So Far So Good...

This post is commenting on what I have done so far with the model I am creating in my group, which is the battleships.

I am going to comment on what tools I have used, how I have created some of the objects and what is left to do at this point.

Firstly I am going to talk about how it started. I first needed a base for the ship, so I created a long box and then needed to create several polygons which will be discussed later, However I needed some vertices too, this was so I could edit each end of the box to give the ship its points, so its easier to move through the water.

In order to do this I used the 'ring' and 'connect' tools, this made it very easy to create extra polygons and vertices I needed. Once I had done this I moved the vertices for the ships points.

This image shows that I have created the points on the ship, there is one either end of the ship.

After that I needed to create gunss, but first I needed to create bases for the guns (which is were the extra polygons come from). So I selected two polygons and extruded them using the settings option. Then I did this again but the same side. Once I had done this I wanted these bases to have a curve to them, so that they were not so box shaped so I had to move the vertices again.

Then after I had to create the guns for the ship, which was a basic tube shape and copied a few times, so that it saved some time and made sure they were all the same size.

This image shows the guns that I have created for the ship, which I think are very effective.

Lastly I am going to talk about what I have left to do for this model, which are:

• Add materials to make the model look realistic.
• Add a navigation tower/ engine and railings round the edge.

So there is not much left to do and once I have finished these I can start animating. 

Let There Be Fire!

This post is going to follow on from the smoke post and learn how to create fire using particle systems.

This post is not going to go into as much detail as the last because it is following on from the same steps as in the smoke post, just changing the settings and adding a different material to resemble fire.

These images are the starting points for creating fire just the same when you were creating smoke.

However there are a few settings that should be added for this element. Such as the particles seen in viewport, need to be at 100% so that you can see all the particles. Also the use of particles at 200 so that there is more depth to the fire.

This image shows the next step until you start adding the materials to the particle, as you can see its facing, and the small squares at the top of the particle are 'fading' out which you can also add to the particle.

Once you have chosen your settings you need to add the noise map and choose what you think to be fire colours, and again change the options to how you see fir, because every fire is not going to be the same.

This image shows my attempt at creating fire, like the smoke I don't think this is a bad attempt but do think it needs to be improved.

This element is going to come in very handy as there were a lot of damage done in Pearl Harbour, and there was a lot of smoke and fire. The trick will be to create realistic fire and smoke in order to create a decent animation.

Ah Where Did All This Smoke Come From!

This post is going to comment on how to use particle systems and in particular create smoke.

The first thing to do is to create the object that will be creating the particles, to do this we need to choose particle systems from the drop-down menu and then choose 'Super Spray'.

From there you need to click on the 'load/save presets' tab on the right hand side, then click 'hose' then 'load' to load the preset, this will give you the spry which you can see when you play the animation

This image shows what the super spray particle system does at its basic form.

Then comes the modifying of the particles which each person does to their own opinion, however there are quite a few different modifiers that can be changed in the particle system. However for example you could use a rate of 40, this means that the super spray will 'spray' out around 40 particles per rate of the animation. Also you could change the speed if you wanted this will make the particles come out quicker or slower depending on how you set it up. Lastly you will want to display the particles as 'mesh' this is so that you can see the particles clearer and know that when you modify them any further you will be able to see the changes clearer, also you could change the particle size to ten for example just to make things a little easier.

This image shows the particles with the properties mentioned above, as you can see the particles are much clearer.

Then it is a good idea to change the timing of the particles, for example change the start and end times, so that the particles are playing constantly. Then to make things easier it is advised to change the particle type to facing, this means that the particles are always facing you in whatever view you look at them in.

This image shows the particles in facing view form, as you can see it is a lot easier to see what the particles are doing, (for example how fast they are spinning).

Once you have chosen your settings to your liking, the next job is too add material to the particle and for this post it will be smoke, which is quite simple to create.

There are many different ways to create smoke, but an example would be to give the blank material some colour, (white, light grey and dark grey) this will be your base. Then you could give the material a mask and add gradient and noise to the particle but you will need to add different colours, or you could go simpler than that and just use the smoke preset within 3Ds Max.

However it is just a case of choosing the settings to how you want them and trying to achieve that perfect smoke effect.

