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Friday, December 29, 2006
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Sunday, December 24, 2006
A New Look To Dynamic Movement...
i have a new look to my web page- new buttons, and slightly thinner, a new work page, some graphics are re-done to
Monday, December 11, 2006
I have finished....
The rendering worked, although from the wrong camera angle so I did the camera bit again and tried that. It looked ok, be it a little slow and boring. Plus having a black background sorta made it look like it was in space and there were these random satellites or something….so I changed the background to white and rendered again.
The next step was to add sound effects, a soundtrack and edit the whole thing using final cut. I found some sound effects online, and added text at the start and changed the speed of a couple of bits of footage, I added several effects including a tint, ripple and saturation. I faded certain bits in and out having it fade to white each time till the end.
I thought that “banana co” by Radiohead would be an appropriate soundtrack and appropriately named also... I wanted to use one of the less popular tracks, and have something that fitted the overall feel of the animation.
I’m happy that I managed to get the project done in time and have learned a lot about 3d max, although I haven’t really achieved what I set out to do, given my current knowledge of 3d max I think that I could get a better result if I were to start over again…as I would start with the smallest object (say a worm) then add more and more objects to it. Then texture the objects last of all.
During this project the skils I have obtained are (but not limited to) ; using the main interface of 3d studio max, how to use standard primitives and compound objects, how to loft objects and edit them using edit mesh feature, I’ve learned how to optimize objects and import and export them. Used the edit polly feature and “cap” to repair gaps. Add key frames, and animate objects. Alter the objects form; I have learned how to split objects using cut and weld methods, collapse areas, smooth objects and chamfer sides. How to alter the background; change the colour and texture of objects. Add cameras that can follow a line and have a set target (the banana). Use different views and render my work whilst saving to different formats.
heres a screen shot of the final piece:
My Resources:
World Wide Web
http://www.k10k.net/
http://www.rushes.co.uk/
http://www.3dtotal.com/
http://www.rushes.co.uk/
http://www.tutorialized.com/tutorials/3DS-MAX/1
Films
Toy Story (1996) John A Lasseter
A Bugs Life (1998) John A Lasseter
Finding Nemo (2003) Andrew Stanton
Bladerunner (1982) Ridley Scott
Pi (1998) Darren Aronofsky
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
Television:
Walking with dinosaurs
Books:
3D STUDIO MAX 3 FUNDAMENTALS, Micheal Todd Peterson, 1999
The next step was to add sound effects, a soundtrack and edit the whole thing using final cut. I found some sound effects online, and added text at the start and changed the speed of a couple of bits of footage, I added several effects including a tint, ripple and saturation. I faded certain bits in and out having it fade to white each time till the end.
I thought that “banana co” by Radiohead would be an appropriate soundtrack and appropriately named also... I wanted to use one of the less popular tracks, and have something that fitted the overall feel of the animation.
I’m happy that I managed to get the project done in time and have learned a lot about 3d max, although I haven’t really achieved what I set out to do, given my current knowledge of 3d max I think that I could get a better result if I were to start over again…as I would start with the smallest object (say a worm) then add more and more objects to it. Then texture the objects last of all.
During this project the skils I have obtained are (but not limited to) ; using the main interface of 3d studio max, how to use standard primitives and compound objects, how to loft objects and edit them using edit mesh feature, I’ve learned how to optimize objects and import and export them. Used the edit polly feature and “cap” to repair gaps. Add key frames, and animate objects. Alter the objects form; I have learned how to split objects using cut and weld methods, collapse areas, smooth objects and chamfer sides. How to alter the background; change the colour and texture of objects. Add cameras that can follow a line and have a set target (the banana). Use different views and render my work whilst saving to different formats.
heres a screen shot of the final piece:
My Resources:
World Wide Web
http://www.k10k.net/
http://www.rushes.co.uk/
http://www.3dtotal.com/
http://www.rushes.co.uk/
http://www.tutorialized.com/tutorials/3DS-MAX/1
Films
Toy Story (1996) John A Lasseter
A Bugs Life (1998) John A Lasseter
Finding Nemo (2003) Andrew Stanton
Bladerunner (1982) Ridley Scott
Pi (1998) Darren Aronofsky
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
Television:
Walking with dinosaurs
Books:
3D STUDIO MAX 3 FUNDAMENTALS, Micheal Todd Peterson, 1999
the end of term....
its the end of the term, alot of work on right now...definatly not a wind down to christmas...i went up on my terrace now so as not to miss the sunset...just thinking that i havent been down to the how in ages...i miss it :(
On the first shot you can just about see the sea in the background
On the first shot you can just about see the sea in the background
Saturday, December 09, 2006
slow progress...
