Cinema 4D: Character Model

In this tutorial I looked at creating a 3D character model. I started by creating a cube and changed it to Gouraud shading (lines). I then made the object editable and rotated to view the underneath of the cube, in which I selected the point selection and selected the middle points on the cube. I dragged the points down to extend this. I basically made this character from a cube and by dragging out different parts of the cube to extend to create this character. After I had created the character I used the materials to add colour to different sections on the character. To create the eyes I simply created 2 spheres and moved them into the character. I then added a light to create a shadow to make the character look 3D.

This was my final outcome of the character. My character came out a little strange and a bit flat in places such as the feet and the head. I needed to add a bit more shape to it. Also I must have pulled part of the head a bit too much because there is a bit that sticks out of the head that I must have stretched. I quite liked doing this tutorial, I found it quite interesting to do but I did struggle with it. I got used to the lighting and how to place it in different locations it was the extruding and dragging of different polygons that I struggled with. Overall I thought it was a good tutorial and useful to learn.

CInema 4D: Shattered Logo Ident

In this lesson we got to look at Cinema 4D in a bit more depth and learnt how to create a 3D ident using this software. To start off with I needed to create a logo in Illustrator in which I used my initials and used bright colours. Once I had my logo finished I imported this into Cinema 4D. I learnt this by following a video tutorial.

Once it was imported into Cinema 4D I made the logo flat on the floor by changing the coordinates of the logo. Once in the correct position I went to 'Extrude Nurbs' and dragged the logo onto it. I then went to 'Make Editable' to change the object into a polygonal object. I clicked on the shading lines to highlight them and then with the logo selected I went to the edge select tool, right clicked on the object and selected the knife tool to be able to cut the image into sections. After I thought it was cut into enough pieces I went to the live selection tool and face select tool and selected all the pieces in one of the letters and set the selection and repeated this for each letter. 

I then created 4 materials making them pure white and unticking the Specular box. I added the white material colour to the logo and used the selection tags to select and colour in the letters. After this I added an Extrude object and dragged it onto the logo and changed the transform to 'per step' and extrustion steps to 1. I selected the Extrude object and added a random effector  and set the random mode to noise and set the animation speed to 50%, which makes all the pieces scatter out from the logo.  

To begin animating I went to the falloff tab and changed its shape to a sphere. I then dragged the effector from side to side to show that it scatters the pieces once dragged onto the logo. I added a floor piece with the colour white to fit with the logo and give it more of a surrounding. I then animated this piece by moving this from one side to another. This is the final shattered logo ident:

I was proud I managed to create this and to follow the tutorial. I struggled with understanding exactly what the role of 'Extrude Nurbs' and some of the other things included actually did to the logo ident, I didn't really understand what I was actually doing I just followed the tutorial. However I did manage to learn some new things and some new tools in this software.

Cinema 4D: Glass Name and Lights

In this tutorial I was looking at different materials and adding these to shapes and text. I created my name in 3D by using the text tool. I then wanted to add a glass effect to this by using the materials and effects to make it look transparent. I then created spheres and looked at creating different effects on different spheres. On some of the spheres I added a reflection effect so that there are reflections from each other in different spheres. On another sphere I looked at making it glow, which I did using the light blue sphere.

After experimenting with different effects on the spheres I looked at lights and placement of the lights to create shadows on the spheres. I put my light in the glowing sphere to make it look like the glowing sphere was giving off the light onto the others.

I found it quite simple to create the glass name and adding some of the effects to the spheres. I struggled with adding light and the shadowing and I think there is too much glow on the glowing sphere it doesn't look much like a glow but a bright coloured, flat circle. I could do with experimenting with lighting to get used to this more as it seems to be something I struggle with the most on this software.

3D Max: Bouncing Ball

In this lesson we looked at an online tutorial to get used to learning the software ourselves. I was trying to create a bouncing ball.

