History Channel - Ident 3

The History Channel - Ident 3

Ident 3

My third and final ident was perhaps my most ambitious and creative animation out of the three total idents. The concept behind this ident was actually conceived rather quickly and I feel that it immediately informs the user of a WWII setting which actively represents the History Channel.

My goal for this Ident was to create a Nazi checkpoint situated in a mountainous outdoor environment. I then planned to create an assortment of objects ranging from the terrain, Guard Hut, Checkpoint barrier and a German Solider. Like with all the idents I decided to start with creating the scene first, in this scenario I began the construction of the mountain terrain using a flat cylinder which combined with a multiple segment plane using an intersection boolean. This consequently resulted in producing a circular plane with multiple segments, this object was specifically required in order to effectively use the Paint Deformation tools. As a high number of segments allow for a greater amount of detail to be introduced without severely affecting other parts of the mesh. The mountains were basically created using the Push/Pull tool within the Paint Deformation panel which allowed the surface of the circular plane to be raised and lowers by simply painting with the mouse. The brush size and strength was adjusted on numerous occasions which enabled finer enhancements to be made to shape of the terrain. Any remaining sharp/jagged areas or unwanted height points were rounded off and lowered using the Relax brush tool. The relax brush simply applies soft pressure on the selected area causing it to smooth off and lower the vertices around it. Mountainous areas were erected at either side of the terrain and a flat section was purposely left through the middle which would later become a road. The terrain object was then converted to an editable poly and I began the task of texturing it.

 

Paint Deformation Terrain

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Given the fact that I intended to recreate a mountainous environment I gathered the required textures including, grass, road and rock all of which were tileable materials, meaning that they can be tiled over any surface without seeing the joins between each one (seamless). However as I desired to use a all three of these bitmaps on the same object, I firstly created a "Composite"material using the road as the base. The rock and grass textures were added to other mat slots and each was assigned a different map channel under their "coordinates" parameters.

 

Composite Material Parameters

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I then applied a "VertexPaint" modifier to the terrain, which allowed the vertices to be painted according to each material/map channel. VertexPaint works using alpha channels i.e. black represents areas where no texture should appear, whereas white does the opposite allowing 100% opacity for the material assigned to it. This basically creates a layered mask effect, so that textures can show through one another. Starting with the Road, I used the paint bucket (”Paint All”) button to make the mesh completely white. A new layer was then added which automatically creates another vertex paint modifier in the stack. Using the new VertexPaint modifier I then changed the colour to black and proceeded to use the paint brush tool to paint on the road, i.e. allowing the road material underneath to be preserved/masked of, whilst the remaining white paint from the previous layer will be grass.

 

Road & Grass VertexPaint

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Another new layer was added for the rock on the hills, White was used as the paint colour for the peak/highest parts of the hills which would completely show through. A grey colour was then selected and painted on the slopes which enabled a softer blend. As grey represents a percentage between the black and white alpha channels, it creates an opacity effect, where in this case the rocks would be slightly overlaid on the grass of the slopes.

 

Mountains Rock VertexPaint

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Each VertexPaint modifier/layer had the “blur All” button applied which basically applies a Gaussian blur similar to that in Photoshop which, softens painted vertices, therefore preventing hard lines from being seen as the texture of the terrain changes. Consequently this was done to produce a more natural looking terrain rather than leaving sudden changes in the textures across the terrain using mesh select which would not appear as realistic.

 

Textured Terrain

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I then produced a German WWII soldier's helmet to put on a clone of my original character. This was constructed from a sphere primitive which was made into an hemisphere and then converted to an editable poly. The vertices were then moved around to line up with a reference image, however due to the fact that I used a sphere rather than a box the top of the helmet was already round. The bottom edge of the helmet were scaled and extruded multiple time to retain the required curved appearance. After completing the overall shape, the border edges at the base of the helmet were bevelled a couple of times to created raised lip.

 

German WWII Helmet Start & Reference

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The helmet was then finished using a symmetry modifier to clone first half of the helmet without having to model the other side as well.

 

Symmetry Modifier Complete Helmet

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A composite material was then create in order to texture the helmet as I had created two materials to be assigned to it. The first was just a dark grey bitmap, representing the painted metal of the helmet. The second material was a TIFF file of the German Heer Eagle which was commonly found on German soldiers helmets. Using a TIFF file ensured a transparent background like the previously described PNG logo, however TIFF's are much superior in quality and provide razor sharp results with no blurring. The different materials where arranged on the helmet using Unwrap UVW modifiers which were linked to the corresponding Map Channel numbers.

 

Helmet Composite Material

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A mesh smooth modifier was then applied to the helmet to finish it off and remove any imperfection or ridge.

