Semester 2 Week 1

Week 1 Class Activity

The intial task was to research about Broadcasting Idents. They are the short advertisments that are used between programmes so their is no blank screen.
A broadacasting ident that is memorable to me is the BBC One "Skate boarding" ident. This is because it is easy to memorise, it is relaxing. The series of idents shows the different type of people and cultures that the BBC are trying to aim their station towards. http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcone/downloads/

Research:

Music Involved - style of music (calm, quick tempo, rock, heavy)
Cultures - peoples different backgrounds taken into consideration
Clear channel advertisements (logos)
Mood - what style of channel (BBC relaxing and laid back, whereas Scuzz music channel is in your face and has a dark/ gothic feel)

The channel that I have decided to design a set of idents for is Scuzz. It is a music channel aimed towards people that enjoy heavy metal and rock. The target audience age is between 14 to 30 years of age.
The colours that represent the channel are dark and grungy (black, silver, dark yellow, brown).




A similar music channel is Kerrang, an ident used for that is:



All the idents are recognsable and link together using the same characters and the way they display their logo.

Keeping my idents recognisable and so that they all link will be important to making it successful

A selection of photos that I believe represent the mood TV Channel Scuzz are:



These images represent the music displayed upon Scuzz. It can come across as dark and scary. From this an idea that I have is to produce scenes that have alot of atmosphere within them. The atmosphere that I believe will work best is scary.
Possible efefcts that could be used are fog, or fire. The natural surroundings could be narrow with an attention to detail Using the surroundings. Such as the trees in the above moodboard to add effectiveness.

I have also reserached what I believe the character of the Scuzz channel is.



I believe that these images represent the character of the Scuzz TV Channel. Its a forceful channel, getting a variety of music out to a large target audience.
It produces a number of emotions with the loud and outspoken bands often appearing upon it.

This has made me think of producing characters that are "In your face" that stand out from the scene and hard to miss.

Week 12

Week 12 Class Activity

Evaluation

I have found 3D Studio Max to be challenging software to use. It has taken me time to get used to using the basic parts of what it has to offer. I believe that the 3 images that I have produced as well as the fruit bowl have shown that I am capable of using the basic functions.

The hardest feature to use was the material editor. This was because there was so much you can do with it that it takes time to explore how well ideas work or don’t work. This is where I found most of my time spent, producing textures.

I believe that the August beach scene looks cartoony and making it look more realistic should be a priority for the future. Ways of doing this are producing better textures or changing the way I have produced some of the objects.

With the December fireplace scene, I am disappointed with how the stockings look and should find a way of making them look more realistic and less square. This could be done by working on how I use the modifiers.

For the January scene I would have preferred not to load the fireworks image into the window, but find a more natural look to getting the reflection so that works realistically.

Week 11

Week 11 Class Activity

For my January scene I have decided to show the reflection of a firework display within a house window with snow outside. This is to resemble to celebration of the New Year as well as the weather that often gets associated with this time of year.

I decided to use the Box Object tool to create the walls of the house, the window wholes were produced using the Boolean tool.



The window glass was produced use the Plane object tool. The Reflections and transparency to make it resemble glass were produced using the material editor.



This allowed for a slight reflection of the snow within the window. The firework reflection is set within the window material; this is because I couldn’t get the window to reflect an image loaded onto an object within the image.

The snow was produced using a box, soft selection as well as the noise modifier.



The snow texture was created within the material editor.



The pink within the material was added to resemble an affect from the fireworks going off.

The house wall of the house had a premade texture imported and edited within the material editor.



After adding a table (produced with the box object tool) I rendered the scene.

Week 10

Week 10 Class Activity

This week I decided to go back over my previously completed August scene by adjusting the texture of the sea.

I have now used the following material settings to produce the completed image.



I decided to adjust the material used for the sea as I was told the original copy did not look realistic. After some experimenting I managed to produce a material that resembled water upon the object.

Week 9

Week 9 Class Activity

Project

August Continued.
The palm leaves were produced using the line tool with the extrude modifier.



