Scene Two - Part 1

This scene takes the Oldman character into the woods where he needs to collect wood for the fire. The feel of the scene will look allot like the first scene. I started by using the hills and house from scene one and putting them in the back ground, from here I started to duplicate and re-size the hills to form a landscape. The problem I was having was that I wanted there the be a perspective look to the landscape, so there were larger hills closer to the camera and smaller ones further away. So I scraped my first attempt and then added two bigger hills either side of the scene.

I also had issues with what view in Max to film my sequence in. The perspective view made the house in the background look to far away but the user view looked closer and better. Another issue was that I didn't want the foreground to look to flat so I made two parts of the scene. Background, and a foreground that slopped towards the camera a bit. I also added some 3ds trees to the right of the scene with a bigger enough gap for the Old man to walk through.

I finally stuck with this layout. The house is in the distance but clear the big hills give the scene perspective, the two parts look like they join seamlessly.

Scene One - Light & Sound

I was happy with the Old mans walk because it gave the scene a sense of distance and comedy as he slowly disappeared from one hill and re-appeared over the next. The scene now needed some light effects. The first light I would need is the light coming from the fire in the house. The light would need to fade away as if the fire wood runs out.

My original idea was to put a flickering omni light directly inside the house by changing the noise levels, this i thought would look more like a flame and the light would only escape through the window, but this didn't end up looking very good. Firstly I couldn't get the flicker to light up just the inside of the house and secondly the flicker was too extreme. I needed more of a glow so I put an omni light just inside the window and gave it an orange tint. I also Checked the 'Far Attenuation Use box' so that the light was only concentrated around the the window area. Next I used the Auto key and raised the multiplier up and down to give a glowing fire effect. This was simple but it looked far more effective than the flicker.

Next I wanted to add lightning to my scene this would be done by first looking for a thunder and rain sound effect. While going through some samples on the web I found a nice clear thunder sound and a good rain effect. I wanted to loop the thunder and also match the volumes of the samples so I opened up Adobe Soundproof and produced one wav file which would act are my weather sound effects if all of my scenes.



Once I had loaded the file into the Curve editor I could start to add my lightning. First I added a omni light in the sky above the scene and set the multiplier to zero. Next I ran my animation and watched when the waves on the track editor got larger, this would tell me the best frame for me to give a burst of light from the omni using the auto key and the multiplier. I wanted to make the lightning and thunder to look as violent as possible so it would look like the Old man is haven't to go out in the worst weather ever!



Lastly I imported my lamp model and linked it the mans hand so it followed him across the scene. The lamp also had the noise flicker effect but which the introduction of the lightning the scene was to busy with flashing lights so I decided to stick to a simple white light which showed the off the movement of the Old mans body better. I also animated the the door opening, this was easily done because i used a pivot door when making the house model. One problem I had with my lamp is that the super gizmo with the fire effect had disappeared and I'm not to sure why or how to get it back. I tried re-setting it with higher setting but it still didn't show up??

Scene One - Footsteps

Once i had the hills looking right I started on the footsteps for my Old man character. I reverted back to my original story board and positioned the old man at the point where the house was going to be, because the man was going to start from inside the house and walk down the hill and disappear out the bottom of the screen. In footstep mode I created enough footsteps to cover the ground over the hill. I needed to rotate the steps so the feet angled down the hill and I also had to to position them so they were touching the grass.

Next I looked to see how the Old man looked while walking down the hill. First I had the problem of his arms staying by his side, this looked very odd as the character was fat and I wanted his arms to stick out as if he was always keeping balance whilst he was walking. I also had to rotate all the footsteps so they were facing outwards a bit, this what make the Old man look like he was shuffling along and also this stopped my models ankles from 'twisting up' because the Oldmans feet were designed to stick awards a bit.

I needed to work out the timing of the Oldman exit and re-entrance to the scene next. The Old man would leave the scene by walking down the first hill and then re-appear walking in the distance over the second hill. I decided to extend the footsteps out of the bottom of the hill so he was out of sight and it acted as a good time gauge to when he should re-enter again.