 

Finished Textured & Mesh Smoothed Helmet

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The last creation stage was to create the guard and checkpoint barrier. The guard was made using the box tool to produce the walls, seat and angled roofing panels.

 

Box Object Guard Hut

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A striped chevron texture was also created in Photoshop, which was imported in Max onto an empty material slot. This material was then assigned to the guard hut using a Box UVW modifier, a Unwrap UVW was then applied so that the texture could be suitably scaled. A wood material was used for the inside including the seat and a separate roof plating material was sufficiently applied to the rood panels, using mesh select on each polygon to ensure the seams in the material lined up.

 

Textured & Rendered Guard Hut

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The barrier was constructed using cylinder primitives, the posts either side were created first which were also converted to editable poly's.  This therefore granted the ability to remove several polygons from each of them in order to create notches for the main pole to rest between. The main barrier pole was also created using the cylinder tool and was textured using the same material as the guard hut, with the except of being aligned along the X-axis. The supporting poles were textured with a rough bark/wood material simulating the intended appearance of cut logs. To enhance this effect the cylinders were also given random noise modifiers to roughen up their surfaces in the X, Y and Z axis.

 

Textured & Rendered Barrier

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Now that the scene and its containing objects were completed I progressed with the animation phase. Firstly I created a copy of my character which was placed in front of the guard hut, the previously created helmet was then scaled down appropriately to fit on the new character's head. As this character is representing a German soldier I also gave it him a rifle by cloning my original mosin nagant and simply deleted the scope. The original sniper character was placed in a laying down position on top of opposing mountain/hill with his sniper rifle aimed towards the German soldier. The animation sequence that I had planned involved the German scanning left and right by turning his head. The Sniper would then take aim and fire at the German character, killing him and shooting off his helmet in the process. This would land on the seat behind him inside the guard hut, then the camera would zoom in to find the History Channel Logo inside the upside down helmet.

To start this animation sequence I enabled Auto Key and rotated the German character's left and right. This was done gradually to portray a seeking motion like he is scanning the surrounding area for possible threats.

 

Seeking / Head Turn

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A camera was then created in front of the German soldier to capture the head turning movement. I then had a brainwave and decided to create an additional camera which was positioned directly on the German's head and simulated the view through his eyes. A further camera was positioned inside the rifle scope to which aimed down the sight towards the German enemy. Another camera was then created and positioned facing the sniper. This was focused on the sniper's finger as it was rotated as well as the trigger to simulate a shot being fired. A fifth camera was put inside the barrel of the sniper rifle which was made to suddenly zoom rapidly towards the German's helmet , as if the camera was attached to the bullet being fired. The last camera was positioned looking at the area directly in front of the guard hut which captured the death animation of the German Soldier.

The death animation was conducted using the same techniques used throughout my other idents where the master hip bone was moved downwards to simulate his falling body. The helmet was rotated off the head at a rather fast speed, giving the impression that a bullet had suddenly pierced it. The arms and legs bones of the German character were rotated in an awkward manner as he fell to the ground, representing the sudden limpness acquired by the human body after being killed. In addition the head  and spine were also rotated backwards to express the impact of the shot on the German character's body.

 

Death Animation - Limp Body

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Death Animation -  Collapsed

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Ident 3 - Final Video Animation

The Video below is the finished 15 second ident, please note that it has been heavily compressed for fast uploading/web purposes, the full resolution and top quality version is available on the DVD.

 

 

 

History Channel - Ident 2

The History Channel - Ident 2

Ident 2

For my second Ident my idea was to create a camouflage style sniper hide where the character will aim down the scope and see the History Channel Logo as the target.

Similarly to the first Ident I started by creating the scene itself followed by the animation afterwards. To begin with a large flat cylinder was created for the floor of the scene which was given a white diffuse colour using an empty material slot. The viewport background environment colour was also set to white to create a white void. This therefore when rendered produced a scene with no horizon, this should in turn focus the attention to the main objects of the scene which will stand out from the white backdrop.

The initial object I created was the Camouflage net for the Sniper Hide. This started as a basic plane object which was given an high amount of height and width segments. It was then converted to an editable poly where I began to delete random polygons across its surface to replicate a holey camouflage net/cover which would typically be found in any military location. This process was tremendously monotonous as I tried to achieve the most random appearance possible without repeating the same shaped holes, which would reduce the level of realism.

Net Making Process Finished Camo Net

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I then created the framework of the hide structure to which the camouflage will be draped over. This was created using normal cylinder primitives which represented upright corner poles and angled roof struts. Having rotated these cylinders I select and grouped them ready to act as a collision object for the cloth camo net. The previously created camouflage net was then given a Cloth Modifier and preset cloth type of "Generic Heavy". The cylinders that the structure is comprised in addition to the ground were added as collision objects to the camo net cloth modifier. The generic heavy preset basically means that the cloth object has altered parameters making it less stretchy, as a result of mimicking properties of that preset based on its real life characteristics.

