Using The Cut & Remove Tools

A model lacks sophistication when only basic modeling techniques are applied such as extrude, lofting and the symmetry modifiers. To add detail to shapes and enable more complex shapes to manifest, it will require the cut and remove tools.

The cut tool allows the user to select an edge and place extra edges into that face, which effectively adds another face to the object. It cuts the face into a smaller one. More than one cut can be applied to one face. This effect can be very useful if the shape of an arm for instance was being created out of the side of a box.

The remove tool, on the other hand, allows for faces to be deleted to leave a gap. This can be useful if the desired effect is to be able to see inside the object. Alternatively, one object might be attached to another using the bridge tool and bridge the two holes together.

Overall, these are some very useful tools that will be incorporated into the modeling of any objects created in the future.

Creating a Water Effect

One of the effects that I really wanted to incorporate into the trailer was some water to add to the danger of the car Bond is driving falling into the sea. A tutorial from the internet (Mucio, 2002) explains in great detail each step of how to create this effect.

This is the final outcome (the bitmap used in the reflection depends on what the background is supposed to be), in this case a Manhattan Skyline was used to create this effect.



By altering the bump level from 39 to 59 it makes it work even better. This is a very useful tutorial and will be incorporated into the final trailer.

I am very pleased with this.

This effect has now been incorporated into one of the scenes with the car crossing the bridge, with its wheels turning with a blur effect as well. The camera then changes direction as it follows the car.

To create  the water effect (paraphasing from the tutorial), first, create a sphere and create a modifier FFD 2x2x2 and move the points so that it looks flat like a pancake. To move the points, control points must be selected.

Next add a noise modifier, select 'Fractal' with roughness of 0.405 and iterations of 6. The strength should be x:0.028, y:0, and z:0.125.

Next, set the animation length using the 'Time Configuration Panel' located next to the frame number.

Once the end of the timeline has been selected, the strength values need to be changed to the following:

x:0.028, y:0, z:-0.227 . Go to the half way frame and modify the strength values to the following:

x: 0.028, y:0, z:0.29 . This makes the waves change and appear to have small waves as the water moves.

The next step is to create a standard target camera and place on the right hand side (in the left view) slightly above the object.

Next, create a wave, this can be found in the create panel, followed by space warps and then select from the drop down menu 'Geometric/Deformable' and then click 'Wave'.

The same way a plane would be created, click and drag the wave across the sphere surface, making sure to keep it within the sphere otherwise it will cause problems later.

Once aligned, select the "Bind to space warp" button located in the top menu. The parameters for the wave should be as follows:

WAVE:

Amplitude 1: 0.021

Amplitude 2: 0.029

Wave Length: 3.697

Phase: 32.1

Decay: 0

DISPLAY:

Sides: 11

Segments: 36

Divisions: 9

Once the object is finished all of the above figures can be changed to create different effects. If the play button is pressed, the waves should move slightly.

Next, create two omni lights, the first should be placed on the left most side above the sphere and its multiplier should be set to 0.3. This should make it darker. The second should be placed beneath the first in the left view port making sure they are aligned together in the other viewports, and set the multiplier as 0.1. The colours of the wave should now begin to be showing.

Finally, add a material of what the water should be reflecting in the diffuser button. It should have a high specular and high glossiness level such as 80 for each. Plus, when on maps on  the parent material, reflection should also be used with the same bitmap so it reflects the image off. Finally add a bump of 59 with the same bitmap image and this gives a lovely water texture. When the camera viewport is selected, the water will move as the camera sees it.

The Animation Begins...

Now that the first scene's background objects are now in place, the first introductory second of the animation can begin. It has been created by scrubbing the timeline, altering the position of the camera, and adding keys to the timeline. The keys were added in fives; thus every five frames another key was added to the timeline. There are 30 frames per second. The previous attempt was created using every two frames and it moves far too quickly. The audience doesn't have the chance to observe what is going on, the results can be seen in the first .avi file listed below.

The difference can be seen when this film is watched:

Indeed, this is only 40 frames long, so there is not much to observe, however the pacing of a trailer adds to the theme of the film whilst needing to be at a speed that the audience has the chance to understand what the trailer is trying to portray.

To render the above clips into an .avi file, the render setup must be used.

This allows the number of frames to be entered in for how long the production lasts so when it is being created it does not render empty frames. Furthermore, the filepath needs to be selected along with what file type to create. It is important before the render button is selected that the viewport containing the camera is selected, otherwise, 40 frames of the left or other viewport will be captured which is not the intended outcome.

