is similar to how tv shots are set up.

The lights I've used are:

Key light - Target type outside the window simulating sunlight and creating a slight shadow

Fill light - Omni type over the scene in a similar position to a lightbulb in the room

Back light - Omni again placed behind the scene to reduce the dark areas cast by the key light

Where neccessary, the lights were moved for close up shots to reduce dark areas.

Improving the marbles....

I bought a couple of old school marbles in today and had a really good look at how the coloured swirl is shaped inside the clear glass ball.

I then went on to create a sphere and collapse it in a similar way so that it forms kind of a star shape from above.

I then drew a Spline Arc and rotated it round with the Lathe Tool to effectively give a hollow ball. The ball has a similar material to the drinking glass I created earlier.

Moving the swirl inside the ball and grouping it finsished it off.

Dead chuffed with how they've turned out :o)

Today I've been mostly listening to...

Had some tunes to accompany my modelling today....
Free Falling - Tom Petty
True Colors - Cyndi Lauper
Sing A Powerful Song - The Saw Doctors
Fishermans Blues - The Waterboys
This Womans Work - Kate Bush
I find it helps me to concentrate with the right kind of background music :o)

More materials...

I've been struggling to get a suitable material for books but found a solution by creating a Bitmap image in Paint including the text and applying that.
That covered the whole object but I applied white to the polygons of the pages by highlighting the required Polygons/Material Editor/Assign Material to Selection.
Got to do a load of others too now :o)

Marbles again...

Just chucked some marbles in the glass and I'm chuffed with the mad way they appear distorted by the glass and water, kinda like how they really would be :o)

Marble's and materials....

I've toyed around with a marble model as I'll need some in my fable. This one has Material added that is Translucent with Noise/Turbulence added to the outer surface. This gives some nice little mock highlights to the glass.

It rolls pretty well, but I'll need to look more at speeds.

Camera's and alternative views....

My storyboard opens with an unusual shot of what Dippy Bird is seeing as he rocks backward and forth. After an hour or two experimenting with different methods, I narrowed it down to 2 possible options.

The first runs a camera along a sketched path, in this case an arc by choosing: Animation/Constraints/Path Constraint and selecting the drive arc. This works ok but runs the camera in one sweep dependant on the scene length and couldn't be adjusted.

The second and easier to control, attaches a camera to his hat which is the option I'll probably go with. It's achieved by creating a Standard Free Camera then attaching it by selecting: Animation/Constraints/Postion Constraint and picking the hat. I then adjusted the camera's Clipping Plane settings to suit.

Animating the camera's too....

Here's a little clip of the Dippy Bird drinking surrounded by a few scene setting objects.

Just had a tinker with the camera's too. I've chosen the Target Type of Camera and pointed it toward the glass. By animating the sweep of the camera from one side to the other it gives a nice feel for the scene.

Second class envelopes.... ;o)

I noticed that when I use the Biped to drive the birds wing movements, it drags some of the body with it. This was caused by the extent of the wings Physique Envelope being too large. To rectify this I selected Physique/Envelope and adjusted the Radial Scale.
All good now :o)

(thanks to Richard Davidson for the link to the Character Modelling tutorial)

Low and lazeeeee...

This one is driven by the Character Studio in Max, it doesn't work well for the Dippy Bird as the bone movements are over exagerated, but it's a laugh giving it a go.

The Footstep Operation controls the Biped in the pre-determined Walk cycle. I've modified the walk slightly to allow the bird to turn his head and nod at the camera.

Nice mover..... (turn on sound)

Having fun with the animation now :oD (turn on sound)

Ummm, well it was meant to be walking.....

......but it's more like walking with really bad blisters :oD

Mmmm, a little more work required I feel :oD

You can do it Dippy :o)

First attempts at animating the bird...

It doesn't look much but it took about 3 hours experimenting to create this crude teeny clip. I had to move each wing, the neck, the tail, both thighs and both legs at just the right time.

I'm chuffed to see the Dippy Bird moving tho :o)

I like to move it, I like to move it.......

Today I've been experimenting with how to make the Dippy Bird move. A simple rocking motion would be easy enough but I want to eventually have walk sequences.
Although the Biped can be tricky to apply, its fairly easy to manipulate the finished thing.


Dippy bird.........


And the manic looking biped used to control him.

The head is abnormally big as I found the beak and hat were being left behind when the biped was moved. Scaling it up to encompass the head, beak and hat seems to work.

Rough scene...

Here I've Merged the Dippy Bird and the glass into a rough scene to see how they look together. I had to Scale up the glass by about 30% to get it to look about the right size.
I've added a single Omni light above and in front of the bird to get an idea how much light will be required and from what direction.

Modelling the glass

Ok. although the fable calls for the crow to drink from a pitcher (jug) I've substituted it for a glass tumbler as this better suits the dippy birds height and allows the water level to be seen falling and rising.
I originaly tried to create the tumbler using the Lathe Tool it created an angular object which wouldn't of looked good in the close up scenes of the animation.
I then tried a Cylinder Standard Primitive with the centre pushed down. Scaling Rings of Edges gave me the required shape.


In this shot, I've applied Material to the glass and turned down the Opacity to give a see through appearance.

I then experimented with Mental Ray Materials to get the render below. Mental ray materials are only available if the render type is changed to mental ray in the Render Scene Dialogue box.

I then selected Arch and Design (mi) as the new template, then the Glass (physical) template. Adjusting the Reflectivity/Glossiness etc gave the result which I'm pretty pleased with.

My only concern is that the mental ray takes longer to render so may be unsuitable for the animation?

Check my dancin' boots! :oD

Head, body, wings, legs and boots are all Extruded from one original Primitive Object which is something I've tried to improve on from past models built up of seperate components.
He's pretty much done now and I need to try not to put any more detail on as it'll only add to the Polygon count.