Camo Net Cloth Properties

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In order to stop the cloth falling off the cylinder structure once it had been simulated, I preserved a line of vertices along the middle of the camo net which should rest on the centre pole of the frame underneath. Having prepared these parameters beforehand I then simulated the cloth locally until the desired draping effect was reached. A clone of my character was positioned underneath the structure to provide a rough guidance of how much I could let the material sag.

Camouflage Net - Simulated Cloth

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Now that I had created all the necessary objects for my second Ident, I textured the Camo net using a custom Camouflage pattern which I created in Adobe Photoshop. This was also given a corresponding bump map by adding a fabric overlay to the pattern, in addition to de-saturating it from within Photoshop. The camo pattern and its bump map were added to an empty material slot and then assigned to the Camo net using a "Planar" UVW map which evenly distributed the texture over the selected cloth object. An Unwrap UVW modifier was also applied to reduce the pattern's scale to a more suitable size. The cylinder structure was also given a shiny green raytrace material to simulate a painted metal type effect. I also took another screenshot of the entire scene which was set as the reflection map for the lens material of the rifle scope.

Textured Camo Net

Camo Pattern Click for full-size image

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Having textured the scene I started the animation process by once again importing my character and rifle models. The rifle was positioned in the characters left hand, where I then rotated the finger helpers to adequately grip the rifle. The character was positioned opposite a large hole in the camouflage net which it will crawl through and take up a prone shooting position.

Starting Pose

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The character was then made to crouch down using the same method as the first ident, except this time the rifle slides through the hand as it makes contact with the ground. Once in a squatting position it then became considerably harder to make the character move into a crawling pose given its current position. At first the character was made to sit on its knees, whilst leaning forward and then reaching out with its arms. This was achieved by lowering the master hip bone far enough to assume a crouching position. The arm bones and base of the spine where then rotated sequentially with Auto Key active in addition to gradually moving the time slider along. The next stage was to make its hands touch the ground and take the weight of its body as it lowers itself down onto the ground. This was accomplished by rotating the collar and shoulder bones forward allowing the arms to be moved into position. The angle of the arms and spine were pointed downwards to portray the exchanging of weight transferred to the characters arms is it lowers its body downwards. The rifle was also rotated in unison with the left hand until the character was lying down.

Weight Transfer

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At this stage I then had to make the character crawl forwards on its torso. This was animated by creating a crawling cycle in the same way as the walk cycle which I implemented during the first Ident. The crawling cycle started by rotating the hip bone forwards, followed by the rest of the leg bones to create a bent position. With Auto Key still enabled the character was then moved forward using the master hip bone until the bent leg had reached an outstretched position. At this point the other leg then repeated the same process. The arms followed a similar cycle where the opposite arm would reach forward as the opposite leg moved, then the arm would take up a bent position for the following arm to reach forward. These movements were then looped to create the crawling cycle until the character had reached far enough inside the sniper hide. The left arm was also occasionally rotated to enable the character to manoeuvre the rifle through the opening in the camo net.

Crawling Cycle Animation

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Once the character had reached this end position I then made it lift up the rifle by rotating the required arm and finger bones. The rifle was then held up towards the character's left eye, where I then rotated the head forwards to simulate it peering into the scope. This concluded the character animation aspects, I then proceeded by setting up the lighting and cameras.

Rifle Aiming Position

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Only one light was created for the scene, this entailed a Target Spot Light which was positioned high above the scene using the top viewport. This was given Raytrace shadows which provided clean and sharp shadows which help them to stand out in a white scene.

Target Spot Light

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A Free Camera was then created and was placed behind the character facing the Camo net structure. The camera was then made to follow the character's movement using the same Auto Key technique as the first ident. The camera follows the character inside the sniper hide and then looks through the sniper scope as it is lifted up. The camera then zooms from the scope down towards the History Channel Logo in the distance. This procedure was carried out using the walkthrough tool to manually position the camera each time via the keyboard and mouse, similar to the controls of a typical FPS (First Person Shooter) on PC.

Free Camera Walkthrough

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Ident 2 - Final Video Animation

The video below is the finished 15 second ident, please note that it has been heavily compressed for fast uploading/web purposes, the full resolution and top quality version is available on the DVD.

History Channel - Ident 1

The History Channel - Ident 1

Major Setback!!