Firstly we started by creating a sphere and adding a material to it to get the pattern onto the ball whilst changing the colours. Once I had finished creating the actual ball I had to try and get it to animate by moving the ball from one side to the other. After I had finally finished animating the ball which took a while to do I added an effect to make the ball squish at the bottom when it hits the floor to make it look more realistic it is bouncing. Here is my bouncing ball outcome:

This took me quite a while to do and I did struggle with the animation of the ball and adding the effect to the bounce. However it was quite good to follow a tutorial online because I could go at my own pace and be able to take in more as I learnt how to actually understand the software more this way rather than copying my tutor trying to catch up to that stage as I found myself getting lost quite a few times creating the other tutorials.

3D Max: Materials

In this tutorial I learnt how to make different 3D shapes and planes in 3D Max. I created a ball and a tyre on a grass floor with a brick wall behind it. I started off by creating a plane for the floor. Then on top of this I created a sphere shape and then a Cylinder. 

Next, I wanted to create a light to create shadows to make my shapes look 3D. I did this by going to Modifier/Create/Lights/Target Direct Light. I would then click and drag the head of the light to move it which is easier to do in the side or front view. I set the light beam to 300 to make the light brighter to create a more dramatic shadow and turned the shadow type to Ray Traced Shadows.

I then added a material to the Sphere with the material type 'standard' and the shader type 'Blinn'. In the colour selector I changed the colour of my ball to a light blue colour and I changed the materials specular level to 80 and the Glossiness to about 50 and then to add this material to the sphere I just drag the material over it.

I wanted to then add a material to the Cylinder so I added a new material and set the specular level and the glossiness to 10. I wanted to add a image onto the cyclinder to create a wheel so I opened up the map button and selected bitmap and then picked the wheel.jpg. To add this material to the cylinder I clicked on the assign material to selection button in the materials section. I added a plane to make the wall in which i added a brick material onto it and a grass material onto the floor. 

In my outcome, my ball went from glossy to a noise effect, I think I might have added a noise material to the ball and not realised until I rendered the image out. I find this software quite hard to follow and struggled a few times to understand it all but I managed to learn more on how materials work and planes. 

3D Max: Box Move Test

This was a quick introduction to 3D Max and looking at the basics. I looked at the different tools in the software and how to create different shapes and adding effects to the shapes.

In this we created a cube and added a bend effect to it to get the shape to wobble around. We then added other effects to the shape to get it to move in different ways. In the video the box seems to move all over the place and wasn't very controlled. I found this quite simple to learn because it was just looking at the basics. However when it got to adding different effects and to get the box to move I started to struggle. 

After Effects: TV Ident

In this lesson I learnt how to make a TV Ident in After Effects. This helped me understand how to animate shapes and use the effects in the Character Window more. I also learnt to use different compositions. I found this quite complicated but I managed to follow the tutorial quite well and developed my understanding of 'Keys' and the Software. In this tutorial I also learnt about 'Motion Blur' by adding it to the shapes to show movement.

After Effects: Walk and Run Cycles

Walk Cycle

In this lesson we looked at making walk cycles in After Effects using 8 different images of a man walking in 8 different steps. Below is a walk sheet to show the different actions to create the walk cycle:

I used the 8 different images and imported them into After Effects and created a new composition, setting the duration of the animation to 1 second. Each image lasts for 3 frames with the composition being 24 frames per second. Every 3rd frame i added a new walking image behind the other, adding keyframes along the way to animate the walk cycle. 

I learnt how to animate a character to walk by combining the 8 different images together in After Effects. I now know how i would be able to animate using drawn images. Doing this animation made me learn how to use keyframes properly and understand them. 

Run Cycle

Below is the run sheet to show the stages of the run cycle:

Again, i used the 8 different images

I used the 8 different images and imported them into After Effects and created a new composition, setting the duration of the animation to 1 second. Each image lasts for 3 frames with the composition being 24 frames per second. Every 3rd frame i added a new running image behind the other, adding keyframes along the way to animate the run cycle. 

Walk Bits Cycle

This was to create a walking man in a different way by creating the character into bits. 