Once I knew what frame to use I created another copy of the Old man and then repeated what I did to to the first hill but this time he would be climbing the hill.

Old Man - Biped

Now my model was finished I needed to add the biped, this was something I had no experienced in doing and I didn't now how it would interact with my character. I modified the size of each bone so it fit the cartoon body of the Old man.

As my character was much fatter than than the standard biped shape I need to make the bones as wide as possible.

Next I had to weight the hands, eyes, browse and mouth to the biped. Here I selected each object and added a skin modifier. Next I would need to add the modifier to the body and to see what happened when the limbs moved.

Old Man - Model Finish

The main features of the face were next and I made the eyes using two spheres for the eye ball and a separate half sphere for the eye lid, I kept the eye lids so they can be opened and shut for when I do the close up scene of his face. Next I created three simple objects for the eye browse and the mouth.

Ive kept the mouth simple and black because I wanted it to stand out as much as possible in the Forrest scene. The mouth will not open as such but it will change shape when the character talks.

Overall I'm quite happy the way it has turned out because it didn't look good at first. I had quite a few issues with the maps not looking good in certain positions but hopefully these wont show up in the animation.

Old Man - Face

To give the Old man a bit of life and colour I selected the poly's that made up the beard and then added a bump and colour to it with the material editor. It also needed a map modifier so that the beard wrapped around his face properly. I did the same with the skin and I also added colour the his hat and tunic. But I still wasn't happy with his nose and eye sockets and I also needed to give him some ears.

The problem I was having was that if I was changing one side of his face it was virtually imposable to get the other side the same. So I had to delete half of my model and then add a symmetry modifier (which I hadn't used before). At first it looked very strange but I could now get to work on shaping the features.
I extruded the ear and started to reshape the nose but the problem I was having was that I had created to many vertices's when I extruded the nose and cheeks from the original box. This made it really hard to choose the right vertices's to adjust to get the face right.

Old Man - Body

To make the model of the Old man I used my original sketches for the character I drew at the start of the project. I set the two views of the Old man up on planes and then froze them so they didn't bother my while I will building him.



I then made a box object to make up the main bulk of the torso. I shaped the body so he would have a nice fat shape an then I extruded the arms.



The ankles and feet were next. I wanted to add the hands now, this was to give the Old man a bit of life while I was modeling him.




The head and hat were extruded next. Here it was becoming apparent that my sketches weren't quite good enough to use for referencing. Firstly the arms were down by the side in the sketch. This wasn't easy to model and also there may of been issues with the side of the body stretching when the arms went up. Secondly the sketch wasn't drawn straight and symmetrical so it was was hard to keep the model neat.



It was too late to start again so I tried my best to get the model as true to the sketches as possible. Next time I would turn my original sketches into a more technical drawing where all the measurements were perfect and the arms were at an upright position. After rendering the model I realised that it needed allot more work to get it looking how I wanted I to.

Old Man - Hands

I needed to make some hands for the Old man. I have decided not to make them too detailed i.e add finger nails, as this would be too time consuming and the final animation will not have any close ups of the them.

First I created a box and made it 7 segments for the width and 3 segments for the length and 1 for the height. I then shaped one end inwards for the wrist and one in outwards for the fingers.

Next I selected 4 polygons at end of the box and used the 'extrude' to bring the fingers out making sure I stopped at the each put of the knuckle to add new segments to the fingers.

At this point I needed a reference to copy round so I found a picture of a hand and added it to plane and placed it directly behind the object.

Once the fingers wee complete I concentrated on the thumb which I extruded from the side of the hand and shaped it the best I could around the Reference map.

Finally I added some knuckles to the hand this was done selecting the Polygons where the knuckles should be and exuding and then scaling them to a realistic size.

Oil Lamp - Part 2

To make the flame I first choose the Sphere gizmo then I made an arc around the middle of the lamp. I only needed the flame pointing up so I un-ticked the hemisphere box in the modify panel which took the bottom part of the arc away. next I re-sized the arc so the flame would be the right height and width. I wanted the flame to be as big I could get it because the lamp will be quite small in the opening scene and I want it to be noticeable.



