School Year

Quarter 1

End of Quarter 1 Reflection

What was learned

        Throughout this quarter we learned how to use many tools in the 3D modling software 3DSMax. I will highlight what we learned and through what projects we learned them in in this reflection. We learned how to place and modify basic primitives in order to make an object look similar to its real life counterpart. We used the edit poly menu as well as the modification menu to make bends, extrusions, and many other changes to individual objects. We used Proboolean to subtract and add objects to one another and we learned how to use the loft tool to make an object along a line. 

How we learned it

        We learned these tools through the making of various projects. The screwdriver project required that I learn how to use the loft tool. We were also encouraged to learn tools on our own through discovery of them. For example, the blocking out project required that I learn the object properties menu in order to make the water translucent. At the beginning of the quarter I had no experience with any 3D modeling software, but now I have the experience and capability to model various everyday objects with minimal assistance from anyone else. 

Conclusion

        During this quarter I became familiar with 3DSMax and many of its features. Still, I understand that I have a long way to go in order to understand the intricacies of the program. In the next quarter, I hope to make something that I could be proud to put into a game or an animation. I also hope that I can continue to make objects that I find challenging as that is what I find helps me become better. I feel that I have a good handle on basic primitives and how to modify them.

Quarter 2

End of Quarter 2 Reflection

What was learned

        Throughout this quarter we learned how to use many tools in the 3D modeling software 3DSMax like the UVW unwrap feature and the Multi Sub Object texture tool.  We learned how textures can be applied to objects and how to make objects' textures not warp.  On multiple occasions, I used various methods of UVW unwrapping, like the manual method and the quick unwrap feature. We learned how photoshop works and how to use its many tools in their appropriate respective manners. I gained the skills necessary to make a texture of my own and apply it to complex objects. 

How we learned it

        We learned these tools through the making of various projects like how to properly use the multi sub object texture in order to make textures apply to different faces easily through the multi sub object cube assignment. In the simple game asset project, we learned how to use photoshop with predetermined images to make a cohesive box. We also used the textured tank assignment to learn how to make a realistic texture in photoshop and apply it to a shape without any warping. In the textured mech project we needed to learn how to make textures for individual parts look realistic together. We also needed to learn how to unwrap a large number of small complex objects quickly. 

Conclusion

        In the future I would like to learn more about lighting and be able to make more complex models quickly out of small parts. I would also like to be able to use substance painter to perhaps make textures easily and more realistic. I do feel confident in my abilities to use all of the features in the create tab and some of the features in the modify tab to make objects or pieces that resemble real life objects. I feel as though all of the things that we have learned so far this year are compounding with every project that I do. I hope to be able to use these skills to make a relatively good looking 3d game in the near future.

Quarter 3

Rendering Techniques Reflection

Arnold

Generally speaking, the image size and the camera AA seemed to have the largest effect on  the overall render quality. Increasing camera AA even slightly drastically increased the amount of time that the renderer took to complete.

Scanline

Global Supersampling and resolution had the largest effect on the render quality in the images. Global supersampling being enabled alone made the amount of time that the render took.

Quicksilver

Iterations, shadow quality, and resolution had the largest effect on the render quality. Shadow quality appeared to have the largest effect on the time that the render took.

Renderer Summary

Arnold renderer produced the best quality because it is designed for high quality renders of objects.  Quicksilver was easiest to use because the renders quality is almost solely based on the iterations setting. The most difficult renderer to use was scanline because of all the complicated shadow settings that have to be changed in order to have a high quality image. Quicksilver and scanline had sharper shadows and arnold had softer shadows that looked more realistic. I would most commonly use Arnold for a final render and I might use Scanline for quicker render.

IRL 3-point lighting reflection

I arranged my lights with few difficulties. The key light was a desk lamp, the fill light was a flashlight, and the back light came from my Chromebook's screen. The only real difficulty I faced was placing my hand to partially block the light from the flashlight so it wasn't overpowering.

The object in the setup

Snow day game asset

I used a green sticky note as it is the right shape and color for my origami frog. I built my model by practicing with an instructional video, and then making one from memory. The main difficulty was the fact that the instructions were made for much larger piece of origami paper, which usually doesn't matter, but the folds took up too much of the paper's surface area making some adjustments to the final folds a necessity. The final fold requires that you fold down the back half of the frog to make the back legs seem longer which wasn't possible due to how thick the paper had become, forcing me to make a single fold for the backside, instead of the recommended 2. Should I want to make this in 3DS max, it might be quite difficult to make all of the folds that origami comes with. I could attempt to recreate all of the steps with a plane, but that might not work too well. I might instead make a prism for the main body and then start taking chunks out with the subtract tool. I would then extract parts of it to make the legs, making sure to change direction at the leg folds. Finally, I might go back over the whole thing, adding small details like the folds and the tail.