At first I went home last night and the saved 3d max file didn’t work on my laptop at home- as I have 3d max 7 and not 3d max 8….great!!!... So got some sleep.
Its half past eight and I’m in Smeaton 108 again doing 3d max, I’m tired, hungry and irritable due to having spent hours on this getting very frustrated….
The 3d max file was going in-explicably slow so I found an import and export bit- which means that you can make things in other windows and import them in…ah, good I thought…maybe I can make files and import them in and that will speed it up and work fine…..
Nothing in 3d max “works fine”…
Any how I made the main television animation happen slightly later so that the cameras could pan around it and show it off a bit before it started to break apart…that meant doing the cameras bit again, but never mind.
I thought that once I had the tv looking alright I would slice apart a sphere and then put an orange skin texture on it and then have the banana come out of that…easier said than done…here are some screen shots.
I decided to scrap the whole idea of the ball as I was having all sorts of problems making it look like it was splitting apart realistically and then fall of the screen (as Id done with the box)….however it fell of to an angle, was to small, was sometimes visible within the box…nightmare!
Then faces started to warp….id extruded a bit on the back of the TV however later for no good reason it became transparent…so I managed to repair some bits but not others.
Also when swapping between open 3d max windows using the import and export tools the textures don’t work so I had to do them again.
I’ currently rendering my work – so hopefully it will be around the right time- and not to slow or too short etc….its really not the project I had wanted….but I’m trying- I think that we should have more than 5 tutorials for 3d max- the internet often seems the primary source of information these days!
Its half past eight and I’m in Smeaton 108 again doing 3d max, I’m tired, hungry and irritable due to having spent hours on this getting very frustrated….
The 3d max file was going in-explicably slow so I found an import and export bit- which means that you can make things in other windows and import them in…ah, good I thought…maybe I can make files and import them in and that will speed it up and work fine…..
Nothing in 3d max “works fine”…
Any how I made the main television animation happen slightly later so that the cameras could pan around it and show it off a bit before it started to break apart…that meant doing the cameras bit again, but never mind.
I thought that once I had the tv looking alright I would slice apart a sphere and then put an orange skin texture on it and then have the banana come out of that…easier said than done…here are some screen shots.
I decided to scrap the whole idea of the ball as I was having all sorts of problems making it look like it was splitting apart realistically and then fall of the screen (as Id done with the box)….however it fell of to an angle, was to small, was sometimes visible within the box…nightmare!
Then faces started to warp….id extruded a bit on the back of the TV however later for no good reason it became transparent…so I managed to repair some bits but not others.
Also when swapping between open 3d max windows using the import and export tools the textures don’t work so I had to do them again.
I’ currently rendering my work – so hopefully it will be around the right time- and not to slow or too short etc….its really not the project I had wanted….but I’m trying- I think that we should have more than 5 tutorials for 3d max- the internet often seems the primary source of information these days!
Friday, December 08, 2006
More 3d fun.....
Its ten to ten on a Friday night (I was here since 2:30pm) and I’m sat in the smeaton building room 108 working on 3d studio max when my friends are all down the pub, or if not getting ready to go out for the evening…
I spent several hours earlier trying to get a box to cut into parts without going hollow etc…I realise that this is possible now as you can use the cap tool within the border part of the editable polly…although I wouldn’t know this if not for being shown that it was there….
So in the end it turned out far to complicated to make the banana peel into another object as it is one object its self with many segments it means that it could potentially be cut into parts but it would warp and look ugly and unnatural, and that using lofting to create a banana is fine so long as your not intending to have the skin on it….some information I found out a little to late. If I had to start all over again I realise that I could make a loft and then add several more shapes to it and texture them and then animate them one by one to peel off.
I find 3d studio max to be slightly un-user friendly…for instance they don’t have a way of cutting objects nicely and smoothly…they don’t have a history like on Photoshop where you can delete several states back and see where and when you did them. Also unless you have a super computer it seems to not want to handle the models you are trying to build…even if you make some objects hidden to speed it up and don’t add textures, it still goes incredibly slow.
