Final thoughts

Overall I am happy with the finished result, however there are minor details I would change, as has been highlighted throughout my blog. I would have also spent more time on the texturing and detailing of the models and scenery. I am not a particularly creative person and struggle with anything artistic, however I persevered with this and tried to get the best work out of myself, and I believe it mostly worked. I also think my animation needed work, particularly the speed of the ships in each scene, as I feel it varies too much.

I enjoyed the project to a degree, however that may be more due to the content, as I am a lifelong Star Wars fan. However that is not to say I did not find it interesting, however I am just not artistic at all, and prefer the more technical (and normally programming based) sides to the course, and game development as a whole.

Editing the video

Editing the video was simple, as I kept my scene lengths exact, so all I had to do was edit the video to 30fps to create a 30 second long clip. For the editing I used Freemake Video Converter, a free piece of software I found online. I searched for a new piece of software as when I used the newest version of windows movie maker, I could not save the final edited product as a .avi file as required. With the software I found I simply had to add the files in and it patched them together to create a final product at the correct resolution at the correct frame rate, creating a finished 30 second video.

Animation part 6

My final scene was the most simple, the X-wing just gets escapes from the exploding death star, getting closer to the camera. The Background is a screen cap from the film with the millenium falcon edited out in gimp, to create a simple explosion in space texture. This is my final scene, and ends the story I tried to convey rather neatly I felt.

Animation part 5

This was one of the more complicated shots in my animation, as I had to have the three ships moving forwards, then have the x wing loop around, shoot the others, and carry on. I am really happy with the TIE fighters spinning out and the X-wings loop, however I feel that the speed of the whole scene is completely off, and the middle is a lot slower than the start and end. I also used the visibility toggling in this scene for the exploding TIE fighters and the lasers. However I feel that as a whole I got the overall outcome I desired in my original planning.

Animation part 4

In this scene, the TIE fighters "shoot" down the two outer X-wings then all three fly over. I liked how I made the X-wings crash using translation and the visibility toggle I mentioned before, however there are many things I would change, such as the ships not actually being shot by anything instead of using the lasers like the scene before, and then simply disappearing into thin air, rather than exploding, using something like a particle effect, however I felt learning to use this effect was not time effective for the payoff.

Animation part 3

This scene was simple, but was more difficult to create than I previously imagined. I could not find a way to rotate the guns and base together, yet also move the guns independently for aiming and shooting. However all in all I believe the effect works well. In this scene I also learned a new technique for creating the laser beams, in which I toggle the visibility at certain frames to create the laser beams at the correct times, and not have to have them linger in the gun. This is my favourite scene, as although simple, I believe the effect is true to the film.

Animation part 2

This scene was a little more complicated, as the ships bank down into the trench at different points, to create a squadron feel to the whole thing. The camera also moves and rotates in this scene, although not a huge amount, and the ships also fly off the scene together. I think this scene did not work brilliantly, I am happy with the banking, however it does look like the ships fly in together, stop and bank, and then fly away, with no sense of forward movement in the middle, which should have been fixed, possibly by texturing the trench and moving that at a constant speed to convey movement.

Animation part 1

This first  scene was a simple one, just a camera rotation and moving all three fighters together as one, giving the effect the a quick flyby. To improve this scene I should have used a path to move the ships, and used the curve editor to create a more even speed throughout the movement.

Texturing X-Wing.

For my X-wing, I decided to texture the majority of the ship with a solid colour, then use unwrapping and GIMP to texture the blocks on the fuselage and wings. I picked GIMP because it's free so I can use it at home.
Using max to make sure I was selecting the right polygons, I used boxes and filling to create the shapes for the colouring on the fuselage and wings.

This is the texture I used for the wings, as you can see it is a simple grey with a little red detailing, as it is on the ship.

This it my Fuselage texture, red for the sides, where one short piece and one long piece attach, yet are separate on this due to the UVW unwrapping and flattening, and yellow for the top.

However, when I imported this into max after exporting from GIMP, the red and yellow showed up as blue and green. This issue was rectified by opening the image again in photoshop and overwriting the save from there, which saved the RGB values to be correctly opened in max. 

Here is my finished, textured X-wing, ready for animation, and I believe it holds fairly well to the original, the main issue being the seams between the two sides of fuselage parts.

Texturing TIE Fighter

After a few weeks out from sickness and getting back up to speed, I decided to crack on with getting my models animation ready.

I started with the TIE fighter, where I planned to texture the line pattern on the wings, and leave the rest as simple colours. However, after unwrapping it and attempting a texture in GIMP which seemed too dark and took far too long, I decided it would be simpler to create physical lines in max and texture the polygons individually with solid colours.

Here was my attempt at the wing texture in GIMP. It was a hassle to create as it was creating different colours for each wing, even with the same level of noise around the edges, and drawing the lines evenly was a big hassle, leading to my decision to create vertices and connections for the wing in max.