Next I added a Fire Effect to the Atmosphere and Effects here I experimented with shape and characteristics of the fire. I needed to make the fire look more like a single flame which was more realistic for a lamp. Finally I wanted to add a flicker to the lamp. I'm not 100% sure I want the flicker because the lamp might work better illuminating the old man with just a fixed omni light. As I was dealing with the flame now I thought I'll add the flicker now to see if it worked. I first set the frame to 300 and turned the auto key on then I opened up the the track view editor and changed the frequency and strength in the noise controller.



Now I needed to add some materials to the lamp. I wanted the lamp to look old and used to match the old mans house and the roughness of the story. I came across a nice texture of a sheet of metal with rust on, I added the texture to both the defused and bump maps. Overall I'm happy with the lamp but ill have to wait and see how the light looks when I add it to the scene.

Oil Lamp - Part 1

To make my Oil Lamp I started by making a couple of Chamfer Cylinder Objects. I turned the big one into an editable poly and cut the bottom off so it was flush to the bottom of the lamp.



In the next stage I created more Chamfer Cylinder Objects and started building the lamp up. The next bit was to cut out the inside of the central section, as this was where the flame was going to be.



Firstly I added the top to the lamp. This was made up of a sphere that has been chopped is half by using the 'chop' perimeter. Next was the central section, first I made three rectangles and put inside the central part of the lamp. I then used the Boolean object to cut the rectangle shapes from the cylinder, this was a bit of an experiment that didn't quite come off but I tidied it up by converting the cylinder to a editable poly and deleted a few polygons and straightened some verts.



Next I wanted to a handle and the support bar the were made with the rectangle tool where I bumped up the thickness in the render output. I was quite happy with the lamp so far next I needed to add the flame and hopefully get it to flicker.

Scene One - Rain

The scene needed more atmosphere so I decided to add rain, I started by adding spray from the Particle Systems drop down. I rotated the angle of the rain so that it would hit the Old man in the face as he left his house. I want the rain to be heavier in the second scene than the first so after experimenting with the parameters I think I've got speed, size, blur and count just right. Next I changed the colour of the spray to a bright white and a self illumination of 100.

Scene One - Hills & Background

To make the hills I first went to the Create panel > Geometry > Patch Grids > Quad Patch and drew a Quad Patch in the top view port. I now wanted to recreate the hills that were in opening scene of my animation. I did this by making two mounds on the object by using the Edit patch modifier and the soft selection option. I then added a Grass picture to the diffuse colour and bump maps in the material editor.




Next I added my house to the top of the hill by merging it to the scene.




In my initial story board I wanted a sunset in the background in which the sun going to go slowly down to give the effect of time passing. But now I have had a change of mind and I'm going to have the scene at night. This will give more enthuses on: 1,The light coming from the house and also from the Old mans lamp. 2, I can add rain and lightning to the scene. 3, The Old man is going to be more annoyed with these conditions, which adds to the story. I made a starry picture in Photoshop and then added it as a background. There is a possibility I might use the moon if the scene needs more light.

House - Design

I started by making a box object. I converted the object to an editable Polygon and deleted the the areas in which the doors and windows are going to be placed. I then choose a appropriate door and window and re sized them to fit the gaps. I choose a door that opened towards the camera as I thought this would look better.



Next I added the loft section of the roof by creating a cylinder with 3 sides for the inner section and by using the line tool I created the beam triangle.



The roof was created with a 3 sided cylinder I then deleted one of the sides this gave the same angle as the loft section. I then added a couple of boxes for the chimney. I hollowed out the top section so I can emit smoke from within the chimney.



Next I needed to find some textures for my house I wanted to make the house look old and weathered but not too dark because the scene was going to be dimly lit and the house is a big part of the story. I found a nice brick map but the colour wasn't right so I used Photoshop to give the brick work a white worn paint effect by changing some things in the blending options of the program.



I found two different wood textures for the windows, doors and beams which I used UVW Map to align the textures. I also found a slate style tile for the roof. I added the same textures to the bump maps to give the textures ab it of depth.