After spending an extensive amount of time modelling my Russian Sniper Character I painstakingly came to the conclusion that I had made it too detailed to animate sufficiently given the time I had left. Looking back it would have been achievable if I had tried to keep the poly-count down, however the detail that I modelled made it almost impossible to Rig the skeleton proficiently to the whole character mesh. As my computer even began to struggle opening the 3Ds Max documents and the interface often became unresponsive or slow. My home desktop is rather powerful given the fact that it has a Quad Core Processor and 2 graphics cards in SLI mode, yet I was still encountering significant issues! If I had a much longer time period or used my time more efficiently perhaps I could have resolved this problem but with the deadline drawing very close I had to settle on a compromise.

After discussing the situation with my lecturer, I came to the decision of keeping the entire skeleton given the fact that it functioned more or less correctly. Therefore as I had also put so much dedication into producing my character model I still wanted to retain just a small part, as it seemed a dreadful shame to put in all that work and not make use of it. Consequently I kept the head from the character mesh and used a "skin modifier" to attach it to the head bone. The skeleton that I previously created was slightly modified by making larger and more uniform boxes for the hand bones, as the previous ones were rather narrow. The skeleton itself was recoloured in addition to the helpers, green was used for the helpers on the Left side of the body and red was used for the right.

Recoloured Skeleton & Helpers

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Ident 1

For my first Ident I decided to demonstrate a simple walk cycle where my character picks the previously created rifle and gets into an aiming stance. To begin I created an extremely simple scene consisting of a cylinder for the floor and a section of wall constructed from a box primitive. This wall had a window made through it using the boolean tool and window slats were also added again using the box tool.

Basic Scene Layout

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The wall scene was then textured using rustic materials to recreate a medieval church type atmosphere, as a lot of combat was carried out in the vicinity of churches during WWII.

Textured Scene

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I then continued by importing the Mosin Nagant Sniper Rifle that I previously made. This was scaled down proportionately compared to the size of the character and moved into an upright leaning position against the church wall.

Positioned M91 Mosin Nagant Sniper Rifle

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Prior to animating I increased the default amount of frames in the timeline by accessing the "Time Configuration" panel using the button at the bottom right hand corner of the interface. It was recommended that each Ident should be no longer than fifteen seconds long, consequently as I decided to keep the standard NTSC framerate of 3o FPS, I simply calculated 30 x 15 to give my maximum number of frames (450).

Time Configuration Panel

Click for full-size image Time Config Button

I then initiated the animation process by enabling "Auto Key" and began moving my characters head. This was done by dragging the time slider along several frames, the head bone was then turned using the "Select & Rotate" tool to make the character look towards the wall. Another keyframe was added in between frame 0 and 8 where I rotated the head downwards slightly to replicate more realistic movement. With Auto Key re-enabled I began moving the characters legs starting with the left hip bone. This was achieved by selecting the Left-Heel Helper and moving it upwards causing the leg to follow. The leg was also rotated by rotating the hip bone, in addition the foot was made to bend slightly by moving the foot helpers upwards.

Leg Lift

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The body was then turned at an angle by rotating the base spine and hip bones. Now that the left leg was raised of the ground and the body was facing the same direction as the leg, I carried out the same process to lower the left leg then immediately raise the right leg. When the feet made contact with the ground I rotated the master hip bone towards that foot to make the character appear to be leaning/putting weight on that leg. This process was repeated to form a basic walk-cycle until my character reached an area just in front of the rifle. I then went back over the walk cycle with Auto Key enabled and made the character's arms swing in time with the walking motion. For example when the character raises his left leg the opposite arm swings forward. Note that I eventually removed the HI solvers on the arms as previously stated as this allowed the arms to be manipulated without restriction. This process was also repeated by moving each arm bone starting with the shoulder and working down to the wrist. During the walk cycle the character's head was made to look downwards at the rifle and focus on it as he walks. This was achieved by rotating the head bone on the required axis.

Walk Cycle

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It was my ambition to try and recreate realistic human movement as believably as possible. Due to the fact that when each limb of the human body is moved, it happens in an arching motion rather than a straight line, due to the way our joints operate. A useful feature within 3ds Max called "Trajectories" allows the movement of objects to be traced in the viewports, displayed by a simple line/trail. As a result I was able to add additional key frames to rotate certain bones to create arched Trajectories.

Arched Bone Trajectories

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Now that my character had reached the rifle I made it crouch down and grasp the rifle with its hands. This was carried out using the master hip bone to make the entire skeleton squat into a crouching position by moving it downwards. The character was also made to lean forwards to reach out by marginally rotating the bottom spine bone. The arms were then moved into a out-stretched position again moving each arm bone separately. The finger helpers were then rotated in the Y-axis to make the fingers rotate into a clenched position in order to hold the rifle.

