Finishing up

Rendering the individual scenes, using the view from different cameras. This was a process that unkown to myself that takes a lot of computing power to complete.

Rendering the animation was a dificult part of the process. Mainly because you need an amazing computing power and many hours of time to wait for each scene to render. I had to reduce the quality of the final animation, also remove the trees, plants and water high detailed effects, also reduce the quality of the lighting system which was very disapointing. My computer took 22 minutes to render one frame, considering my animation is made up of 1500 frames that is a very long time. Reducing the quality of the lighting drastically effected the quality of my animation, along with the reduced output quality, but it there after rendered at 30sec per frame. This disapointed me no end, as I was initialy very happy with the still renders of the scene, but the final outcome has not impressed me.

If I was to approach this module again, I would have learnt alot more about the rendering capabilitys of certain computers, before modeling and animation all my work on them. As different versions of the 3Ds max software are not compatible when importing animation, only objects such as still meshes. I wold aslo have spent less time modelling, and more time animating, as I have never approached it before i did not understand the huge indertakning of it, and the time and patience that it requires.

Cameras

I positioned cameras in the scene where i wanted to film angles from. The target of the camera can be moved, and animated to follow a path, this creates a panning shot which renders really smooth, and doesnt increase render time.

Animating my eagle

This eagle was made from standard objects, and turned into editable polys. Each one I moved individualy craeting the flying motion. I moved the pivot point from the middle of the wings to the end near the body, creating an acurate wing motion when pivoting.

Still images render

Here is a render of the scene, using the Daylight system as the lighting.

Lighting

Here is the lighting system that i used for my fable. It is called a DayLight System, it can be found on the in the drop down menu along the top of the software, not in the usual location for the loghting.

It is a very detailed lighting system that tales alot of rendering power to process properly. The shadows and atmosphere is very good with this apporach.

Using SKIN modifier to move a mesh with bones

I used the Skin modifier tool to turn the mesh into an animatable state, where it behaves under the rules of the bones you apply to it. This can be a tricky job if your mesh is not correct or clean enough. Simple is best, and the use of leaving lines of the mesh on joints, making the bending and flexing more realistic.

The image shows the skin modifier open in the side pannel, and the bones in the scene with the skin hidden.

Here I have applied material to individual polygons of the model, as this is a childrens cartoon animation this aproach works well for good results and limited rendering time.


The image above shows the see-through model skin of the man, and underneath is the bones which I have allined and assignend to his skin. These bones will be used to animate the model, and make it move accross the stage.