Here was the final wing, with the polygons textured with solid colours, ready for animation.

Conclusions

I am happy with my results from this assignment, I think my models are accurate to the originals, particularly in shape and size, which means that I will not need to edit these areas before using the ships in the later assignment. However, I found the fine details to be a real difficulty, which will be something I will be trying to learn over the coming weeks to improve my models before they are used, where I would need to learn some new techniques for a more accurate and refined finish on the models. Also I will need to use more images of the ships to get this detail, as some of it does not come out accurately in just the schematic diagrams. All in all I think my models are a good representation of the originals, with only some fine details to be refined before they are ready for my animation project.

Assignment Model 3: Slave1

For my final ship I decided on the Fett family ship, the Slave1. I decided on this ship because of the interesting shape and because I enjoyed seeing it in the films, especially as I enjoy it transition from the landing position to the upright flying position. It will not feature in my animation, but I decided to try a more interesting shaped ship to make a more interesting model.
The main problem I faced with this model was creating the right shapes. I tried to create the back with a hemisphere and the front with a an extruded spline, however, I found neither of these worked. In the end I did the back portion with a lathed spline and the front with a modified cylinder and sphere. All in all I believe using these shaped worked in my favour to create a more authentic looking shape. Another problem I faced is the actual schematics I used.

As you can see, this schematic shows two differently sized views, and in the scaling up of these, there were some real problems in alignment, although I managed to come to a good medium between the two.  I also experimented with various techniques on this ship, especially before I settled on the shapes I would use, especially chamfering to get the curve needed for the front portion, although  ultimately I decided on using a cylinder instead. I also had to use splines a lot, and with one part of the wing I used a spline to create it, extruding it up and capping the end, which was also a new technique I had to learn and experiment with.

This is by far the most difficult models I worked with, mainly due to it's irregular curved shape, which I struggled with a lot more than the straighter X-wing and TIE Fighter.
The main improvements I would make would be fine detail, particularly on the wings, where I really struggled to get the correct shapes in.

Assignment Model 2 : TIE Fighter

My second model I decided on using was the TIE fighter, which is another classic ship which is an important part of many scenes, including the one I have decided to animate. 

This ship was considerably easier to model than the X-wing, as it has a much simpler shape and design. To create the wing joins I used splines and lathing to create the general shape, the manipulated the vertices to turn the circular shape into a hexagonal one. On the wings it was simply a case of creating connections and extruding them to the correct size. Creating the center are was a simple matter of moving vertices again to create some properly sized polygons to make the window. 

I didn't learn any new techniques on this ship, rather I built on techniques I used on the X-wing and other models, particularly the splines and lathing  to creathe more interesting shapes than using base primitives.

For accurate sizing and to create the splines I used schematics as before, this time found on google.

This gave me great front and side view, which again gave me great scaling, and allowed me to position the pieces correctly. However this did not give me a top down view which lead a lot of missing detail form the top. 

I feel like my model holds fairly close to a TIE fighter, however I feel like a lot of detail is missing, especially on the center portion, however due to my struggle to find source material I struggled with this are, which would be my main improvement on this ship.

Assignment Model 1 : X-Wing

The first model I made is the X-Wing, which I chose because it is a classic icon of the original trilogy, featured in some of the most prolific scenes.
I faced many issues in building this model, the most notable being the nosecone and the cockpit. These were simply an issue of creating vertices and moving them into the correct position. In the case of the cockpit it was to create the right size and shaped polygons to make the windows. The nose cone was a real challenge as simply picking the correct starting shape proved a lot more difficult than is seemed at first. However with time I found that I could make accurate shapes with manipulating vertices.
The main techniques and tools I found useful on this model is the pro boolean tool, which I used to make the detailing on the back part of the body on the ship. I made a cutter out of a box by cutting other shapes out of it, then using that to cut out detail. I believe this makes for a more accurate ship.
The other technique I used a lot in this model is the spline and lathe. This technique was used in creating the guns and engines, which I think came out effectively, particularly the guns. The engines could be improved upon, as once lathed it would not let me boolean out the shape needed for the font and back of the engine for the intake and output. which is the biggest change I would make.  To create the splines I used the schematics I found online ant wookiepedia, as seen below.

These schematics were invaluable in creating accurate splines for the engines and the guns, as well as the general shape and scale of the entire model.

There are a few improvements that could be made on the model, which would increase the realism which would be important if using the model in an advert or film, however in a game the model would be perfectly suited. One improvement would be increased detailing on the wings, which could be done with connections and manipulation of vertices. Another would be the aforementioned intake and output detailing on the engines, as well as their placement which was difficult to do.

Notes on colleagues work

http://jackperry3dmodelling.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/desolate-village-practice-splines-and.html?showComment=1383857312897#c5830471881048841453

http://mac3dmodelling.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/castle-exercise.html?showComment=1383857565971#c5188502056147189167

My thoughts on the models and techniques.

