THE VIDEO IS FINALLY UP M80S

This is the last final entry, showing the final completed video. Some of the sound effects I got for the project is pretty bad, but it will have to do. There are some weird movement in the video as well. Hopefully you will enjoy the video.

10th Journal Entry

This is my 10th and last entry. I have finally finished rendering all the videos that are going to be part of my animation. It took about 2 days to do it, with a lot of errors and mistakes done to it, but the videos are rendered nicely and ready to be edited. I am going to edit the videos using Adobe Premiere, even though I know so little about video-editing, let alone the program itself. I am going to get my sound effects from various websites like freesound.org and YouTube. I have about 5-6 videos ready to be edited for my animation. Finding the sound effects is going to be annoying and hard.

Here is one of the videos that are going to be used in the animation:

The video is going to be done hopefully on Monday. The only problem is the lag in Premiere Pro, the sound effects, and my poor video-editing skills.

9th Journal Entry

This is my 9th journal entry. I started animating the models. To animate, you don't just move and rotate and add the key-frames to the CAT objects. You need to add the layer to the CAT objects to animate it. I used the Absolute Layer one, because that seems to be the most basic I have. I am about 65% done with the animating as I am writing the journal. It is so hard to animate, because I don't know what a second, and the third of it feels like, but it's doing fine.

I also added the materials to the objects. Here are examples:

I used the UVW Unwrap Modifier to apply the material and I use Adobe Photoshop to make the materials. They look pretty bad, but it fits the bill. I also try to experiment to use mental ray for the rendering, it makes the scene have those sexy lighting and shadows.

Here are pretty much the 'story' I have come up with will experimenting with this project. It changed a lot but this is the final story, I guess. You see, there is this crime organisation, and they have psychic powers (because it's so hard and takes a long time for them to hold the guns or other objects). And then there is this guy, the main character, which my childish and nerd side calls him "Dead Hunter". In this 'animation', we uncover as Dead Hunter goes on to this organisation and attacking them. That's pretty much the story basically.

Here is the map I made for the place to animate. It's a pretty simple map really, it's just part of an inside of the building, with a small vent, three 'branches' of the floor (I don't know the word), and a room for the boss. There are three pawns, the boss, or bigger pawn as I mentioned in the last posts. There's also the main character, with his sniper rifle, knife and M9. The lights are just standard lights. there is a chair and a table as well, made by converting them to editable poly from boxes and cylinders, and using turbosmooth modifier on some of the parts.

So yeah, that's pretty much what I have done in this journal entry. I hope I am able to finish this project and get an A in ACE IT.

8th Journal Entry

This is my 8th Entry. This week I modeled a sniper rifle for the main character. It's referenced after a normal sniper rifle, but it it a semi-auto sniper rifle, because I can. The trigger, the barrel, the barrel-holder, and the body are separate objects. They are all editable poly, with the barrel holder and trigger symmetrical using the Symmetry modifier.

I finished rigging the pawn model and made some test videos about it. It needs some fixing on the hip using the Skin Morph modifier. There are three different models of pawn. One with the sleeves tucked short, one with the sleeves tucked a bit longer, and one with both the sleeves long and short. The rig used is CAT Object, which is different from biped, because biped has too many constraint, so that's
why I use CAT.

All I need to after rigging the models is animating them, and then edit the model animation with Skin Morph modifier to edit the joints because there bounds to be some funny mistakes there. After that, if I have time, I can texture the models. 

7th Journal Entry

In this journal entry, I did some progress on rigging the characters and some modelling. I almost completed rigging the main and the pawn.

Rigging for pawn

Rigging for main

Oh yeah, and I finally figured out some basic of rendering in 3dsmax.
To show what it is rendering, go to the viewport and click on safe frames, or Shift + F for the shortcut.

And to control the dimensions of your image/sequence, you go to the output size in the render setup.

There is also a command I learnt. It is used to lose the material from the object/model you have. To apply it you need to type it at the bottom corner left.
Click the object, then type the command: $.mat = null and the material is gone.

I am starting to rig the big pawn as well. I think rigging the main is finished, just need some small improvements on the fingers and joints. I am going to fix the joints using the Skin Morph Modifier, If I have time for it. I haven't finished rigging the pawn yet, and I'm doing it at school. I did the rigging for main at home and doing the rigging for the bigger pawn right now. It is such a pain to do it, but once you've finished it, it feels great.

So yeah I guess that's my update on this journal entry, I learnt a lot stuff about 3DSMAX "this week".

6th Journal Entry

I did some progress on my project. First of all, I modeled the characters. There are some parts I need to remodel for rigging. I use NURMS to make them smooth instead of turbosmooth modifier. I have the main character, the pawns, and the bigger pawns. They all have the same characteristics of not having faces because it is hard to model, especially rigging it.

Main Character

Pawn

Bigger Pawn

I've also made a scythe for the main character. It has 4 parts separated, the handle, the middle part, the part that holds the blade, and the blade. the scythe's blade are also two connected blades. I started from a box, and by converting it to editable poly, I started modeling from the handle. I used a bunch of extrudes to add more level and I used swift loops to "add" more poly.

I've finished creating the rig for the main and the pawn. I've tried experimenting with rigging the main, but it's hard to do so. The only other problem I have is texturing and other special effects right now. Other than that, I think it's overall just going smoothly.

5th Journal Entry

Hi this is my fifth journal entry.

This week I've made the main character for the project. I remodeled the previous character into the the character he is using a bunch of extruding and target welding.

I've also finished modeling the weapon for the mob character. Originally this was supposed to be the main character's weapon, but I just decided to give it to the mob or the enemies. It is an assault rifle with a a very low-resolution reference image. I started from the end part to the nozzle.

Rigging the character: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PogyaBTmeE

I am going to plan on rigging the character with this YouTube tutorial, but I have not fully watched to know that it is useful.