Scene 1 – Window Scene

The opening scene of my animations tarts with a black screen for a second before having 2 sections in the middle split apart. This is to give them impression of opening a window as I wanted to make this scene as if it was from the Farmer’s eyes. This is why when he looks through the window he sees his flock of geese on the farm.

The camera then moves forward out of the window to give the view from the farmer’s perspective. The camera travels forward out of the windows and then pans around the sky. Here the camera sees a set of clouds and the sunshine in a bright blue sky. This is to show that it is a nice day and sunny/blue skis usually implies happiness. The camera then focuses back to the geese. It then zooms in on one goose. This is the main Goose in my animation who eventually produces a golden Egg. The scene ends when the camera has zoomed in on the animal.

I originally had only the main goose in the scene but it looked too bland and it needed something else so I thought about adding more Geese. These geese have pre-set animations made for the biped in a separate file so I was able to simply merge them in and just edit the timelines accordingly.

I feel that one of the strongest parts of this scene is the lighting. As the farmer opens up the windows an “omnilight” rises as if it is the sun rising. This gives a great affect of the scenery being very dark as the window as opening but by the time it has fully opened the scene is light and the sun has risen.

Modelling The Thought Bubble

The final model to be created was the thought bubble that was going to be used to show what the Farmer was thinking about. This would be used in 2 of my scenes but the look of the bubble was going to remain the same.

This was a very simple and easy model to create and I did not want to waste too much time on it. I simply started with a box, which I converted to an editable Poly. I then moved the vertices around to create more of a rounded affect. I also moved the vertices to create the sharp triangle like shape that would be used to show that the thought is coming from the Farmer.

Thought and Speech bubbles are used very frequently in cartoon animations and they are always white so I thought I would continue with this trend. I created a simple white material and added it to the though bubble.

The Final Thought Bubble

Modelling The Axe

The next model for me t create was the axe. This was going to be used to kill the goose in a scene quite late on in the animation. It would be involved in actual animation during the project however no biped was required due to the shape and demands of the model and animation.

I started off by creating the handle using a simple box standing on its smaller end. I split the box into 3 segments so that I would be able to work on the top part to create the blade.

After converting this to an editable poly, i extruded out from the top segment 3 times to create the actual metal part of the axe. i extruded 3 times so that i could change the angle and sharpness of the blade.

I also then played about with some of the vertices at the bottom of the handle. This was because most axe's in real life do not just have a straight part of wood, they have a groove in them for where you hold it. This creates better grip and I wanted to add this to the model.

I then added a Turbosmooth modifier to the axe.

After applying the Turbosmooth, I noticed that the blade was looking very fat at the end. This was because of how I had extruded it out from the box. The blade on an Axe is very sharp so I was going to need to create the same effect for realism.

To do this i moved the 2 sets of vertices on either side towards each other. With the Turbosmooth on it created an effect of going from thick metal to a thin edge, which was perfect for what I wanted.

The final step was to colour the axe to make it realistic. I selected polygons and used the "Set ID" to give me different sections to apply materials to. I then created 2 materials, 1 for the wood and 1 for the metal. I then applied these to my model.

The Finished Axe

Modelling The Egg

I was now ready to make some of the extra models that would be needed to complete the animation. These were models that would not need animation but were going to be created in 3d because it made them look realistic and fit in well.

The first model to create was "The Golden Egg". Seeing as the whole fable is based around this Golden Egg, it was obviously pretty important. I started off by creating a "Sphere". I then made this an Editable Poly so that I could play around wit the vertices. I now selected the very top vertex of the Sphere and used the "Soft Selection" tool to gradually start affecting a larger area of the sphere. I then used the move tool and raise the height of the egg. This created the shape of the top of the egg.

As you can tell, this is a very simple model to create but it was very important to the fable so needed to be created.




I now had my Egg model created however one of the key parts of the Fable is the fact that it is golden. This meant that I was going to have to change the colour of the Egg. I thought I would look around on the Internet to find a good gold texture but instead found a tutorial of how to make one.

http://www.3dvalley.com/tutorials/creating-gold-silver-and-copper-materials << The link for the tutorial I used.