I decided to use the “Bend” modifier to arc the leaf into a more natural position, otherwise they looked too square.



For the tree trunk I duplicated 12 cone shapes vertically and merged them together. For a more natural appearance I added the “Bend Modifier”.




The next step was to create an umbrella to put at the front of the scene. The top of the umbrella took time to get right. The umbrella was produced using the Sphere object and cutting it into a hemisphere shape.



I then had to select the “Edges” option of the editable poly and select specific segments within the object. Then by selecting the “Loop” option it expands the selection so that areas directly attached towards the centre are also selected. From here it allows the user to select the centre of the object and by pulling the area upwards it starts to transform the object into an umbrella shape.



The pathway was created using multiple boxes, flattened and placed alongside each other.



The shadows were produced using 2 spotlights.
They are cast across the beach from the direction of the sun. By adjusting the settings I believe I have picked up the correct direction and shading for the shadows on each of the objects. The light gradually gets darker on the image as you look further away from the sun.

Week 8

Week 8 Class Activity

Project

August

For August I decided to produce a beach sunrise scene.

The sand was produced using a Box Object and Noise Modifier.




The “strength” number determines how much deviation there is along the axis.



For the texture I decided to use a photo of sand that I took to add to the object.

The sea was created in the same way as the beach but using stronger settings to produce a harsh rippling effect.



I decided that the sea should resemble the sunrise. This meant that the sea should contain shadowed areas. For this reason I decided to use the “Flat Mirror” map alongside the “Bump” Material, this would allow for areas to be darkened if there was no light getting to it.

The “Noise” map allowed for more defined shadows where the ripples were and where the sun would not hit.



The background was added to the scene in the rendering options. This allows for premade images to be loaded as a background.



The texture of the sand was created (like the sea) to contain shadows from the rising sun.



This meant there would be a gradual decrease in the image brightness (left to right).

Week 7

Week 7 Class Activity

Project

December Continued.



By using lights I was able to lose the brightness that is seen in the original render.

For this I decided to use an “omni light” for the main fire, and positioned two “area omni lights” to produce the candle light. I still believed that the lighting for the room was incorrect, so adjusted the settings using the “Light Lister”. This bought out the fire within the image and produced better shadows.



Final render:

Week 6

Week 6 Class Activity

Project

December Continued.

I decided to add two candles on top of the fireplace and also added lights to the scene.

For the candles I used the Cylinder Object Tool and Soft Selection to manipulate the objects form.

The fire was created using “atmospheric apparatus”.

Using the “SphereGizmo”, I setup the fires basic shape. I had to use a hemisphere shape, otherwise I would have been left with a ball of fire which is not what I wanted.

Hemisphere:


Ball of fire


I then had to choose the settings for the fire such as colours; size and amount of smoke.



Many of the settings will affect how natural the fire will look and how long it will take the system to render the image.



For example, the higher the number for “Flame Detail” the more natural the fire would appear but would take longer to render. I was able to produce a fire that looked like this:



I next used the line tool to produce the stockings and used the extrude modifier to produce a 3D appearance. The MeshSmooth modifier then allowed me to produce a smoother result



Textures for the brick on the fireplace and the wooden floor were produced within Photoshop and imported.

For the fireplace I decided to create a marble texture.



The smoke map gave me the most realistic marble texture, by adjusting the settings I was able to produce a realistic result.

Week 5

Week 5 Class Activity

Project

December

For December I wanted to produce a fireplace with Christmas stockings hanging on it.

The fireplace was created using the Box object and the Boolean feature.

First I had to produce two boxes (one slightly smaller).










Using the Boolean feature I had to subtract object A from object B (Object A is the pre-selected object when entering this menu feature) The “Pick Operand B” button has to be selected before selecting object B.












This is the end result:










The Boolean feature was then used again to produce the back of the fireplace. This time using the “Union” option to merge objects together.












I then added a floor and wall using planes:









The wood and coal were both produced using the basic objects tools (Cylinder & Box tools).