Animation Idea

Right here we are half way through now and time to start animating the three models I have created.

I have decided to create an animation that will show each of the models that I have made, so I hope to have some close ups of the models and some effective scene's. I am going to design a storyboard which will be shown in the next blog post, with more specific details of how the animation is going to plan out, and where I am going to have lights and cameras. Furthermore the storyboard will also go into more detail about where the models are going to be in the animation etc.

To add to this I am going to have different lighting effects to show off the models at their best, otherwise if I don't add in lights the animation is going to look very dull and basic. Some of the lights that I am looking at of including are, Omni, Target Spot, Target Direct, Skylight (all standard lights). I hope that using these lights is going to make my animation more interesting to watch.

Furthermore there are different cameras that I can use, however there is only really two to select from which are, Target Camera and Free Camera. I believe they are self explanatary, so for the Target camera you select an area that you wish to target, and the free camera is where you are free to move the camera around.

Right first of all, the first scene is going to be of the tower, with a zooming out camera action onto the crossbow, which I hope to have a close up of going around Leonardo Da Vinci's crossbow invention.

Next I plan to move from the crossbow to Leonardo's invention of the catapult, using the same effect on the crossbow going around the catapult zooming in and out and looking at how the model was created.

From there I will then go into the main story of the animation which is going to be a battle between the catapult and the crossbow. I plan to have the catapult destorying parts of the tower model and the crossbow firing back and maybe some camera zoom ins of the crossbow's arrow and the catapults ball, being fired and hitting their target.

Throught out the animation I am going to have close ups of the battle, furthermore I hope to have some background music in the animation to go with the scenes in my animation.

So that is the basic layout of the animation that I am going to create, I understand it might so a little dull at the moment, but Once I have uploaded the storyboard the animation will become more clear and understanding.

Lights, Camera & Action!

This post is going to be commenting on the use of cameras in 3D's Max. To help me with this topic I used the introduction to camera's tutorial which was a big help and I also used the further animation techniques tutorial too. The example I am going to show you is using a target camera that has a 'path constraint' on the camera to follow a shape which in the example is a circle. Basically the camera is stuck on the circle (like a train to a track) and the camera must follow that track in a loop. From there just to practise with the camera I put in a preset teapot, just to see if the camera and the path constraint worked and hey it did.

This is just to show the camera with the path constraint attached

As you can see from the screenshot there is a circle with a camera on top this is the path constraint and basically the camera follows that circle round and round while focusing on the teapot.