Body and wings....

I've begun to model the body and wings now which is going quite well. I began by modelling the basic shape of one wing by extruding out polygons and shaping them into a rough wing shape. It soon became clear that I'd have to do the other one the same which would be time consuming. The tutor suggested I cut the model down the centreline and use the Symmetry function to mirror the wing over to the other side to model more efficiently.

The Symmetry function sits above the Editable Poly in the Modifier List so any changes I make to the polygons, they will be mirrored over to the other side.

'Tickling up the bird' ;o)

I've thickened up the beak a bit to make it more crow like, enlarged the eyelids a bit but as a cool add on, I've used the Look at function to get his eyes to track an invisable object. This will save a lot of time during animation as I now won't have to more each eyeball individualy.
Look one way.........

.......then the other........ :o)



I've also added some tufty bits at the back of his head to simulate feathers and a neck :o)

Modelling Dippy Bird.

Here's my first attempt at a rough dippy bird head. It's loosely based on the actual toy with some exagerated features.
The head is modelled as one group of polygons while the hat and eyes are kept seperate to help with moving them in the animation.

Crow And Pitcher Storyboard

Ok, here's my rough storyboard.
1. The animation begins with an establishing shot of a tumbler on a bookshelf.
2. The camera rocks backward and forward zooming in and out of the tumbler.
3. The camera then rotates around showing the dippy bird crow drinking.
4. Zooming in, the water level begins to drop as the bird drinks.
5. Eventually, the water level is too low to drink and the crow becomes annoyed.
6. In sheer frustration, the crow throws his head back bashing the bookshelf above.
7. Marbles on the shelf above, become dislodged and fall ending up rolling past the crows feet.
8. The crow angrily picks up a marble and throws it against a book, it bounces back and splashes into the tumbler raising the water llevel slightly. Seeing this, the crow has an idea and picks up some more of the marbles and drops them in too. Eventually he can drink again :o)

Crow and pitcher mood board

The dippy bird/crow character I'm hoping to use in my fable is fairly inanimate, I'm going to have to look to the facial expressions to engage the viewer.
To that end, I'm drawing on inspiration from Pixar characters that show a wide range of emotion from eye and eyebrow shapes.
Although the story calls for a water pitcher which are usually crafted from pottery, I'll need to show the water level rising so I may go with a tumbler instead.

Researching the Fables....

To get a better feel for how the fables could be translated for children I bought a copy of the old school Ladybird book 'A First Book Of Aesops Fables' published in 1974 from amazon.co.uk Even though the book's a little tatty, it features some cool illustrations.



Nice crow illustration with plenty of character...



The text is fairly true to the original fables and hasn't been dumbed down at all.

I'll now look at books aimed at modern children and see how they differ at all. Are the illustrations more currently relevant?

Developing ideas..

Taking a 1970's style Dippy Bird bought from Ebay as a study, I took some of the details and created a character that's a combination of a dippy bird and a crow. I've sketched on seperate eyebrows as I'm hoping to model it in a simailar way allowing the face to have various expressions.
I want to avoid speech so the animation can be understood in any language but I may add some sound effects at a later date.

Critique.....

I think I'll have a look at animating the Crow And The Pitcher. I've chosen this fable as it illustrates how what appears to be a big task can be overcome by a series of smaller ones. I think it also encourages ingenuity.

To make it a little more relevant to modern children I'd like to try for a Pixar stylee animation maybe using a popular child's toy known as a Dippy Bird. Dippy Birds appear to lean down and drink and this would work both with the action of drinking but also with picking up stones to drop in the pitcher. Again to help kids relate, I may replace the stones with marbles as this wouldn't spoil the moral?

The downside of selecting this fable is that the action centres around a single character. This means that he'll need to be super expresive to hold the viewers attention.
As a Dippy Bird simply rocks back and forth, I'm aiming to give him fairly expressive facial features to compensate for limited movement.

Stick men are go!.....

Week 1 Lecture exercise..... We were asked to have a go at sketching people walking across the room in various styles using stick men figures. This was to try and concentrate on what were the key features of the actions.

The Peacock And The Juno.

A peacock asked Juno for the song of a nightingale, Juno refused. When the peacock persisted and became agitated, Juno simply said that he was her favourite as he was.

Moral: Be content with your lot.

(Juno turns out to be Queen of the Olympian Gods)

The Dog And The Shadow

A dog was carrying a piece of meat when he came across a plank of wood acting as a bridge over a brook. As he crossed he caught sight of the reflection of what he thought was a dog carrying another piece of meet. Being a little greedy, he snapped at the reflected piece of meat and in doing so, dropped his piece into the water and lost it.

Moral: Beware lest you lose the substance by grasping at the shadow.

The Crow And The Pitcher

A thirsty crow finds a part full pitcher but can't reach down to the water to drink. Despite repeated efforts, he cannot take a sip. A clever thought then springs to mind, dropping a pebble into the pitcher, the water level rises slightly. Pleased with himself, he then drops in more pebbles untill he can is able to take a drink.

Moral: Little by little does the trick.

Animation and initial reaction to the new brief.....

Second year. semester two. Time to have a go at animation using 3DsMax.

The brief this semester is to have a go at animating one of Aesops Fables for a new childrens tv channel.

As an initial reaction, it looks like the tricky bit's are going to be:

A) Retaining the original moral but making it relevant to todays children.
B) Creating models with sufficient personality and character to maintain a childs interest.

As children of different ages have different interests, I asked the tutor which age group the animation should be aimed at. He suggested around 6 years old. 6 year olds prefer more action to cutesy characters so I'll aim at quite a lively script.

Ok, first things first, I'll have to have a read of the stories and choose one that has a current moral meaning.......