Character Crouched & Grabbing Rifle

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The character was then made to gradually stand back up-right holding the rifle in its hands. This was accomplished by doing an opposite walk cycle to make the character lean and walk backwards. The rifle components were grouped to make one object, which were then key-framed to moved with the hands by rotating and moving the rifle upwards. This proved to be a rather tedious process as nearly every other frame required the rifle to be manipulated in order for it to appear to be moving simultaneously with the arms.

Backwards Walk Cycle/Rifle Lift

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Once the character had stepped far enough away from the wall the rifle is rotated level and held up towards the character's eye. This again was achieved by using Auto Key where the arm bones and rifle were rotated gradually as the time slider was incriminated by dragging it several frames along. However the character's hands had to be constantly adjusted by inserting key frames to ensure that all the fingers remained gripping the rifle as it rotated. Although left and remains on the rifle throughout the animation, the right one has a few glitches where is twitches away from the rifle. This was a minor problem which I did not feel was vital enough to spend additional time correcting, due to the fact that it isn't immediately obvious. Another reason was because I simply ran out of time to rectify this issue after already exerting a considerable amount of time trying to fix it. The character's head was then finally titled so that his right eye was aligned with the Sniper Rifle Scope.

Final Aiming Pose

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The animation process was finalized by creating a "Free Camera" which was positioned behind the character from a side-on angle. Auto-Key was then enabled and the camera was moved using the "Walk Through" button to pan around using the W, A, S, D keys on the keyboard in addition to the mouse which controls the angle. This method was used to follow the character at several stages, then once Auto Key was disabled the camera animation was complete. As the camera then moved automatically once the animation was previewed using the key frames that had been inserted by Auto Key.

Free Camera Walkthrough

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I then created another camera which was positioned in front of the church wall object, pointing directly at the window slats. This again was animated using the same technique as the previous camera, however this one was made to zoom through the window and stop dead-on in front of the rifle scope containing the History Channel logo on the front lens.

Second Camera Zooming at Logo

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In order to create a transparent logo without a background, I imported the History Channel Logo as a PNG (Portable Network Graphic). This was assigned to the diffuse colour of an empty material slot, then the diffuse map was copied onto the "opacity" map slot. Inside the parameters of the Opacity Map the "Mono Channel Output" option was changed from "RBG Intensity" to "Alpha". This was done due to the fact that PNG's contain embedded alpha channels which preserved a transparent background, i.e. rather than surrounding the logo with a white background box. This material was then assigned to a small-sized plane just in front of the rifle scope. The lenses of the Scope were also given a Raytrace Material containing a screenshot of the scene as a reflective map, this therefore created a "fake" yet real looking reflection which can be seen behind the PNG Logo below.

Transparent PNG Material Logo

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The last step to conclude my first ident involved the introduction of several lights. One main target spot was positioned high above the scene for the main illumination , then several omni lights were added to brighten up dark areas around character and wall objects. The main Target spot and one of the omni lights were also given "raytraced" shadows to provide more dramatic visual affects for the final rendered animation. The intent of using raytraced shadows was due to the fact that I rendered the animation using "Mental Ray" which I found to be faster in addition to providing higher quality of appearance in raytraced materials. Mental Ray is not capable of using "Area Shadows" which would have produced softer shadows. However this was compensated for by increasing the "Sample Range" on the "Shadow Map Params" rollout menu of one omni light which was given a "Shadow Map" shadow type.

Light Placement

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Ident 1 - Final Video Animation

The video below is the finished 15 second ident, please note that it has been heavily compressed for fast uploading/web purposes, the full-resolution and top quality version is available to view on the DVD.

Ident Asset Creation

Mosin Nagant Sniper Rifle Construction

Ident Asset Creation

After deciding on my chosen TV channel (The History Channel) to base my three idents on, I had to produce various objects within 3DS Max that would stay consistent throughout each ident. I therefore began this process by collecting vast amount of research images to base these objects on. I started by acquiring a distinct range of images containing different variants of the "Russian M91 Mosin Nagant Rifle". One of the most notable sources that proved an invaluable wealth of information was a web site called http://7.62x54r.net/ which is a dedicated Mosin Nagant reference.  Out of the numerous images that I collected I decided on two main images which would serve as the main points of reference when modelling the rifle. The first image was a direct side view and the second from straight above, these images were purposely chosen due to the angles in which they were taken from. Each image was imported as a Bitmap into 3ds Max using the material editor, both were then separately assigned to a matching sized plane in the top and left viewports accordingly.

 

Modified version (barrel made longer and contrast increased)

 

Having aligned these image planes I began constructing the rifle , starting with a standard box object. This was converted to an editable poly allowing the vertices to be rearranged in order to roughly match up with the shapes of the reference image planes. Certain faces of the box object were extruded and reshaped numerous times to achieve the final shape of the wooden parts of the rifle including the stock and barrel grip. A mesh smooth modifier was then applied to replicate the intended appearance of curved hard wood.