Any way the new idea is that there will be a television, the sides will unfold to produce a banana- or maybe one object before the banana inside it….I took several pictures of my TV at home and manipulated the picture in Photoshop so that they could be used as textures using the multi sub feature again as I did with the banana.
To create the TV set I started with a box then changed the shapes of it slightly and then mesh smooth it and extrude certain parts and chamfer certain edges to try and make it look more realistic.
I have also started experimenting with camera angles and having the camera pan around the TV set…this seems to slow it down even more.
Maybe ill just work in the wire frame mode from now on as this will probably speed it up at least a little bit.
I spent several hours earlier trying to get a box to cut into parts without going hollow etc…I realise that this is possible now as you can use the cap tool within the border part of the editable polly…although I wouldn’t know this if not for being shown that it was there….
So in the end it turned out far to complicated to make the banana peel into another object as it is one object its self with many segments it means that it could potentially be cut into parts but it would warp and look ugly and unnatural, and that using lofting to create a banana is fine so long as your not intending to have the skin on it….some information I found out a little to late. If I had to start all over again I realise that I could make a loft and then add several more shapes to it and texture them and then animate them one by one to peel off.
I find 3d studio max to be slightly un-user friendly…for instance they don’t have a way of cutting objects nicely and smoothly…they don’t have a history like on Photoshop where you can delete several states back and see where and when you did them. Also unless you have a super computer it seems to not want to handle the models you are trying to build…even if you make some objects hidden to speed it up and don’t add textures, it still goes incredibly slow.
Any way the new idea is that there will be a television, the sides will unfold to produce a banana- or maybe one object before the banana inside it….I took several pictures of my TV at home and manipulated the picture in Photoshop so that they could be used as textures using the multi sub feature again as I did with the banana.
To create the TV set I started with a box then changed the shapes of it slightly and then mesh smooth it and extrude certain parts and chamfer certain edges to try and make it look more realistic.
I have also started experimenting with camera angles and having the camera pan around the TV set…this seems to slow it down even more.
Maybe ill just work in the wire frame mode from now on as this will probably speed it up at least a little bit.
Thursday, December 07, 2006
getting a bit further.....
Getting a bit further but progress Is very, very slow, looking at the odd tutorial online and trying to get to grips with 3d max a little more. However yesterday I spent a large amount of time adding a more realistic texture to the banana skin using a multi sub/object option in the material editor. Then when that was looking a bit better spent a while trying to smooth it over; and I didn’t like how one end stuck out- as this isn’t particularly realistic of a banana. I tried deleting the end when it was on edit mesh mode and I selected and deleted it, but this left the object looking hollow when I rendered it. So after playing around with feature for about an hour I discovered a tool called collapse, with deletes a certain part of the object yet covers it also. The next big step is making the object peel its skin… this could be very difficult and time consuming…I now realise why people use the “terminator 2” style liquid metal re-shaping effects when doing this sort of thing!
Here is a bit of 3d work that I think is quite relevant to my work:
http://www.rushes.co.uk/heineken/mainframe.htm
killer app for the semantic web proposal
Carman and I decided to scrap the idea with festivals and birthday alarms etc… and thought about an application that would be used on a personal organiser. However the main feature of this would be that it’s an global positioning system with a greater level of interactivity and dynamics.
A GPS device that not only would tell you where on a map you were but could connect to your friends and let them know where you were. Also you could view where your friends were due to they would “accept” you as their friend, therefore adding you to their friends “list” or social network….all the information about yourself and your friends could be found and updated including pictures and video- much like facebook.com….so if you were in town and several of your friends were there too then they would show up on screen, you could search the where abouts of specific friends….however you could “sign of”- or set your status to “invisible mode” if you didn’t want your friends knowing that you were in a certain part of town/house/ shop/ pub for instance.
You would have a log in and log out part of the application. You would also be able to find out where your wallet and keys were using GPS, as they would have a mini GPS device of there own- as small as a sticker- as this is in the year 2100 (maybe).
How many times have you lost your keys and wished that you could track them on a pc or something instead of searching everywhere or not finding them at all!
This application would stop thefts, track criminals, be proof of where about to a certain degree, be a social networking tool, aid Businesses, help mountain rescue, eradicate need for txt messaging and potentially phone calls too; as messages could be sent direct to the user’s inbox. And make the internet as much a part of your life outside the office/home as it is inside.
The user would need to buy the gps device/organiser in the first place, however in its early stages they could run it through there pc/laptop with a gps device attached.