The image was created in Adobe Illustrator to begin with and then I imported this file as a composition into After Effects I then added the walk composition I had created in the other walk animations. The file was shown with the different sections of the man in which i linked all the objects in the hierarchy to the body so that they will all be linked as one piece. I then moved the anchor points in each object to the joint of the body piece, for the arm it would go to the elbow and wrist. This was so i was able to rotate them.

I then selected the body layer and clicked 'P' for Position and on every 3rd frame i would key the body for the up and down position.
I then selected all the layers and clicked 'R' for Rotation in which i rotated every piece in the walking position every 3rd frame.

I learnt different ways to animate a character in the walking cycle. One way of using stages of drawings and another using different body pieces to move into different walking positions. I liked the walk bits animation more than the other because i think it's more accurate with its movements and more simple. It also shows a way of moving a character in any different position you like instead of having to repeatedly draw out the character.

After Effects: Slideshow

In this lesson i learnt how to make a slideshow with photographs as an introduction to Adobe After Effects. I started by importing the images into After Effects.

The next step is to create a new composition by clicking on the new composition button or going to Composition>New Composition. In the Composition Settings i changed the preset to 'HDV/HDTV 720 25' and set the duration to '0:00:35:00' whilst checking the Frame Rate is 25.

I then select all the layers and grabbed the bars on the timeline and dragged them to the 5 second marker shown on the top of the timeline.

With all the layers still selected I pressed the 'T' on the keyboard which opens the Opacity for the layers. I then moved the Timeline Curser to the beginning on the frame '0s' and then clicked on the stopwatch to create keys on each layer. I then changed the Opacity percentage to 0%.

I then zoomed into the timeline and moved the Timeline Curser to frame 5 and changed the Opacity percentage to 100% which adds more keys on each layer at frame 5.
I moved the timeline to the end of the layers and moved the curser 5 frames backwards and added a key at the current time making more keys appear on the timeline with the Opacity to 100%.
I then moved the curser to the end of the layers on the timeline and changed the Opacity level to 0% which adds more keys to the layers and then zoomed back out.

Next step I closed the layers to hide the Opacity levels. I then pressed 'shift' and dragged the layers one behind each, by pressing 'shift' they will snap to the end of each layer. This has all created a slideshow with a fade in/out transition between each image.

I then changed the composition duration to '0:00:40:00' by going to Composition>Composition Settings. I selected all the layers and dragged them to the end of the timeline.

To add a title layer for the slideshow I selected the Text tool and clicked on the preview window to type a title. I then dragged the end of the layer to the 5 second marker in front of the picture layers and changed the size of the text in the Character Window.

Now I had finished I had to render the slideshow so I selected the composition and went to Composition>Add To Render Queue. Then I clicked on 'Lossless' on the timeline and changed the Format to 'h264' and then clicked on 'Format Options' to change the Profile to 'High', the level to '3.1' and the Bitrate to 10. Then i gave the Output Location and clicked Render.

Here is my slideshow. This is the first time I have ever used 'After Effects' and I thought it was a good introduction to the software by starting with something quite simple to create. However, I did struggle with the understanding of 'Keys' and couldn't get the slideshow to work at first but now I have learnt how to use the Keys and some of the tools on the software.

Photoshop: Layers

This lesson was an introduction to layers in 'Photoshop' and 'Illustrator'. Firstly i learnt the basics of Photoshop such as toolbars and dialogue boxes. I then opened this star image to practice with layers: 

I opened the star image into Photoshop and changed its original layer to a background layer. I added a 'multiply' blend mode to this layer so that other layers behind could be seen. I then opened a new layer to make my first selection to be filled in.

I used the polygonal lasso tool to go around the shape of the star to make an accurate selection. I then used the bucket tool to fill the star in with a colour from the colour swatch. I used this technique to fill in the rest of the image. 

I already knew how to use Photoshop and how to use layers this way but this lesson was a good recap over how to use the software and learn different techniques.

However i have never used Illustrator. I learnt how to do the same in this software even though it is similar to Photoshop i learnt how to use layers and fill in objects using Illustrator.