Overall Evaluation & PDP

This module has definitely helped me learn many new skills and improve my existing knowledge of 3ds max. Not only have new skills been learnt, but existing skills have been expanded on.

I had already modelled buildings last year, but my methods of using lots of polygons and by placing blocks together was not the best way to do so. This year, learning how to extrude, bevel etc. has reduced my polygon count and improved rendering time, as well as making the overall appearance of the building look much more professional.

Another important new skill was UVW Unwrapping. This took me quite a while to get my head around, and the buildings that were used weren’t exactly the easiest to texture, but the end results were excellent and definitely made all the difficulties worthwhile. It helped that I already had lots of experience of using Photoshop for this particular skill.

Rendering using targa files definitely made the final stages a lot easier too. There were no crashes for any of my renders thanks to this simple method of rendering out a scene. The group members that exported as avi’s all had trouble with their files afterward, but even though my files were large, the targa files proved to not be a problem whatsoever.

Although I feel that many new skills have been learnt and my 3DS Max knowledge has improved greatly, the group work aspect was one element that has frustrated me pretty much constantly throughout the module, as was to be expected. I and one other member I feel have worked to the best of our ability, always working well and meeting our group deadlines. However, the other two members although working hard have always left their work till the last minute, which got frustrating. However, this has helped me improve my leadership skills so something good has come out of the stress. Also, the amount of work and detail that went into the animation would have taken much longer on my own and it wouldn’t look anyway near as good as the final result. So group work did have a definite advantage when it comes to creating a good quality, lengthy animation. However it had its definite disadvantages too.

Although group work was difficult at times, throughout the module we have all shown up to lessons for our group meetings and communicated with each other effectively. We have shared opinions of each other’s work and shared out the workload when others were lagging behind to ensure that it all got handed in on time. All of the modelling and animation looks brilliant - the water, scenery, buildings and daylight system are all excellent. If there was one model to be criticised, it would be the planes. Everything else looks consistent with the scene and fits really well together, but the planes look more cartoonish. This works well for the flashback scene involving toy planes, but if there had been more time I would have helped to re-make the planes and texture them better.

This module has been my favourite module of the semester and has renewed my enthusiasm and enjoyment of animating. The modelling side was the most enjoyable; as I feel that this is my main strength. The animation was probably the part that was the most difficult, mainly because of the amount of time that the rendering took. But the end result is something that we all feel looks very professional and we are proud of.

If there was one thing that I could do again, I would probably have started the Premiere aspect earlier. Premiere was one part I was not looking forward to, but team work made it a lot easier than previous times. Exporting out of Premiere took a ridiculous amount of time, much more than I remembered last time, so allowing more time for this part would have been an advantage were we to do this project again.

But, overall, I am very pleased with how the final animation turned out. It looks and sounds professional and will be an excellent addition to my portfolio.

Importing Into Premiere Pro

While myself and Lydia have been importing the targa/avi files and the sound effects/voiceover/music files into Premiere Pro while we are once again waiting for render files from someone in the group, we have been getting re-familiar with Premiere and learning new skills along the way.

Importing targa files has been a new and valuable skill for all of us. It makes rendering much more reliable and less likely to crash and lose all of our work, plus it is generally easier to piece all of our broken up scenes together in Premiere. We have had to leave some gaps for Scott's files that he keeps rendering at the wrong size for some reason, but the sound effects have been easily synced up and worked around this issue. The voiceovers were not needed for any of Scott's scenes, but he still needs to re-record his voiceover for Lydia's flashback scene, which was recorded wrong three times, but hopefully this will be done today.

We have been playing about again with the speed and duration of certain clips so that they fit together well with the sound. Me and Lydia have been also having fun using lots of fades and blending modes where it's appropriate, as well as timing the bombs with the big explosions. We have slowed down the fire scene at the end to make it a slow motion dramatic pan out, so that the majority of Roosevelt's speech can be included. We had to cut down certain parts of the voiceover ever so slightly, but we ensured that all of the important information was still included so that the viewer understood what was occurring in the flashbacks.

Premiere Editing

For the past couple of days we have been working on putting our completed renders into Adobe Premiere Pro for the finalising of our animation. We have been using HDV 1280 x 720 format, ensuring that we are all rendering in the same way. Upon viewing some renders, we have needed to cut/extend the time on them so that they fit in with the narration and vice versa with the narration. For today, we have just been putting together all of our scenes and applying effects to the scenes that are our flashbacks.

For the flashbacks, noise, black and white and brightness and contrast have been added as effects to give these scenes an old looking effect, as they are the flashbacks into the history of Pearl Harbor while the attack is occurring in our other scenes. However, we forgot about the pain of having to render our scenes yet again in Premiere...a couple have taken a ridiculous amount of time again and have had to be left on overnight as the time remaining just kept increasing. So that was a major pain, but we have allowed enough time for it and plan to spend another day on getting the footage into Premiere, along with the soundscape and sound effects (Lydia has been creating the soundscape as best she can without the full timing of the animation while we've been waiting for other member's renders and I have been gathering sound effects to be used). Once the animation is complete, we will insert the sound effects and soundscape so that it matches up properly with the events that are going on in the scenes.

We have also added the beginning, end and title screens. These use simple fades and transitions to make our animation look more professional. We have also included a fade to white in the last flashback scene before some of the big battle scenes commence.

More Sound Editing

For my final scene, showing the aftermath of the desturction on the island, Roosevelt's speech will be playing in the background. As the amount of his speech in the script was longer than we thought, we have decided just to use the last section: 

"I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, Dec. 7, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese empire."

So the sound has been cropped down and adjusted slightly to include a little less distortion, but it still includes enough for people to recognise that it was his speech from the time.

More Explosions!

The scene near the end of the animation that everyone is including something for, I have also included another explosion on Ford Island.

To save another member of the group having to do the explosion with the planes, as he is the most behind out of all of us, I have blown up where the planes are stationed and the planes aswell.

I have had some trouble creating a Sphere Gizmo explosion to follow the PArray, so have created a Super Spray instead which follows the preset of fireworks. This makes it explode in a circular motion, similar to that of an explosion. The particles have had a material applied as a Face Map, with a layered Gradient so that each face has been given its own texture and is more circular. The render shows it much more circular and realistic of a fireball than the window above shows.

The Sphere Gizmo was not the only problem - at one point the scene would only play and render up till frame 27: when the explosion occurred. I later found out that the problem was with the PArray, but for some unknown reason 3DS Max fixed the problem itself for no reason, typically after I had already re-made the scene. But it all got rendered properly in the end, so that's the main thing!

More Explosions

As explosions is one of the key components that I wanted to learn for my personal learning objectives, I have added more into the key scene that everyone contributes to - scene 11. So far, I have included one explosion and then a fire beginning, which Lydia will then spread to another building (as fire was one of her objectives) which will proceed to setting the island on fire. The camera pans to film all of this, then proceeds to another building which I have also blown up, using the same tutorial and techniques as before (PArray, visibility, motion blur etc.)

I have now completed my own scenes so will just proceed to render them once the others have added their sections, and also to help them with any help as well as starting the final parts in Premiere Pro.