Week 12 Checklist

Things to remember for next week's hand in:

1) Your work is marked INDIVIDUALLY make sure that your personal blog is up to date and that it contains everything that you personally have done during the module. Print out your blog and hand this in.

2) You must put all of your work on a CD or DVD including all workfiles. Again you MUST hand in your own work on your own disc. Don't just put everything on one group disc unless all files are VERY clearly labelled so I can see who did what.

3) The group blog should contain minutes of every meeting you've had throughout the semester. Print this out and hand it in with one group member’s work. It is not necessary for every member of the group to hand in a copy of this.

4) Your final animation can be included on each group member’s disc if you like but it may be best to include a separate disc for it and attach it to the group blog printout.

Render Settings and editing in Premiere

Some of you have been asking questions about the ideal render and video export settings below is one example of how to achieve a suitable video size and quality, there are however many ways to achieve similar standards.

1) Decide on the frame size you will render at AND STICK TO IT as it important that you stay consistent with this (1280 x 720 is a good standard).

2) Render as .avi and choose "uncompressed" as the compression setting.

3) Open Adobe Premiere and choose a file location to save the project. Then from the presets list, in the 'HDV' folder select the 'HDV 720p' preset that matches the frame rate that you rendered your work at.

4) Import renders into Premiere and edit scene as required.

5) In the media encoder (Once you export the finished sequence) chose flv/f4v format and in the preset selection choose "F4V-HD 720p" (Feel free to experiment with this, as you find that other presets such as 'H.264' will give you a smaller file size).

ADVICE - IT IS ALWAYS WORTH EXPERIMENTING WITH RENDERS AND SETTINGS BEFORE YOU GO AHEAD AND COMMIT TO A FORMAT. Do some test renders to see if the quality is good enough before wasting time doing renders you don't need!

Using Reactor to animate realistic water

Path Constraints Refresher

Path Constraints.zip

Smoke & Fire Effects

Pearl Harbour was of course an attack so it seems only natural to learn some skills to implement realistic smoke & fire effects. Here are some video tutorials to follow on from the techniques shown in class.

Week 4 presentation

During week 4 (next week's session) I would like each group to give a short and informal presentation which details the groups intentions and progress. You should include the following:

1) As a group you should explain your intentions for delivering the brief and also explain the angle your intend to take in delivering the factorial information surrounding Pearl Harbor.

2) Introduce each group member and tell us what each person is responsible for. (Remember, each group member must complete some kind of modelling AND animation)

3) Explain how you intend to model and animate the scenes with reference to a completed storyboard.

Personal Development

10% of the overall mark for this module is allocated for "Demonstration of new skills". It is therefore very important that your blog reflects these new skills clearly enough for me to distinguish exactly what new skills you have picked up or developed.

The first thing you should do is choose a new skill. Here are some suggestions which apply to the module but feel free to deviate and do something you really want to do.

1) Successfully light a scene using a realistic daylight system
2) Use Unwrap UVW mapping to accurately apply materials to a complex model
3) Use reference planes to accurately model a complex object
4) Use particle systems to make realistic smoke and fire effects
5) Create a rigging system to animate a complex object

Once you decide what you would like to achieve make a blog post that details what you want to do and how it will apply to the module. Make sure that you continue to update your blog with your progress with this task. A well maintained blog and a successful outcome with the chosen technique will warrant high marks for this section.

Advanced Materials - Unwrap UVW

Hello everyone, we will look at an advanced materials technique this week. This is an extremely powerful tool which if used correctly will save you lots of time when you try to create complex textures for your models. The videos below show how to create and render your Unwrap UVW template ready for you to make your material in Photoshop.

Low Poly Modelling & Smoothing Groups

Low Poly Modelling
For this brief you are more that likely going to be creating some very large scenes with a huge number of polygons. For this reason it is important that you gain a good understanding of economic modelling techniques which minimise the total number of polygons in the scene and in turn, will reduce all important render times.

This video shows some useful techniques for creating low poly objects and is quite focused on gaming but the techniques are all very relevant. Pay close attention to his use of 'Connect' which is a beautiful and quick method of adding even geometry only in the areas which really need it.





The following tutorial shows another method which is specifically useful for scenes with multiple buildings. Buildings can contain a very large number of polygons so this method is ideal for scenes with lots of them.




Smoothing Groups
When you lower the number of polygons in your models you may notice that they start to look more faceted as a result. This is where smoothing groups come to our rescue.

The Pearl Harbour Conspiracy

Shortly after dawn on Sunday, December 7, 1941, Japanese warplanes launched an all-out attack on Pearl Harbor [wiki], the major U.S. military base in Hawaii. Within two hours, they had damaged or destroyed 18 warships and more than 200 aircraft, killing 2,403 American soldiers, sailors, and marines, and wounding 1,178. Americans were stunned and outraged.

Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor was one of the most dramatic incidents in U.S. history - and the source of persistent questions. Did President Roosevelt know the attack was coming?

Welcome To Virtual Environments 2012

The Brief

You will work in small groups (3 or 4 students) to the following brief:

Introduction
Just before 8 on the morning of December 7, 1941, hundreds of Japanese fighter planes attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor near Honolulu, Hawaii. The barrage lasted just two hours, but it was devastating: The Japanese managed to destroy nearly 20 American naval vessels, including eight enormous battleships, and almost 200 airplanes. More than 2,000 Americans soldiers and sailors died in the attack, and another 1,000 were wounded. The day after the assault, President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked Congress to declare war on Japan; Congress approved his declaration with just one dissenting vote. Three days later, Japanese allies Germany and Italy also declared war on the United States, and again Congress reciprocated. More than two years into the conflict, America had finally joined World War II. – [http://www.history.com/topics/pearl-harbor]


Your Brief
In teams of three or four, using 3D Studio Max, you are to produce an animation to show how the attack on Pearl Harbour unfolded. You are to produce an informative documentary style video which accurately depicts the attack with reference to thorough research which must also be documented as part of the module.

This mark will form 100% of the overall mark.