Video Game Scene

The most challenging thing to model in the scene was obviously the seamoth. Instead of trying to make it in one shape, I made all the parts individually and then combined them into the finished product. I used only ambient lighting, due to the fact that it would look very unnatural to have anything other than the sun illuminating the scene. I did however, turn down the shadows to make it look more like the light source was really far away. I chose arnold for the final render as the scene is small and the main focus is on the object in the center and the flora surrounding it. One of the issues I encountered while rendering was the coral not UVW unwrapping properly. Instead, I applied textures to specific parts faces of the object. I would have loved to add more detail to the texture for the seamoth, as it currently looks quite barren and undetailed.

Exploring Cameras Reflection

How does changing the lens size affect the rendered image?

The lens size changed the zoom (FOV) of the camera. The higher the lens size, the smaller the FOV and the more zoomed in the image looks. An 85 mm would show more than the 200 mm lens. Generally speaking , in real life the longer lenses focus a smaller range of light into the camera's  photon detectors.

What does a clipping mask do and what is its effect on the render?

A clipping mask hides items past a certain predetermined distance from the camera. This setting has no relation to any real life camera options or addons. This setting at it's base makes things often look unnatural, if your scene isn't dark. This setting could perhaps be used if you were, say, modeling a dark forest and you wanted the trees to fade into the background.

What are the main differences between target and free cameras?

How do changing the settings of physical cameras affect a rendered image?

Do you prefer physical, target, or free cameras? When might you use each?

I prefer target cameras because they are easy to use and it's easy to determine where it is pointing. Physical cameras might be used if you are trying to get an image that has effects on it, the target camera is used if you want an easy way to point your camera at a spot, and the free camera might be good if you want to point it in a general direction or for movement in animations.

Basic Animation Reflection

Time Config

Adjusting the time configuration made the timeline have either more or less frames. The total frames is always one more than the last frame on the time line. The amount of frames, as well as the FPS impact the smoothness and length of the animation. 

Keyframing

The only real problem that I ran into was not having the objects selected, and not being in the set frame mode. Hitting the make keyframe button when not on the set keyframe mode causes nothing to be made. Additionally, if you don't have all of the objects selected, the keyframe won't contain any data.

Frames per second

The frames per second being 15 made the animation less smooth than the average animation. The average animation is 30 fps, which is much more smooth than 15 fps. The "smoothness" of the animation reffers to how big of a difference there is between frames. A large gap will make the fact that it is just a bunch of images more evident.

Animation mode

I used the manual "set keyframe" mode. I found it easier as it wouldn't do anything unexpected. If I accidentally made a change at a frame that I didn't want, it would save it as a keyframe. With the manual mode, I can make the change, and then switch to the frame that I want the change to happen at and save the frame there.

How it relates to game design

If you were making a cutscene in 3DS max for a game, these are the main methods you might use to animate a character's movement. I'm not too sure about 3DS max, but in other platforms, you just have to make the character, apply a "skeleton" to it, and then move the "skeleton's" points in order to get them to move. This involves just setting major keyframes, and moving the points, just as we did today. The basic set of changes shown today make up all movement you might find in a cutscene or a animated movie.

Adjusting the tangents changed how much distance the cars moved in the set amount of time. If the graph changes more within the given frames, the object will appear to move faster. They always end at the same point, they just get there at different times. For example the blue car accelerates slowly at first, speeds up, and then slows down before ariving.

Tangent types

The "Bezier Curve" was the most like real life. It accelerates until it reaches max speed and decelerates until it reaches its destination. Real cars can't go 0 to 60 in 0 seconds and real cars can't stop on a dime, they require time to break. 

Challenges

The challenges that I faced were mostly in figuring out all of the new tools like the create tangent button. Figuring out what these did required a lot  of messing around in the menu to figure out the effects of all of the tools. For example, the new tangent tool creates a new keyframe, from which you can apply a curve to to get complicated movement.

Uses

This could be used to simulate vehicle movement by applying movement keyframes to the model, and then determining a Bezier Curve that matches the real life acceleration and deceleration of the car. This could make smooth motion that breaths life into a cutscene. 

Refinements

Animated 4 Corners

How did organization help?

Organizing my project folders, and backing things up in my google drive allowed me to easily find my old project and make a copy of it so that I could do this project. I needed to open the 3DS max file from my google drive, as it could no longer be found in my computer's hard drive. I didn't have any difficulty with finding the project file, as I have kept my organization consistent throughout the entire year.

How did adding a Path Constraint change the car’s movement?

The path constraint forced the object to move along the predetermined spline throughout the timeline. I needed to make it move the correct direction, so I flipped the axis. In order to make the car turn, I made it follow the X axis. To make the turns more realistic, I added bank and set it lower to add roll variation to the turns.

How did the animation's time affect the animation?