This tutorial showed me how to create the gold texture and add different lighting to it to give it a good shine.




I liked the final product however during the animation I did come across a big problem whilst using this egg model. With the gold texture that I had created attached to it, adding lighting to the scenes made it very hard because of the reflection that was set up. In most of my scenes I ended up having to just add a gold colour created from the colour swatches in 3ds max.

Bipedding My Models

I now had my main two models created and had put materials on them. The next step was to create the Biped's to fit them so that they could be animated.



The first step was to ceate the biped for the Goose. I thought this would be harder to create as it is a more irregular shape as oppose to the Farmer, which resembles the basic biped shape.

The first thing I needed to do was take off the "Arms" of the biped as the goose only has two legs. I then increased the amount of "Neck links". This was to enable me more movability in the neck, which is the main part of the Goose that would be moving. I also added some more "Tail" links to enable me to move around the Tail Feathers of the Goose. I am not sure how much animation will be done with the feathers but I thought they could possibly be used to make the animation look better. The final change I made was to the feet where I added three toes as that is how I had made my Goose.

I then created the Biped with the adjustments made and re-sized, moved and scaled it to fit the body of the Goose. This would obviously have to be adjusted as different parts were moved. I started with the head and the neck and got them placed how I wanted as shown below.


I then worked on getting the "Tail Links" into place. This would enable me to animate the "Tail Feathers" when it came to actually completing the animation. I did this by "Scaling" the links to make them longer.


I then worked on the legs. Scaling, rotating and moving them to make them fit inside the mesh.

The Goose Feet - Edited the toes by rotating and scaling to make them fit the toes.

One problem that did occur was trying to make sure all the biped fitted into the mesh. The angles of the legs coming off the hips made this very difficult. After speaking to other classmates and the lecturer I was shown an option to solve this. In the object properties of the model there is a tick box for "Renderable". If this is unticked the biped does not actually come through the mesh on the render's but still has the correct animating affect.

This is not recommended on a large scale but I was only using it for very small amounts of the biped that were coming through.

I then started work on the Biped for the Farmer. This was a lot easier as I used the basic biped model for a human. I then just had to move,scale and rotate some of the bones to make them fit.

The Farmer Biped


I did the same for farmer's hand that I had done for Toes of the Goose. I extruded the fingers and rotated them to fit into the mesh of the hand and fingers.

Farmers Hat + Eyes

Apologies but i forgot to post this before my post about the Materials. After creating my farmer, I needed to add Eyes to his head. TO do this I created 2 Circles and converted them to Editable Poly's. I then selected all the vertices of them and used the "Attach" tool to attach them to the head of my farmer. I repeated this process for the other eye and Mouth.

I also decided to add a hat onto my farmer. This was very simple to make but I feel makes the farmer look a lot more realistic. I started off by creating a cylinder. I decided on the height of the cylinder to decide the thickness of the hat. I then increased the amount of "Width Segments", which created a cylindrical effect coming out from the centre of the circle. I then chose the inner cirlec of the hat and move it upwards to create the room for the head.

I then selected the centre vertex and used "Soft-Selection" to gradully increase the selected area. I indented this area to make it look more like a hat. I also moved the vertices around the edge of the hat to give them a bit of an upwards curve.

Materials

I now had my 2 main models made. These were the models that were goign to feature thorughout the animation so were therefore most important. I now needed to put some colour to them because at the moment they just looked plain.

The main tool I used for this process was the ability to "Set and Select ID's" for individual or groups of Polygons. This meant that I was able to select a group of Polygons and then give them all the same material. It is a great way of saving time ratehr than adding it to each Polygon

I started off by working on the Farmer.

The Farmer - For some reason the eyes come up black on this image however you can see them properly in the final render below.

The Farmers Shoes and Legs.


The Farmers Belt - I added a leather material to the belt however it does not appear in this screenshot. It appears properly in the final render below.



The Farmers Belt - I created this affect by getting an image of some "Leather" from the Internet. I then added the leather material to the belt.

Final Render of the Farmer - The leather material of the belt and the Eyes are both now properly viewed.

I then moved onto the Goose.


Side View of Goose



Tail Feathers of Goose


Beak and Eye of Goose



Final Render Of Goose