Through these six weeks I have learnt a range of techniques. The one I have found most useful is the boolean and pro boolean tool. I tend to use the pro boolean tool more as I find it makes a cleaner cut. In my models I have found use in the tool by using pro boolean to make a shape to cut out of the main shape to make some detailing on the main body to create a more realisitic shape, especially when creating manmade structures, such as my assignment work, In particular the back section of the X-wing.

Village

Here I have a village I made to destroy, except once made, I had a real problem with using the boolean and proboolean tool, which I have used many times. In this case however, whenever I try to remove the shape, it deletes the entire face of the house it is touching. So I have decided to leave my suburban street as is, and revisit the issue at a later date. Nevertheless, here is my village/suburban street, ready to be destroyed to fit into a game like the Walking Dead.

Update and moodboard

Amidst modelling my ships for the assignment I realised my blog work had fallen through the cracks, so I will catch up these parts now.

Here is my mood board of my favourite ships from the star wars franchise. For this assignment I have decided to model an x-wing, a TIE fighter and the infamous Fett ship, the Slave1. However I only 2 of these ships will follow on to my animation assignment, as I am going to recreate the famous "running the trench"scene from A New Hope when they destroy the first deathstar. I chose to model the slave 1 as well instead of Darth Vader's TIE fighter as the two TIE fighters would be too similar, and the Slave1 can show off some other modelling skills.

Assignment blog pt.1

Here is my pre detail X-Wing. The detail I am yet to add is the nose cone and the finer detailing on the back. I was considering detailing the front of the engines with the inverted t and hollowing, but upon trying this I could not make it work, as it would not let me cookie cut it out with the boolean or pro boolean tool, or with extrusion on the polygons.

Chess Piece

Today I used the lathe tool and splines to create a pawn. I created the outline by drawing with splines along a picture of a pawn, the grouping them to create a full outline. I did this to create an accurate outline for the shape. I then used the lathe to create the full 3d shape and rotate to get it facing the right way.

All in all I think it went well, and the shape holds well to a real chess piece, especially some of the harder edges.

Storyboard

This is my preliminary storyboard for my final assignment. I decided to base it on the classic blowing up the first Deathstar scene, as it contains a few different ships (3 X-wings, 2 TIE fighters and a TIE advanced X1) and a mounted gun as well. This seemed like it could show off some good modelling and animation techniques, as well as some interesting camera angles, so I settled on this slight change on the original scene, missing out the millennium falcon and the cockpit scenes of the various ships.

First week of 3d Modelling continued.

For my second assignment of the week, I was tasked with creating a castle. In general, I found this much easier than the house, due to the lack of difficult connections to make, like the roof I needed to make on the house.

I started with one of the corners, starting with a tube and manipulating it from there. It was simple to pull parts up and create windows due to them being created from lots of boxes. It ended up being fairly simple to create a corner with two arrow slits to face the outside of the castle with just simple connections and extrusions.

 I then cloned and rotated the corner 3 times, to create all four corners, placing them precisely using the transform co-ordinates, as dragging them could lead to the corners being slightly out of position, which could prove problematic at a later stage.

With the four corners in place, I placed a block between two corners, and did more connections to make the edges to extrude up and down to make the edge and walkways, then pulling the edges to the tubes to create more a joint to them, so there would be less of a gap between the square and curved faces.

I once again cloned, rotated and re-positioned the boxes, again using the co-ordinates, to create the full castle walls.

To finish off my castle I added a large box in the centre, making sure it was right in the middle with the co-ordinates, and created a smaller cylinder on top, with a cone on top of that, so to create a centre castle with a tower, leaving an end result I was pleased with

Just for a final touch I decided to try to create a window on the roof of the tower, to finish off the trapped princess look it had started to gain. I did this with connections and pulling edges to protrude out. This is the main part of this project that would need real improvement, but for an experiment I think the idea comes across well.

I think the whole building comes across well, and I believe for my first week of 3d modelling I have created a convincing castle. I found the project easier than the house due to the lack of a roof, which is another thing that needs implementing on the centre building to complete the look of this castle.

First week of modelling

This is my first real experience of modelling, therefore this modelling of a house proved difficult at first. The main difficulty I faced was making the correct connections on the roof. I solved this through connecting vertices instead of edges, as only at the end of this model did I realise how to delete wrongly created edges without removing faces. This my work at the end of the tutorial, before what adding in the extra doors and windows, which I will add in soon.

This is the roof before pulling it up to create a point. As you can see, my connections aren't totally perfect, but for a first try I think my work is acceptable.

Here is the finished model, ready for expansion of extra windows and doors.
As I said previously, for my first real attempt of modelling I am happy with this, and I will carry on with this model this week.