WHAT ARE U LOOKING AT!!!

I have created the second part to the scene, where Norbert looks at the camera and realises someone is looking at him. He then goes to scratch his belly and gives a very unhappy 1000 yard stare! This will then lead into the rest of the performance, I wanted to set the scene to show he is not even happy with people looking at him let alone what he will encounter soon!! (Poor Guy)

OOOO Dear 3DSMAX!!

I am starting to think that 3DSmax hates me after I had rendered my first scene of Norman walking on stage. I saved the work and then when i tried to open it there was a little bit of a problem......















I checked on the max file and my character, his skin, biped and everything attached had gone! Basically the file had corrupted luckily I had made backups from before I started animating, but as I had a finished version of the video it was not too bad. As I could use that and then cut to a new scene. But needless to say I was not a happy chappy as that was not my original plan.

So I apologise for any unhappy viewers that will see the cut, but I am sure that I can use my fantastic video editing to make it look like it was meant to be there all along!!

Starting to Animate

I have produced some basic animations for the walking cycle, I have not used the built in one with max. As it distorted my character loads, mainly due to the position of his shoulders, so I decided to make my own (allot harder!! But was worth the effort.)



As you can see he does not pick up his feet but shuffles, this is not because I cut corners and was lazy it was mainly because his character is!! I do not want him to be running and putting in effort, he has to look like every foot step is using all his energy and he really cant be assed!!

More Walking.....



I have added some more steps, just trying to work out how to make the steps look as realistic as possible!! When this was rendered I had less frames, so it appears to that he is running and looks way too fast for what I want. It was mealy a test of his body and the timings. (I also excuse about him having no pants, he had a wardrobe malfunction.) I need to also work on the way his feet move back and forwards, not so keen on this sliding motion. As much as I was, he may need to pick up his feet just a little bit to make it look more real.

Getting Closer!!!



I managed to improve on how he walks, I made him pick his feet up more. But he still looks like he is sliding! (maybe its that slipper shiny floor??) But that is an aspect that needs to be sorted out as it makes it look very amature. You will also notice that I have started to test the morph tool, while he is walking. It works really well and allows him to dislay a grumpy exspression (as he will be mubbeling to himself.) and blink while walking, what a BONUS!!

The best walk I have made yet!!



I managed to sort out that sliding problem, it is still there but you barely notice and I have done a panning motion with the camera so you are focused on those brilliant facial exsperssions!! He really is getting into his walk, swaying his arms and shoulders, stomping those pink slippers on the ground. You can really tell norman is not a happy chappy!! oooo things are only going to get worse!! MUHWAAHAHA

Lighting and Scenery

I wanted to start setting up the scenery for the animation, as this module is all about animation it was about time I jumped on the band wagon. I have spent ages making my kick ass character "Norman" and now he needs to show how much of a grumpy old man he really is!!

Where will this epic film be shot???

As we are not getting any marks on the environment, then I am not going to spend ages making a detailed environment. I decided to just make a plane background, out of a box.























I created a box, edited the poly's to create the shape you see above. (I made this so that the light has allot of space to move around, also being able to reflect of the top.)































The material used for the backdrop, was a shiny white. I used a reflection of 12, and a falloff map. This means you can see a slight reflection of the character, but not like he is walking on glass. It just gives the scene some more depth.

Setting up the Lighting































I wanted to set up the lights to make the character, really bright!! now low lights or dramatic shadows!! (which look rubbish) I wanted my work to be in full spotlight, I spent that time on him for a reason, so that he looks good!! (He wants his spotlight)

You will notice there are a few lights, there is the main light named (highlights) this gives my character his main shiny light on his face and body. I added a filler light which gives off less light from the other side making sure that the other side of him is not in pure darkness. There is also the light that you cannot see, towering from above. This is purely to light the scene and does not effect the character.

I also added a camera, it has just been set up dead straight for the first scene. Where Norman walks on/plods on. Making sure this was all sorted before animation occurred meant one less stress I would have to deal with!!

Rigging and the Biped

I tried to use the bone tools for my character, but found it really difficult to connect all the bones together and create the correct shapes. It was mainly due to the fact I was no sure where to start and creating something from scratch was really difficult.

Using the Biped - The better Choice

























The other option was to use a Biped instead, this basically meant creating a bone structure that was already existent in 3DSMAX you then edit the from to fit the character mesh you have designed. Which in my case sounded allot easier than creating every bone from scratch.































As you can see from the image above, I have modified the biped to match the body size of the skin. It was just a case of using the bone edit tool and then using the scale tool.