The car moved a lot slower around the track after the change to the frame amount. It made the same continuous motion, it just did it over more time. The Re-scale time tool made it so that the keyframe remained at the end of the animation instead of at 100 frames.

How did changing the frame rate impact your animation?

If the frame rate was significantly higher, many things would happen. The animation would look smoother, but it would take more time to render and it would shorten the time of the animation. If the frame rate wasn't changed to 30, the time that the animation took wouldn't be an even number like 24 seconds, making telling how long the animation actually is harder.

Final 4 Corners

Lighting types

The use of different lights gave the illusion of multiple light sources that interacted with one another. For example, the sun rays, which were a target direct light, made the illusion of daytime shadows that changed in length. I struggled with making sure that I had the right light selected when I changed their locations and parameters throughout the animation.

Car Headlights

Linking the headlights to the car insured that the vehicle and the headlights remained the same relative to one another. This made it look like the light was emanating from the front of the vehicle. The Align tool ensured that the cars lights were in the same place as they appeared on the car's model.

Day/ Night cycle

The change from day to night made the whole animation seem as though a large amount of time has passed from the cars perspective. The lighting changes make the environment more dynamic and seem less artificial. I needed to change a large number of lighting parameters, like the intensity and color, as well as the position to ensure the translation seemed realistic. 

Shadows

The contradicting shadows made the scene seem more whole and as though there were actual reflections and multiple light sources. The final render looked much more like an actual drive through a scene because it had shadows that changed over time.

Cameras

The cameras allowed the animation to cleanly follow the car from a perspective view and to smoothly follow the car from a designated camera location. Linking the target camera's target to the car allowed the animation to follow the car automatically without the camera itself moving. Linking the free camera to the vehicle allowed the vehicle to move along with maintaining the same relative distance from the car.

End of Quarter 3 Reflection

What was learned

In this quarter, I learned how to properly light things, how to animate things, and how to put everything we have learned together to make a cohesive project. I learned what a 3 point lighting setup is, how to do it, and when to use one. I also learned how to use the timeline and keyframes to make an object move in an animation. Also, during the learning of animation, I learned how to use the graph editor to make smoother motion. Additionally, I learned how to put texturing, lighting, as well as basic primitives and transformations to  make a scene that focussed on an object.

How we learned it

I learned how to properly use the 3 point lighting setup by making basic scenes, and using scenes that had already been produced to make the object look better and show off all of the parts. In order to learn how to learn how to use the 3 point lighting setup, I did 2 projects, one where I illuminated a teapot, and one where I illuminated the spaceship that I made earlier in the year. In order to learn how to use the timeline and animate things, I did multiple projects. I did a project where I created basic shapes in order to use the basic transformations. I also did a project in which I learned how to use the graph editor where there were cars on a racetrack. Additionally, I learned how to combine most of the things we have learned so far in the year by creating a scene in 3DS max.

Conclusion

In the future I would like to do a project where I can make something using everything we learned so far, and animate it. I would like to be able to animate things myself, more quickly in the future rather than following direct instructions. I am confident in my ability to place a  proper 3 point lighting setup into a scene. Initially, I liked the manual key placement option, but after further thought, I realized that I more enjoyed the auto key option to place keyframes as it took less effort. I would like to utilize my skills to create an object that eventually could be placed into a video game, along with other assets, without looking out of place.

Quarter 4

End Of Quarter 4 Reflection

What was learned

In this quarter I learned how to put everything we've learned so far together. I learned how to animate a fully completed scene in a manner that was smooth and loops. In this project, I also learned how to animate a project without direct instruction, with a rotation, movement, light flicker, and camera movement. This project required knowledge of basic modeling from previous projects, as well as knowledge of the material editor. I had to learn how to do repeated tweaks on certain values to make materials look more like their real counterparts. 

How we learned it

I made a massive project over a couple of weeks that culminated in a final textured and animated scene. I had to create a couple of textures for different parts of my bike, like the metallic parts of the upper bike and tires and the matte parts of the bike. I also had to make the bike move in a manner that looked realistic. This required making the tires rotate as well as the pedals. The pedals, however, look strange if they rotate with the part that attaches to the bike, so I had to use the link tool. I also learned how to do camera movement by iteratively changing aspects of the movement slightly until it looked good.

Conclusion

In the future, I want to do more projects like this because I want to be able to make cutscenes for games in the future. Although 3D modeling platforms have differences, it will be helpful to know these things to make things in the future. I hope make more similarly eerie scenes in the future because it was quite fun to make such a dark scene. At this point, I think I can confidently model full scenes with lighting and animations. I found that animating things is easiest if you don't try the same thing that doesn't work over and over. Instead it is most beneficial to note what didn't work and what order you took the actions to get the result in order to not repeat your mistakes. I hope to create a game over the summer and I hope that my experience here helps me model assets for my game.