This image shows my first attempt at creating smoke and I must admit I don't think it is a bad attempt.

Finally from learning this new technique, I have decided to use particle systems as my new technique to learn about, which now I have got the basic knowledge to create particle systems, I will be testing out different particle systems to use in my animation.

Low Poly Modelling

This week we learnt about low poly modelling, which seemed simple enough and looked very realistic once finished.

Firstly it involved creating a plane within 3ds Max and using the material editor to attach an image onto the plane. From there we needed to convert the plane to an editable poly and use the 'quick-slice' tool so that the image was in manageable sections and we had to do this for the window edges horizontally and vertically.

This image shows the use of the quickslice tool, this will help with extruding the windows out later.

Once you had all the sections you needed, such as making sure the windows were separate and the balcony parts were separate, you could then extrude them out to make them 3D and more realistic. Now it is starting to look more like a building.

This image shows how I have started to extrude the windows in to make the building more 3D lifelike.

Once you were happy with extruding the windows etc, it was very simple to create another side by using shift and drag, which copied the same plane, so you didn't need to worry about creating a new one from scratch. However there is also another way to create more building faces, which is too move the object over and then affect its pivot point, so that its away from the object but in the middle.

Once you had done this you then need to go to array, and choose total 360 degrees, then a count of 4, and 3D's Max will create 3 more building faces and put them in the right place for you, so you don't need to keep using shift and drag then putting the buildings faces in the right place manually. The only things that was missing was the roof!

This image shows the use of the array tool in creating more sides for the building rather than having to repeat the previous steps four times over.

Unwrap UVW Mapping

This post is commenting on a new technique I learnt this week, which is Unwrap UVW Mapping. This technique was all new to me as I had never used it before, however neither had most of the other people in the lecture so I wasn't the only one. 

It seemed simple to begin with, firstly we needed to create a cube that  we had created similar to our house but with just a window and door otherwise the next step would have been very complicated. From there we needed to make the cube an editable poly, and use the modifier 'Unwrap UVW' then press the plus box and click on face, as this will allow me to select the faces of the cube and be easier to deal with cause the tricky stuff comes next....

This imge shows my very simple house, but is also showing what you have to select on the right hand side in order to arrange the shape.

You then needed to click on edit which is under parameters on the right hand side, this will pop up a new window where you edit the shape to create something else.

Once your window has popped up you un-check the pattered square near the top right, then click mapping then flatten mapping. This will then give you the shape you have created but in individual faces. When you see this for the first time the faces will be in different positions, you then need to join each of the sides together so that each face joins but in the right place, when you are joing the sides together you should be looking for blue lines when you select and individual face. This means that that face should be joined to the other face but connected on that blue line.

This image shows the UVW Unwrap modifier where you edit the shape that you have created, once you have joined your sides together, it should look like a flat pack cube.

Once all the faces were joined we needed to import the flat image into Photoshop and create background samples for the house for example wood, once this was done for the whole shape it needed to be saved ready for the next step.

Then once you have saved that image you just need to open the material editor and find the image and place it onto the cube,then comes the clever part, the UVW Map will know where each of the materials go on the shape and automatically place each of the materials in the right place.

This proved more difficult than I thought, especially when I had never used this method before, it was a struggle coming to grips with the techniques involved. With this in mind I couldn't quite grasp the importing into photoshop and placing the materials.

However I hope to have another go later on in the module and hope to have it finished by the end, otherwise I could focus on this too much and lose time on creating my model.

My Involvement in The Project

This post is just commenting on what I am going to be doing within the project, I have put myself forward to start building the ships that we are going to need for our Pearl Harbour animation. Furthermore I will be doing most of the animation involved with the ships, such as the attacking of the ships, sinking of ships, explosions (hence why I choose to learn about particle systems for my new technique).

I am looking forward to creating the ships and animating them, should be a lot of fun and am sure I will enjoy it all the way.

New Technique

This post is just basically commenting on what new technique I am going to learn and incorporate into the group work.

I have thought about what I could do and I have decided to choose, 'Use particle systems to make realistic smoke and fire effects'. This seems to be the right choice because there were a lot of damaged ships and explosions at Pearl Harbour, and seeing as I have never used the particle systems before I thought it was the right choice.