Similar applications or websites would include www.facebook.com, msn messenger and www.frappr.com the main difference being that it would be updated all the time and have greater user interactivity.
A GPS device that not only would tell you where on a map you were but could connect to your friends and let them know where you were. Also you could view where your friends were due to they would “accept” you as their friend, therefore adding you to their friends “list” or social network….all the information about yourself and your friends could be found and updated including pictures and video- much like facebook.com….so if you were in town and several of your friends were there too then they would show up on screen, you could search the where abouts of specific friends….however you could “sign of”- or set your status to “invisible mode” if you didn’t want your friends knowing that you were in a certain part of town/house/ shop/ pub for instance.
You would have a log in and log out part of the application. You would also be able to find out where your wallet and keys were using GPS, as they would have a mini GPS device of there own- as small as a sticker- as this is in the year 2100 (maybe).
How many times have you lost your keys and wished that you could track them on a pc or something instead of searching everywhere or not finding them at all!
This application would stop thefts, track criminals, be proof of where about to a certain degree, be a social networking tool, aid Businesses, help mountain rescue, eradicate need for txt messaging and potentially phone calls too; as messages could be sent direct to the user’s inbox. And make the internet as much a part of your life outside the office/home as it is inside.
The user would need to buy the gps device/organiser in the first place, however in its early stages they could run it through there pc/laptop with a gps device attached.
Similar applications or websites would include www.facebook.com, msn messenger and www.frappr.com the main difference being that it would be updated all the time and have greater user interactivity.
Wednesday, December 06, 2006
The group marketing project
The group marketing project
Are decided group roles:
Darrel Fox: Project Manager/Web Development/Flash
James Veale: Co-Production Manager
Matthew Knight: Co-Production Manager
Carmen Tse: Research & Development/ Company Image
We filmed footage of us throwing a screwed up piece of paper to each other and when we each unfolded it and showed the bit of paper to the camera it had our individual job roles…
This required some editing to make it flow …but the idea being that it would be seamless and on a loop when put in profiles page of the website.
So in our group we decided on a name (par four) and a variety of ideas to do with a spoof viral advertising company…we looked at some examples websites such as eatmail, Viral Factory and rubberrepublic that were researched by Carmen.
So the plan was to go away and make a few funny clips, after looking at the existing marmite adverts and there website etc… I came up with this:
I chose to do it because a lot of the existing marmite adverts seem similar to viral adverts already, The idea being that it would be slightly over the top and in your face taking the slogan of “love it or hate it” in its simplest literal context.
After researching into viral adverts a bit more I realised that it is better to break the conventions of a normal advert if possible and give the viewer an unexpected twist at the end. This clip was shown on “UKTV g2”:
http://totallyviral.uktv.co.uk/clip/196
The other advert we did was one for Plymouth University:
Darrell created the web layout and the others concentrated more on the text and content.
After talking to our tutor Hugo it appeared that we had more time to do the work than expected, however this was changed in a later email back to the original presentation time. Matt was due to work Monday morning, and I injuring my knee over the weekend and had to get it checked at the hospital... so given the circumstances we were given an extra day.
Matt was left in charge of the marketing side of things (being as he did a marketing degree)- to come up with the presentation and what to say on the whole, also in charge of some of the web content.
The presentation went ok, strange to have to pretend to be a marketing company instead of talk about how we had put the project together… thank full though that this is one less project to worry about.
Here is a list of our research:
http://www.nmk.co.uk/article/2003/04/02/viral-marketing
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/click_online/5179166.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4547680.stm
http://www.nmk.co.uk/article/2003/04/02/viral-marketing
http://www.ideasfactory.com/business/marketing/know_it/feature7.html
http://www.tamba.co.uk/portfolio.asp
http://www.davechaffey.com/Internet-Marketing/C8-Communications/Viral-marketing/Viral-marketing-research-survey
http://viralchart.com/movies.php
http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmt5/viral-principles.htm
http://www.theviralfactory.com/
http://www.marketingterms.com/dictionary/viral_marketing/
http://www.leeanddan.com
http://www.dsemotion.com
http://www.channel4.com/learning/microsites/I/ideasfactory/germ/about.htm
http://www.hotcherry.co.uk/www/index.php
http://www.eatmail.tv/site/main.htm
http://www.rubberrepublic.com/casestudies/polarbearparking
http://viralchart.com/movies.php
http://www.10yetis.co.uk/viral-marketing.html
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/sample.cfm?contentID=3225
Are decided group roles:
Darrel Fox: Project Manager/Web Development/Flash
James Veale: Co-Production Manager
Matthew Knight: Co-Production Manager
Carmen Tse: Research & Development/ Company Image
We filmed footage of us throwing a screwed up piece of paper to each other and when we each unfolded it and showed the bit of paper to the camera it had our individual job roles…
This required some editing to make it flow …but the idea being that it would be seamless and on a loop when put in profiles page of the website.