To be able to see how big to make each section I had to place the biped inside the skin for my character. By turning the skin see-through it allowed me to access the biped inside and change the dimensions to fit all the parts of the body.

Applying the Physique Modifier

Now that the bones are all set up it is time to apply the Physique Modifier to attach all the skin. I did each part of the body at a time, as there were many parts and some bits did not need to be attached. It also let me keep track of each part as it was added.































Once you have applied the modifier, you simply click on the "Attach to Node" then it will be looking for you to click on bones or part of the biped you want to link it to. The best way is to link it to the whole biped, from the selection list.































As I did not name my biped, it is still called Bip01. Once you select that it will ask you to accept and initialize the connection. (I kept all the settings to the original as they seemed to work really well.)































Once I went over each part, it was finally all attached to the biped. This meant that when the biped was moved the mesh attached would follow. But the job was not done yet, I still needed to sort out the "Envelopes" which control how much is connected to each part of the biped.



















You need to select the Envelope option, for the partical object (e.g. I am using the skin here to show as an example.) With that selected start clicking on the biped inside the mesh.










































As you can see from the images above, as you click on the bone it will show you the coverage of that bone. You can then change the strength and size of the radius. I went over the body on each bone to make sure the coverage was correct, and tried moving body parts to make sure all the mesh moved with the biped. (IT TOOK SOME WORK AND ALLOT OF FRUSTRATION!! but I got there in the end.)

Morph Stuff

I wanted my character to have as much expression's as possible, to meet the criteria of the module. But the only way I knew how was to use key framing and then move the vertex points around, but I did not want to do this as it could cause allot of problems.

As you start to edit the vertex points you are essentially are moving the mold of the entire face and parts. Now if you are not careful too much editing will ruin the model you have spent so much time and effort on. (And we know we don't want that.)

So I did some research and found out that there is a modifier called the "Morph" which allows you to create copies of your model and change them. Then you can use sliders to change your original model but you can always lower the sliders to get back to your original state.









































You can see from the images above, I created many copies of my characters body ( I had to use the whole body as the head is attached to the body and you cannot chop the head of and just use that.) Now all the morphs have to be made before you skin the model, otherwise it will mess it up.

This was tricky and required allot of planning as I had to work out the best morphs for what exspression I was going to be using, I covered the basics of happy, sad, mad etc and also added in some subtle mouth movements and eye movements. (Also the advanage to this is that you can use each one at the same time as another, so you can use say eye gestures and mix them with mouth ones, enabling you to create hundreds of diffrent looks from a small amount of designs.)






The video above is a test of all the gestures one after the other, I know it looks rather crazy but its just to see how the face reacts to each one. Some are very over the top than others and all this can be fine tuned later on. (But I am glad that I used the morph tool, as it works really well!!)

UVW Mapping

I have tried my hand at UVW Mapping before and found it to be literally terrrable and impossible to understand. But however to get a good result on the texure you need to use UVW or it will look rubbish and could only have reapeated textures.

The last time I used the modifier it was with a complex mode of my face, which had allot to contend with and it was increaisngly difficult but as the elements of this model are not as complex and are diffrent parts instead of just one massive object with hundereds of ploygons.

Unfolding and creating the Maps
I found that the easiest way to create the maps were to simple apply the UVW unwrap, when you first apply it the seems are normally really messed up and in the wrong places.















































As you can see they are impossible to work with and this is how everything was turning out last time. (I did not have high hopes as I wondered if I could ever get anything that I could work with)But by simplying selecting the faces and using the "Planar" then going into edit mode. It lays out the structure very simply but shows it from above.

























You can then select "Normal Mapping" which then allows you to see the front and back of the object, splitting it into 2 main segments. This is hard for side parts as they become moulded round the edges but I was only worried about front and back for this object.































I then took the Mapping into Photoshop, were I added mucky splats to add to my characters design. Making him look really really scruffy as if he had spilt all food over himself and yet he doesnot care, due to his lazy and slobbyness.






















































You can see from the image above what the object looked like when the material was applied with the UVW unwrap. It really makes the object looks better instead of just being white, So am glad that I have managed to learn to use UVW unwrap correctly.

Gotten the Bug for UVW Unwrap!!































Once I found out how to use the materials, I decided to try and add some more to the body and shorts of my character. It really improved the design from the standard basic colours, I especially enjoyed doing the skin. As I got to make moles and a scrubby beard, once again really making the character more detail.

HOWEVER!!!















Having all the UVW Unwrap it really did slow down the program and moddeling was becoming icreasingly hard. So animation would be so do difficult that it was not even worth trying, so to save myself from having the program crash every 10 seconds I removed all but the t-shirt material which due to its size, still allowed fast movement.