Conclusion

I have now completely finished my animation and have it in a .avi file ready to be handed in. I would have to say that I am very pleased with what I have produced. I have enjoyed the past 12 weeks spent more on the “Animation” side of things rather than the modelling. Semester 1 was enjoyable but I think I struggle with my lack of patience when it comes to intricate modelling. I felt that I was far better when it came to thinking up ways of animating scenes and using cameras and lighting effectively to create a mood.

As mentioned I am very happy with my overall animation but there are 3 scenes that I really feel showed off the skills that I have learnt. The first being the scene where the camera circles round the goose just before he is killed. I feel that I used the camera angles to show off the animation and model of the goose whilst also creating the feel of the Goose being helpless and all alone. I feel that the lighting in this scene really makes it stand out from others.

This follows in nicely to the 2nd scene that I am very proud of, which is the actual killing of the Goose. This was a tough scene to create because I knew what I wanted to achieve but needed to go about it in a certain way that would appeal to my target audience without being regarded as too gruesome or horrible. I also feel that the animation of the Goose after dieing along with the reaction the Axe chopping through the body came out very well and realistic.

The third scene that really stands out for me is the final scene where we see the farmer distraught after realising that he has just wasted a huge opportunity at becoming rich because he was too impatient and greedy. This scene took me a long time to work out how I was going to do the ion because it was extremely important to portray the farmers feelings to the audience. It took me a long time to work out where each bone needed to be/move/rotate to to ensure the perfect body position for falling to his knees. I feel that the final outcome of the scene was very good and worked well.

I believe that throughout this project I have learnt a wide range of animation techniques that will stick with me for any future projects. Examples of some of these could be:

Creating A Biped
Skinning A Model
Weighting The Bones Of A Model
Using The Timeline
Using The Walk Cycle

and many more. My aim was always to try and incorporate as many of the techniques that I learnt throughout the year in my animation. I did this as a test to make sure that I was listening and understood what was going on as well as using them to create some great effects.

One thing that I focussed heavily on in this animation was the use of lighting and cameras to enhance what is happening in a scene. Last semester I was criticised for not using them enough so I really wanted to try out all the options in this animation. I feel that I did this well and used a range of lighting techniques including “Omnilight” and “Target Spot”. I used these lights to create effects such as the sun rising by moving the Omnilight upwards on the scene through the timeline. I believe the cameras give the viewer a range of views of the scenes. These range from face on, from behind, over the shoulder, point of view and roaming camera shots.

One of the things that I struggled with was the skinning and weighting of my models. I found this hard because it is a very tough, tricky and long process to ensure that all the bones are affecting the correct vertices. I had to keep moving bones on my models to see how the skin would react in different situations. The problem would usually come when one vertex was being affected by a random bone on the opposite side of the body. This then created a horrible reaction and I then had to spend time sorting it out. It took a long time to get both my goose and my farmer skinned and weighted but I was happy with the final result.

If I did have a lot more time to spend on the project, I would definitely have spent some more time on the skinning and weighting. Most of the bones movements and rotations work fine however there are occasions when they did not react correctly. When the farmer is in his Walk Cycle, you can see that under the upper arm towards the armpit, there is the skin pinching and creating an odd shape. Unfortunately after spending a lot of time trying to fix this, I had to settle for the best I could get. it still looked good but when you compare it to some of the animations that big companies such as Pixar make, you can see the difference in ability levels.

I would have also liked to have put some more effort into the hands of the farmer. These were very tough to work on because a human has so many bone links in their hands and fingers that to put the full amount of detail could take hours. The only other thing I would really like to spend more time on is the smaller features of both the farmer and the goose. For example on the farmer, a lot more animation on the eyes and mouth would be very effective.

Overall I have enjoyed this project. I have learnt a lot of new skills, which will be used in any future projects using 3DS max. I feel that my final animation is very good and gets across the morale of the story. The cartoon theme runs all the way through the animation as I wanted to ensure that the theme was consistent.

I hope to continue using 3DS Max in the future because I believe that there is lots more to explore within the program. I have enjoyed working with the 2 Richard’s in either semester. They were both able to give superb advice and take me trough different techniques step by step.

The only two things I dislike about 3DS Max is the amount of time it takes to create such a small model or animation. Hours can be spent on a small animation and after allowing for Render time, the time to complete a whole animation can be ridiculously high. The other thing that annoyed me about 3DS Max was the amount of intricacy involved in creating the models. The model had to be dealt with 1 vertex at a time and when you can have a few thousand on a model, this increases the time spent on a model.