The aim of this scene was to represent the original scene of every Bond film, which has Bond walk across the scene as he turns to the camera and then shoots his gun, which then fills the camera with blood. The scene is always looking down some sort of cone object.
To achieve the scene's aims. The James Bond Biped needs to be opened, and his attire needs to be changed to represent a white shirt and black shoes and trousers. In the same scene, an open ended cone will be created, with a swirl modifier along with the twist modifier which will make it appear similar to the original when rendered. Plus, there will be horizon lines in a simple blue colour like the original. There will also be a plane that appears on the screen with an altered opacity so that the camera can still see through the blood on the screen. There will also be a superSpray particle system to represent gun smoke.
To alter the attire of the model, it is simply achieved by using the paint selection tool along with faces selected on editable poly, and highlighting the faces that need to be altered. For example to alter the shirt all of the t-shirt section is selected. Once the material has been altered, the next set of faces are selected and the process repeats itself until Bond is looking more smart for this scene.
For the scenery, an open ended cone needs to be created. The cone is added to the stage which should be approximately four times the size of Bond. Convert the cone to an editable poly ensuring before this is done, there is only one face on both the top and bottom of the cone. Select the face on editor poly, and highlight the bottom and top face of the cone and delete these faces. This is so that the camera will be able to be positioned so that Bond will walk by the cone and turn to the audience and shoot. Therefore, it is important to make the size of the smallest end of the cone to be big enough to see Bond through it. If this is not the case, then use the scale tool to adjust its size.
Once this is complete, turn off editable poly, but still have the cone selected, and in the modifier panel, select Normal from the drop down menu. On the side menu that appears, tick flip normals. This will allow the inside of the cone to be rendered. If this step is not completed, the cone will not appear in the rendered file.This is because Max normally expects to render the outside of an object rather than the inside, so this modifier alters this to make it vice versa.
To make the cone similar to the original, it needs to have the swirl material applied to it with black and white as the colours to swirl. Alter the tile and mirror so that it swirls around the inside of the cone. Next apply the twist modifier to the cone and twist the cone, so that it emphasises the swirl of the cone and begins to resemble the original more. Towards the end of the timeline when Bond will have walked and then shot his gun, and the screen turns red, if the twist modifier is adjusted here it makes an interesting effect to the end of the scene. The cone is a stationary part of the scene and will not move from its original positioning throughout the scene other than when the twist modifier is applied, but it still doesn't move.
The horizon lines are two planes that have been aligned with Bond and made to scale to Bond so that they are approximately twice the size of Bond so there is not blank space when he walks across the stage. On the diffuse colour panel in the material editor, two shades of blue were selected, one was to the plane of the x axis and one to the other on the y axis. This gives an element of depth to the horizon lines, but also works well where Max has standard lights when creating a scene, which allows you to see the objects that are on the stage. The positioning of the horizon lines mean that the angle of the camera in relation to the horizon lines show a shadow as well adding depth.
Now, that the scene is ready, Bond can now have footsteps added to the scene so that he can begin his walk. As Bond has already had the physique modifier applied, he will not need to go into figure mode in this scene. He simply needs to be moved into place by selecting his COM and using the move tool and placing him, just before the right side of the cone that the camera will look down. On the motions panel, select footstep mode, and select walk, followed by create multiple footsteps. He shouldn't need more than seven footsteps to reach the centre of the cone, and ensure to select start from the beginning, rather than at current frame. Then click 'OK'. This will then show the footsteps that Bond will adhere to. If there are too many adjust as necessary. On the last footstep he will hold one leg slightly aloft. Ignore this as it will be adjusted later on. Once the correct number of footsteps have been selected, activate the unactivated footsteps in the motions panel. You will witness the model of Bond automatically adjust himself to the first footsteps.
The next step is to create the illusion that Bond has fired his gun. In many of the originals, you can barely see his gun, you just know that it is there because of the gun smoke that comes off of it. Therefore, due to time constraints, smoke will be created to represent gun smoke but not the gun. A bullet will then fire towards the camera. This is created by selecting the create panel, and on the drop down menu and selecting particle systems. A button will appear saying SuperSpray. Select this and add to the stage. Place it so that it is just above Bond's extended hand. Adjust the spread and particle size so that it the smoke will not go in a straight vertical line. To make it appear like smoke, by selecting the material editor and changing it to a gradient and on each iteration altering the second color to be white and the first and third colours to be black, this will create the main part of the smoke. A level of noise needs to be added, adjusting the levels so that it begins to take a smoke appearance. To make it more see through, the opacity also needs to be adjusted so that the final effect is like so:
Now the smoke has been created, a bullet can be created by adding a cylinder to the stage and converting it to a poly, and on the top face, extrude and bevel so that it comes to a point. To create a gold material, in the 3DS Max tutorials folder and added to the diffuse material. By adjusting the glossiness and specular level it makes it look like a gold object.
At the beginning of the animation the bullet was placed where his hand was going to have smoke come from as it is representing a gun. But so it doesn't look out of place, it was scaled down so much that it wasn't even visible that it was there. When Bond is then in place as he is about to fire, using Auto Key, move the bullet closer to the camera through the cone, and scaling the bullet out of proportion so that as it comes towards the camera, it appears to grow in size as it was originally a small object from far away and has got bigger as it draws closer. The result is a little exaggerated but this was the intended effect, and it works very well.
Finally for the blood to come over the screen, a plane was created that was originally placed above the camera out of sight, and once Bond had shot, the plane descended in front of the camera using Auto Key. This then stays on the stage for approximately one second and then concludes the scene.
To make the camera in this scene that has been mentioned throughout how this scene was made, it is simply done by selecting Target on the create camera panel. As the target is looking through the cone, the target doesn't move, which is why this type of camera was most appropriate. When rendered, it needed an Omni light in two places to make it appear the way I wanted it. There was one behind the camera to create a shadow done the cone and also one near Bond so that he wasn't all shadowed out. It was still clear to see what he was doing.
Overall, I was very pleased with the result of this scene. Indeed, there could have been improvements with the model of James Bond, but in terms of the animation elements of the scene I am very pleased.
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