 

Click for full-size image

 

Click for full-size image

 

The metal barrel was made using a cylinder which again was converted to an editable poly. The end polygon was then inset and extruded inwards to produce a hollow tube. I then proceeded by creating the handle/trigger area of the rifle using 2D splines, these were then converted to editable poly's and extruded as needed. The outstanding metal components were all constructed using basic standard primitives. Any required holes such as through the scope mount were achieved using booleans to carve out the necessary sized holes using additional shaped objects.

 

Click for full-size image

 

The lenses at either end of the scope itself were made from thin cylinders, each one had two bend modifiers applied to curve them in both the X & Y axis. This resulted in one concave lens for the end of the scope and a convex lens for the viewing end.

 

Click for full-size image

 

I then proceeded by gathering a wood material to texture the wooden sections of the sniper rifle which was assigned to an empty material slot and applied using a UVW Map modifier set as a "box mapping" type. "Bitmap Fit" alignment was also used so that the texture was evenly spread over the selected objects. An Unwrap UVW modifier was then used to scale the material appropriately to simulate the real grain size of cut wood.

 

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I then proceeded by creating a basic Raytrace metal material from within 3ds Max, using a dark grey diffuse colour for the metal parts of the rifle. The scope was given a similar black material, except a high degree of gloss and specular highlights level was introduced to represent a shiny black paint appearance.

 

Click for full-size image

 

 

Russian Sniper Character Creation

Character Modelling

Over the duration of the Christmas break, I decided to use this time effectively to produce the Russian Sniper Character for my three upcoming idents. This period proved to be a very time consuming and frustrating experience, as I soon determined that organic modelling is extremely intensive if a realistic outcome is desired. Simply due to the fact that every human figure is completely unique and consists of detailed features which are extremely difficult to replicate in 3D software. After an extensive process of trail and error of experimenting with different character modelling techniques I eventually produced a fairly realistic head using box modelling. Although box modelling is a reasonably easy form of modelling it still resulted to be extremely tedious as individual vertices had to be constantly readjusted/moved to achieve the desired outcome.  Other methods I attempted included modelling a head using planes.  This however proved to be even more difficult, especially for an intermediate user like myself who has little experience in organic modelling.

The head was created using two different images similar to the rifle construction process, however these references were only followed roughly as the resulting object would have been too detailed to model.

 

Head Reference Images

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The head started as standard box object which was given plenty of height and width segments in order to provide a sufficient amount of vertices when converting it to an editable poly. The individual verts were then manipulated using the select and move tool to line up with the reference images. In order to see the reference images through the box object, ALT + X on the keyboard was pressed to make the selected object see-through turning it into a light transparent grey colour.

 

                         Stage 1                                                             Stage 2

        

           Click for full-size image                           Click for full-size image

 

Where more detail was required for example around the eyes, an edge around the eye area was selected then ring select button was pressed to select all the edges in ring around it. The connect button was then used to add new edges connecting the ring selection and therefore producing more vertices to alter the shape of the head This then allowed smaller polygons to be extruded inwards to form the eye sockets.

 

Ring Selection

              

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These additional edges also allowed a nose to be extruded without disturbing the rest of the head's shape. The nose was created by simply dragging out specific vertices to produce a roughly curved nose shape. Then head object was then given a mesh smooth modifier which was simultaneously enabled then disabled to preview the final smoothed organic appearance of each feature.

 

                       Stage 3                                                               Stage 4

        

          Click for full-size image                             Click for full-size image

 

The nostrils and mouth were created using the same technique by adding extra edges to allow more detail through additional vertices. The mouth was given edges for the lips and then was extruded inwards to create the opening. The lips were then given additional edge loops to provide vertices to create a slightly extruded curved appearance, to simulate more realistic lips.

 

                         Stage 5                                                          Stage 6

                  Click for full-size image                            Click for full-size image     

     

The last aspect to create was the ears to complete the head, these were producing using plane modelling. I therefore started with one plane which was converted to an editable poly, one edge was then selected and shift-dragged to create another plane/polygon attached to it. This process was repeated to slowly build up the shape of the ear, gradually moving and rotating edges to construct the basic shape of the human ear. However given the fact that the ear is actually a very complex feature to model due to all the curved ridges and indents, I feel my attempt was fairly recognizable whilst not being completely true to life.

 

                         Stage 7                                                              Stage 8

        

         Click for full-size image                              Click for full-size image

 

Having completed the overall head, I continued producing my Russian Sniper character by starting with his boots. These were produced using box modelling and were again constructed to fit the rough shape of two reference images which were also used during the modelling of the rest of the character's body.

