SWOT Analysis

Strengths:

In this module I have found one of my most notable strengths is patience and the willingness to spend time experimenting with different features of the program such as using cameras, Biped mechanisms and weighting models for animation.

I feel I have gained a good understanding of how Bipeds and skinning is used to animate models as well as how different lighting can be used to influence the mood and appearance of a scene.

Weaknesses:

One of the biggest weaknesses that have shown up while undertaking this work is the relationship between complexity and available time for development. I take pride in designing higher quality models and have such suffered on animation time due to the amount of work put into the models being used in the animation.

I have learnt that very careful planning can determine whether the initial idea can be made to standard within the given time limit, I will in future be taking the development time period into account when it comes to designing any piece of animation work, so as to avoid this issue.

Opportunites:

Last year I touched on Bipeds and lighting techniques briefly, along with the use of cameras. These have played a major part in the animating side of 3DS Max and have proven to be some of the most useful tools to be used.

I have been able to practice weighting techniques considerably during this course and can safely say that I am comfortable using this feature on any future work.

Finally, having the chance to use Bipeds properly has given me a good insight into Animation within 3D Max. I have learnt more about how skeletons work and what types of movement affect different areas of the body.

Threats:

The biggest issue I have experienced during this course is to do with the biped and skin link on my models. I found that when a skin is applied to a biped that has already been animated it tends to lose its 'connection' when the file is saved and reopened. This unfortunetly caused me to waste time trying to recover from pieces of work that were lost when the skin / biped link was removed.

Better devtime management is still an important area that needs to be taken into consideration when any future work is undertaken.

Animation - Final Scene 5 - Bat + Fox + Bird

For my final scene I have kept the amount of animation down to allow the narrator to explain the scene more.

Again, using the camera angles I have been able to easily transfer the views watching different characters while the Narrator is talking in the background. This scene ends with the morale of the story followed by a short series of credits.

Animation - Scene 4 - Bird + Fox + Human

For my fourth scene - I saved time by linking a majority of the smaller scenes / events i wanted to add to my animation all into one file.

This scene features a change of time (from night to day), along with simple yet effective camera angles. I was able to reuse the walk sequence for the fox as it suited the event of the bird and fox meeting.

One event i wanted to add to this scene in order to add some humour for its target audience (children), was the introduction of a photographer. This character would stop the collision between the animals by photographing them - obviously drawing their attention away from fighting.

One area of this scene I feel did not go to plan was the way the character is holding the camera, as you can see in the screenshot - his hands are not entirely wrapped around the sides of the camera, leaving untidy gaps.

However, I do feel this scene is effective in producing a humourous and interesting piece to watch as part of my animation. the result can be seen below:

Animation - Scene 3 - Bat + Bird

This scene was not as difficult to produce compared to the previous scene featuring the fox. Here i have tried to keep the animation down to a minimal and relied on camera angles to get the effect i was looking for.

Unfortunetly I feel the Bird needed to be animated more in this scene in order to get a more realistic looking series of events. Seeing as a biped was not used on the bird, I was limited to the range of movement I could add to the bird - Too much animation of the polygons would cause the program to crash!

However I was able to split the animation up into small clips and mold them together - producing a fairly clean wing flapping animation by simply manipulating the polygons creating the wings.

Animation - Scene 2 - Bat + Fox

This is where the animating starts to step up considerably. For this scene I needed to animate a walk sequence for my fox which unfortunetly proved to be quite a difficult and lengthy task.

One of the biggest issues with this particular piece of work was the fact the biped movement was more or less trial and error. After positioning the legs ready for the next movement, using the 'planted key' on the next frame would sometimes throw the limb completely out of position and required me to try slightly different positions on previous frames to get each section working.

After a lengthy period of trial and error with the biped I finally managed to produce a working version that is suitable for this scene and can even be used again!

The Bat fortunetly required very little animation and only appears in this scene for brief periods.

Animation - Scene 1 - Intro

I had a good idea of how I wanted my animation to look like and a rough ideas of what camera angles would give the best effect.

Looking at the game trailer video i talked about in my inital ideas - I setup a scene containing varies trees, a simple landscape and obviously - all the models I would be animating. From here I experimented with using the camera and how I could be animated to move down the top of one of the trees (as seen in the game trailer.)

This was very easy - especially as the camera in travelling in a straight line! I set a starting keyframe at 0 and positioned the camera how I wanted it to end further along the timeline. This took a few attempts in order to get the desired length of scroll motion correct, however I am very pleased with the result!

Human Biped & Weighting

Fortunetly my human character requires minimal movement of the body, instead just the arms will contain the majority of the movement. This was a very simple addition of the Biped as the default stance resembles a human skeleton and posture to beging with.

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Weighting

The Weighting for the human model was quite straight forward. Again I will not be doing large amounts of movement or any complex postures, positions, actions etc. The main areas I focused on was making sure the arm movements were smooth along with relevant weighting on the leg joints - especially around the pelvis.

Otherwise I am pleased with how the weighting went for this model, keeping it quite simple has definetly provided me with a suitable model that can easily move as needed for the featured scene.