So in our group we decided on a name (par four) and a variety of ideas to do with a spoof viral advertising company…we looked at some examples websites such as eatmail, Viral Factory and rubberrepublic that were researched by Carmen.
So the plan was to go away and make a few funny clips, after looking at the existing marmite adverts and there website etc… I came up with this:
I chose to do it because a lot of the existing marmite adverts seem similar to viral adverts already, The idea being that it would be slightly over the top and in your face taking the slogan of “love it or hate it” in its simplest literal context.
After researching into viral adverts a bit more I realised that it is better to break the conventions of a normal advert if possible and give the viewer an unexpected twist at the end. This clip was shown on “UKTV g2”:
http://totallyviral.uktv.co.uk/clip/196
The other advert we did was one for Plymouth University:
Darrell created the web layout and the others concentrated more on the text and content.
After talking to our tutor Hugo it appeared that we had more time to do the work than expected, however this was changed in a later email back to the original presentation time. Matt was due to work Monday morning, and I injuring my knee over the weekend and had to get it checked at the hospital... so given the circumstances we were given an extra day.
Matt was left in charge of the marketing side of things (being as he did a marketing degree)- to come up with the presentation and what to say on the whole, also in charge of some of the web content.
The presentation went ok, strange to have to pretend to be a marketing company instead of talk about how we had put the project together… thank full though that this is one less project to worry about.
Here is a list of our research:
http://www.nmk.co.uk/article/2003/04/02/viral-marketing
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/click_online/5179166.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4547680.stm
http://www.nmk.co.uk/article/2003/04/02/viral-marketing
http://www.ideasfactory.com/business/marketing/know_it/feature7.html
http://www.tamba.co.uk/portfolio.asp
http://www.davechaffey.com/Internet-Marketing/C8-Communications/Viral-marketing/Viral-marketing-research-survey
http://viralchart.com/movies.php
http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmt5/viral-principles.htm
http://www.theviralfactory.com/
http://www.marketingterms.com/dictionary/viral_marketing/
http://www.leeanddan.com
http://www.dsemotion.com
http://www.channel4.com/learning/microsites/I/ideasfactory/germ/about.htm
http://www.hotcherry.co.uk/www/index.php
http://www.eatmail.tv/site/main.htm
http://www.rubberrepublic.com/casestudies/polarbearparking
http://viralchart.com/movies.php
http://www.10yetis.co.uk/viral-marketing.html
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/sample.cfm?contentID=3225
Tuesday, December 05, 2006
Modelling in 3d studio max
I have started to look at modelling my objects in 3d. Here are some screen shots from 3d max, I looked more at tutorials for lofting, as there are probably quite a few ways to make this shape.
One part of the project that is going to be very hard is making one object appear beneath another one. As if it’s the same
After talking to Katina in tutorials I’ve decided that the objects list is very long and to make all this in 3d and make it look realistic just is not possible in the time given this is my first 3d project also.
One part of the project that is going to be very hard is making one object appear beneath another one. As if it’s the same
After talking to Katina in tutorials I’ve decided that the objects list is very long and to make all this in 3d and make it look realistic just is not possible in the time given this is my first 3d project also.
the objects
After having a think about what objects I wanted to use I decided that it could follow this order:
Therefore showing the contrast in man made things and natural things, the common link is the form of the object, rather than the object its self…so that the object the evolves from the last is completely unexpected.
- Grapefruit:
- peels away to become a ball…
- Ball exploded and becomes a banana…
- Banana peels away to become a “mag light” torch …
- mag light torch unscrews too reveal some batteries…
- the batteries merge into a chilli pepper…
- chilli pepper would become a worm and wriggle away…
- the become a cable and grow a USB head …
- then finally becomes a half USB half Worm creature
Therefore showing the contrast in man made things and natural things, the common link is the form of the object, rather than the object its self…so that the object the evolves from the last is completely unexpected.
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