I hope to learn a lot from the particle systems, because I wanted to try and use it for my last modelling project but didn't have time to learn how to use it, and was disappointed but now I have another chance to learn about it and incorporate it into the group project.

Smoothing Out

For this post I am going to be commenting on using the smoothing groups tool, which is also new to me like the connecting tool but I think it was very useful all the same. 

I think this is a simple tool but can be very effective, for this tool you need to create a basic shape, a sphere for example. A sphere already has a smoothing group attached to it by default but when you take it off it looks like a cardboard cut out.

This image is showing a smoothing group applied to a basic shape.

This image is showing the same shape but with no smoothing group notice how it looks like a cardboard cut-out.

However you can easily put it back on and it looks so much better, you don't have to add just one smoothing group onto a shape you can add multiples, for example you can have one half of the sphere with a smoothing group of one and the bottom half a smoothing group of two.

This image shows two smoothing groups applied to one shape, one half has a smoothing group, the other half has a different smoothing group, and 3D's Max shows this very clearly.

As you can see it has a different shade to the shape to show that the shape has a different smoothing group on it. If you were to add a smoothing group to the shape and by mistake gave a segment of the shape the wrong smoothing group number you would be able to tell because it would stick out like a sore thumb.

This image shows how you would notice if you missed any part of the shape with the wrong smoothing group. It sticks out like a sore thumb.

Finally you can have more than one smoothing group on a section of a shape, for example you can have the top section smoothing group one, then the bottom smoothing group two, then have the two halves in the middle smoothing group three. Now having those different smoothing groups you think would make the shape look different but it dose not it looks like the shape only has one smoothing group.

This image shows the shape as if I had just created it, however the shape has three smoothing groups attached to it. One on the bottom, another on the top and another in the middle.

I think this tool is very useful and is an easy way of showing to different aspects to a shape, for example showing a join in a piece of machinery, having two different smoothing groups will show this a lot better. This is also the first time I have used this tool, as I used to use turbo smooth and sometimes didn't work out very effective however this tool is much better and should think I will be using this tool in my animation.

Connecting

For this post I am comment on using the connecting tool that we learnt about this week to help with our animation.

The connecting tool is a way of creating an object using just one object, and the object that I have used is a basic square shape and managed to create a house from using this basic shape.

First thing to do is to create the square shape, then turn it into an editable poly, from there you need to select the edges but only one. From there there will be an option call 'ring' which will select all the edges around the square that are the same sided edges around the square. 

This is an example of how the 'ring' tool works. I selected one edge and then clicked the ring tool and selected the parallel.

Once you have done this you select another option called 'connect' but select the settings box next to the word, this is so you have more control on where you are going to put the connecting lines. There are three options for this, first is how many segments you want to create, then there is an option called 'pinch' which lets you decide how far or close you want the segments to be, then finally is the option 'slide' which lets you choose where you want the segments to be.

This shows how the 'connecting' tool works. If you click on the settings box next to the button 'connect' then you will be able to choose the settings exactly how you want them, as you can see in the image.

Once you have the got the settings to your liking you can then extrude, insert, bevel each individual poly to what you want to create, I prefer to you the settings option like the connect tool because you are able to choose the exact measurement of how much you want to extrude an object for example.

This image shows how using the 'ring' and 'connect' tools to create a door and a window.

This tool that I have now learnt is new to me and have never used it before, but is a much easier and quicker way of creating an object instead of creating new objects and making it more time consuming that it needs to be. I think now knowing about this tool is going to very helpful because it will save time when coming to create the models for the animation. 

This is an image of the house I designed.

Its Started....

We have now started our virtual environments module, and for this we have been asked to create a virtual environment/animation regarding the events of pearl harbor.

This firstly involved us splitting into groups of four and deciding what each of us were going to do, this involved mainly for this week carrying out research and finding out as much as we could about pearl harbor and what actually happened that day.

We also had to have a team meeting which involved what we do in the coming weeks and what job each person would have to contribute to the model, for next weeks lecture we decided to try and bring together a storyboard so we had a better understanding of what we needed to create and we would take it from there.

I believe that this module will be a team effort and everyone in the team has knowledge of the software we will be using (3D's Max) and we all have some idea of how we are going to present what happened on that dreadful day

Best get started then.....