The type of camera that was used was a target camera, thus the target was the hotel itself, and the camera was moved around the stage as it continues to follow the hotel.

The next clip uses a path constraint for the camera to follow. This was achieved by creating a circle around the hotel, followed by placing a target camera on the side of the circle facing the hotel which is the target. Next, select Animation>Constraints>Path Constraints it requires the camera to be snapped into place onto the circle. When the play button on the timeline is pressed the camera viewport displays the camera revolving around the circle. This is displayed in the .avi file below.

This appears to be more effective as an introductory first second to the animation, as it appears to move a lot smoother than the manually moved cameras used in the first two .avi files. Although a circle was created to for the camera to follow, it doesn't mean it has to complete an entire circle. As displayed in the above .avi file, if the range is set to the frames that should appear when rendered it creates the intended effect.

To make it easier when rendering the files, very small scenes are going to be created to reduce the time it takes to render the production. Once all of the files have been rendered, all of the .avi files will be edited together.

Hotel The Second Attempt

The beginning scene of the trailer begins with James Bond exiting a hotel, as a Harrier appears on the scene that will eventually chase him later. Therefore, as at least five seconds will be dedicated to a hotel being present, it is important that it looked effective. The first attempt at the hotel, was very unrealistic. It had red brick walls and very strange windows. With this in mind, a new hotel was created and lighting was used as well. This has worked much better.

Lighting has been used as well, to give the impression of night time, which has also made it work very well. The material used to create the walls was marble, with different shades of grey used rather than the default colours provided. The number of tiles was multiplied to 20 to make it look more effective.

The name of the film is the name of the hotel, to show early on what the name of the film is. This is slightly different to the events that occur during the film, but the essence of Bond will be incorporated from start to finish. This is the reason that the hotel was made again, everything within a Bond film appears very flash, the hotel that was created before did not fit in with the generic conventions of a James Bond film. The only part that will be incorporated from the previous attempt will be the garden, as this works very well.

The next step was to add a path for James Bond to walk across as he exits the hotel. Using bitmaps found on the internet of tarmac, the tiling was altered and bump was used to make add the rough texture of tarmac. With the lights also in the scene, it adds an interesting colour to the tarmac when rendered. The effect looks like this:

This works well. More lights will be added to make it easy to see Bond as he exits the hotel. The next details to be added will be some foliage such as a decorative garden. To begin, a cylinder was created to create the grass that the foliage will be placed with. The cellular map was used in combination with bump. The colours were altered and produced a green bumpy grass effect which appears to work rather well.

The effect is best displayed when rendered compared to when it is displayed through the view ports. Although more lamp posts have been added to the scene. The omni lights were only used in the ones nearest the hotel and the ones furtherest away. When all lights were used it made it very difficult to see the hotel from any angle. 

A centre piece of the garden has now been added to the scene. When the harrier appears in the scene, the leaves on the trees will all begin to move as they would in real life.Small planes were added with a white colour to give the representation of road markings so Bond's car can be added ready for Bond to jump in.

This is the image of the foliage added in and placed in its respective place.

A light was also placed within the hotel to make it appear to be still open so that Bond could walk out of it. Models now need to be added to the scene so that animation can now begin to take place.

The car model has now been added to the scene, ready for animation. Thus, far the lighting is rather dark over the car, this is the intended effect. This is because once the harrier begins to ascend into the air, it's lights will brighten up all of the scene, and then shine onto the car and the rest of the objects within the scene.

Building The Scenary For The Animation

This scenery has been created based upon the drawings from the storyboard mentioned in previous pages. The white space that can be seen in the picture below, is a cylinder creating a horizon line, so no matter what direction the camera is looking, there will always be a horizon line. Reasons as to why these are used in mentioned in previous posts.

The boxes in the first image are the initial layout of the hotel mentioned in the storyboard. This will be the first scene that involves Bond walking out of the hotel, as he turns around there is a harrier hovering over the hotel ready to fire.

The next stage was adding pavements around the hotel for Bond to walk on as he leaves the hotel. Thus far, there is no material added to the plane therefore making it appear unrealistic. The material added to the hotel was a bitmap image that was adjusted on the x, y and z axis to make the bricks appear smaller and look more realistic. At this stage there are no windows, in fact at this stage, the building appears more like a prison than a lavish hotel. Perhaps once more of the scene has been completed, more materials can be tried and tested to see which effect appears to work better. 