 

                               Front View                                            Side View

                                                          

                    Click for full-size image                   Click for full-size image

 

The vertices of the boot object were rearranged to create as curved as appearance as necessary and included a slight extrude/bevel on the base to create the sole and heel of the boot. The top polygon was inset and extruded inwards to create space for the leg to sit in, the entire object was also given a mesh smooth modifier in order to represent the intended style of leather boots.

 

                      Boot from Box                                            Smoothed

                                                   

                    Click for full-size                                   Click for full-size

 

I then continued by making the characters legs, this process also involved experimenting with various modelling techniques before a desirable result was achieved. My initial attempt involved using box modelling however this resulted in severe difficulty in ensuring that the leg was the correct shape in each viewport. A alternative approach which I found was to be considerably more efficient was via the combination of a CrossSection and Surface modifiers as these were not only quicker but produced a better looking result.

 

          1                                 2                                    3                                      4

                                                

Click each image above to view their full-size

 

Step one involved drawing four editable spline circle objects which were rotated to match the joint positions of the reference image such as the knee and thigh. On step two a CrossSection modifier was applied which basically joins up the splines vertically using the vertices of each spline object. However in order for this to execute properly each spline object has to have the same number of vertices. Step three involved applying a Edit Spline modifier so that the cross section could then be manipulated to produce curved splines to match up accordingly to the shape of the leg in the reference images. On the last stage a Surface modifier was introduced which basically converts the splines into a 3D object by connecting the edges with a surface. I was particularly pleased with the end result of the leg as it was extremely quick to produce and can easily be adjusted if needed.

The image below shows the modifier stack for the leg object which should clarify the mentioned order of modifiers.

 

Leg Modifier Stack

                                               

 

The legs were then connected by extruding edges between the gap and then welding any overlapping vertices. During this process I tried to create a curved bottom connecting the two legs symmetrically. I also produced a flat surface on top of the legs by selecting all of the top vertices and scaled them on the Y-axis until they were completely level. The whole object was then given a mesh smooth modifier to round off sharp angles and to portray the appearance of human skin which is curved and organic.

 

                Connected Legs                                      Result of Mesh Smooth

        

           Click for full-size image                            Click for full-size image

 

I then proceeded by removing the top polygons of legs to create an open border which I extruded multiple times to create the shape of the characters body. The vertices we often moved along the X-axis to create a rounded torso in addition to an indentation along the back for where the spine would be. This process was continued until I reached the shoulder height where I then connected the previously created head using the same method as when connecting the legs together.

 

 Torso by Extruded border                Connected Head & Arm Join Holes

              

    Click for full-size image                                Click for full-size image

 

Having deliberately left holes to extrude the arms, I selected the border of the arm hole and extruded it numerous times, scaling rings of vertices each time. In addition vertices towards the forearm  were gradually rotated which will allow for more manoeuvrability during the animation process without deforming the overall mesh. The manipulation of vertices also allowed for the definition of the main muscle areas such as the bicep and tricep in addition to the elbow bone. The arm was then cloned and attached for the other side of the body, the whole object was again given a mesh smooth modifier to preview the final smoothed result.

 

             Arm created from extruding the border

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 Smoothed Arm

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The last and most difficult component to create with exception of the the head was the hands. The hands were made using the box modelling technique, I started by creating a standard box primitive with five length segments therefore splitting it into five parts for the fingers and thumb. This was then converted to an editable poly and multiple edge loops were added to provide additional edges needed to extrude the fingers. The individual vertices were again manipulated in a similar fashion to the arm creation process  to produce the four fingers and thumb.  Several vertices were also moved inwards to create a dip in the middle of the underside of the hand representing the palm area. Each finger had vertices scaled up to represent the knuckles in addition some edges were added across the palm and indented to create creases which are naturally found on a real human hand.

 

                      Stage 1 - Box                                              Stage 2 - Thumb

        

         Click for full-size image                            Click for full-size image

 

                  Stage 3 - Fingers                                          Stage 4 - Palm

        

         Click for full-size image                            Click for full-size image

 

The final steps to complete the model included adding finger nails to the hands and then attaching the hands to the wrist end of the arms. The finger nails were constructed  by extruding and beveling a group of polygons on the end of each finger, they were also made to overhang slightly just like real finger nails. The hand was then aligned and scaled accordingly to the dimension of the existing arm. It was then connected by welding the end vertices that make up the wrist area. However a frustrating problem was encountered during this situation as well as throughout the previous character modelling sections as there was and odd number of edges of the hand compared to the end of the arm. This issue was rectified by adding extra edge loops throughout the mesh to keep all polygons four-sided i.e. quads, as triangles and five or more sided polygons can result in "Pinches" in the mesh surface. To finalise the character model a mesh smooth modifier was re-applied to smooth out the array of edges making up the knuckles and fingernails of the hands.