Foliage was also added to the scene to make it appear more organic. In the create menu, various trees and foliage was experimented with to see which had the most interesting effect. The intended effect for the hotel was to have exotic trees to make it seem more like a holiday destination. Therefore, when rendered the tree works very well with the decorative foliage around it.

The white lines around the hotel entrance and the garden is intended to be road markings, as when the models are added to the scene, Bond's car will be parked, ready for him to jump into. 

The image below highlights the effect with windows added to the hotel. Hotels have windows and plenty of them for their guests to admire the view. Therefore, windows must be added to this scene. The select tool was used to highlight the faces that would be transformed into windows. These were then set their own ID, so that the building was able to be a multi-sub object. Using the material editor, a chrome effect was added to the windows. Given there is enough time, more detail could be added to the material used on the windows as these do not appear very realistic. The window or door tool was not used thus far, as it appeared to causing more trouble than it was worth. When adding materials to it, it appeared very strange, whereas if the same material was added to a box that was extruded inwards to represent a door, the glass material appeared very effective, as can be seen in the rendered image.

Indeed, more work needs to be added to this scene, but overall it would appear that it is making good progress. Details such as skylines still need to be added, so the scene doesn't appear to be shot in the dark.

Learning the Basics in 3D Animation

There are two main ways of animating models in 3DS Max, these are using Auto Key and Set Key. Auto Key is very easy to use as all that is needed is to select the frame to add a part of the animation, the screen will have a red outline surrounding the view ports to highlight that auto key has been selected. It is important to observe if it has been selected as the object is tweaked and adjusted this may mean that instead of there being a permanent change, instead the change has been incorporated into the animation.

By following a couple of very easy steps an animation can be created, this is accomplished by first, selecting 'Auto Key' once the object has been selected. Move to the next frame that the next key frame will be held, adjust the object and then scrub the time line and observe the animation. The problem with auto key is that it tends to overstretch the model.

On the other hand, a more precise method is to use Set Key animation. This is accomplished by clicking on the object, press Set Key, which will then make the outlines of each of the view ports turn red, the same as Auto Key to highlight that animation is being used. Next, go to the next frame on the timeline and adjust the object and press Key. When the timeline is scrubbed, the animation can be observed.

To enable to use everything in animation, it is important to highlight the necessary filters, otherwise parts of the animation will not render correctly or be visible when scrubbing the timeline.

The curve editor is a very useful tool that will aid in adjusting the animation in set points and adjusting the strength of various parts of the animation. The side bar is set in a hierarchy that the objects used in the animation are all derived from World. World consists of different elements within the scene. It gives a graph that can then be adjusted at different points. Generally every 30 frames is equal to 1 second.

Finally, to render the production, it is important to set the production correctly. By selecting Render Setup, the folder the animation to save the file in can be selected, and the file type can be selected such as .avi. This means that when played, the file will play in mplayer. Compression can also be selected to show how much will be compressed. Once all of the necessary parts of the animation have been setup, the render button is selected, which then renders the animation. Depending on what has been used in the animation, the time to render will vary.

Final Storyboard before Animation

The original intention for the trailer was to have a large trailer including lots of action and explosion with plenty of models, but due to time constraints this was narrowed down as explained in previous posts. Furthermore, the models explained in previous storyboards are now different to those that have now been modelled, this is because the last idea lacked originality and variety between models, as two of them would be exactly the same. Now, to challenge this, a new storyboard has been created to match the models that have been created.

The trailer begins by Bond walking out of a hotel following the path out of the hotel in the shape of a semi-circle. As he walks, a harrier aircraft begins to ascend above the hotel as it aims towards Bond. Hearing the sound of the harrier, Bond turns and looks towards the harrier. Seeing the harrier, Bond runs for his parked car as the harrier approaches. Now, the harrier is in hot pursuit for Bond as the harrier begins firing missiles at Bond. Bond uses evasive maneuvers to evade the aircraft missile. In retaliation, Bond makes a hand brake turn so his car is now facing the aircraft, and is now driving at high speed in reverse as he fires a missile from the car towards the aircraft. His car then reverts back to driving the correct way round and then drives off as the aircraft explodes into a ball of fire. The screen then cuts to Bond walking across the screen, turns to the camera and shots. The screen turns red with the titles of the film appear on screen and the trailer finishes.

Here are some basic sketches for the storyboard.