 

Extruded Finger Nail

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Smoothed Attached Hand

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Final Character Model

                        Front View                                                 Rear View

 

           Click for full-size image                          Click for full-size image

 

 

Russian Sniper Character Rigging

Character Rigging

Now that the modelling of the character was completed I pushed on with the Character Rigging phase. The first task was to setup the skeleton using "Bones" objects found under the systems menu in the create tab of the 3ds Max command panel.

First the bones were created for the character's legs starting from the hip then working down towards the foot then toes. This creation order was vital as the first bone created (the hip bone) is the parent and any additional bones created afterwards in the same bone chain are subsequent children. Hierarchy of bones is essential when rigging a character as when creating a human skeleton in 3D human anatomy still applies, especially if realistic results are required. By studying the basic skeleton of human beings I was able to create the bones in the correct order i.e. so when the thigh bone is lifted the other leg bones move accordingly. However another vital step to ensure true to life leg motion is HI Solvers, which are an extremely useful tool that allow links to be positioned within an existing bone chain. IK or Inverse Kinematics grant the ability to govern the how children bones are transformed by controlling the HI Solver linked to the parent bone. In this case I created one HI Solver from the heel of the foot up to the top of the leg, another from the foot to the ankle and then a final IK chain from the toe to the ball of the foot. Setting up these IK chains consequently resulted in more realistic moving bones which will be vital when animating the character throughout the idents for walk cycles for example.

 

                   Leg IK Chains                                      Leg Bone Movement

                                                

           Click for full-size image                        Click for full-size image

I then created a series of bones for the characters spine, starting at the base then working up towards the neck and then the head. The base of the spine was then attached to the hips using the "select and link" tool this therefore ensured that all the current bones in the skeleton were connected.

 

   Spine , Neck & Head Bones                              Rotated Spine/Head

                                                 

       Click for full-size image                               Click for full-size image

The next chain of bones I introduced was for the character's arms. Starting with the collar bone, then  the shoulder followed by the bicep, forearm and then the wrist. IK chains were added between the wrists and shoulders for the same reason as the leg bones. However when actually animating the final character during the Idents, these IK Chains may be deleted for normal FK chains instead. FK or Forward Kinematics basically allows each bone or linked object to be moved independently whilst still maintaining the link relationships. IK chains can prove exceptionally problematic on a character's arm and also aren't as necessary like the leg bones. This is due to the fact that arms are a lot more versatile than legs and using IK could restrict movement  which would hinder the animation process.

 

 Arm Bone Chain

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Arm Bone Chain Movement

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The last set of bones to arrange are for the character hands, these were purposely left to the end as they are complex to setup and can be created using a variety of different methods. One way of creating hands is simply by using default bone objects however this can often become disorganised if too many bones are created. An alternative method which I implemented was using standard boxes, this method proved to be considerably neater and easier to manage. Each finger was comprised of three boxes to represent the three joints in a actual human finger. Another larger box was created and shaped for the palm which the thumb/finger box chains were linked to. The palm was then linked to the wrist, which in turn caused the hand boxes to become part of the arm bone chain.

 

                 Box Bones Hand                                      Finger & Palm Rotate

 

           Click for full-size image                         Click for full-size image

 

Now that the whole bone system had been setup for my character I decided to go one stage further and optimize the bones using an array of helpers. This was done to save considerable time during the upcoming animation process and prevent the need of having to select each individual bone every time for each movement. The first helper objects I constructed were linked to the finger bones using "Wire Parameters" Wire parameters allow any animatable parameter of an object to be linked to another. This proved to be an invaluable tool especially with my character's hand bones as rotating each individual bone to make a clinched fist for example would be exceedingly laborious. Instead a box helper object was created for each finger, then the Y rotation of each finger bone was wired to the Y rotation of the helper. As a result whenever the helper is then rotated on the the Y-axis all the bones in that finger will also rotate in the Y-axis whilst maintaining their bone hierarchy relationship. This process was repeated for all ten fingers and thumbs with the matching number of helpers for each hand. Therefore in order to create a clenched fist as previously described, all I would have to do would be to select all the helpers for that hand then simultaneously rotate them.

 

Wire Parameters - Y Rotation of finger bone to helper

Click for full-size image

 

                Finger Bone Helpers                           Helpers Y-Axis Rotate

 

          Click for full-size image                          Click for full-size image

 

Although these wired helpers will be extremely useful they did cause a minor problem, disabling the ability to rotate each bone within each finger separately. For example I wasn't able to rotate just the end of the middle finger in the Y-axis as this was overwritten by the wire parameters. Therefore to solve this problem I made two additional helpers between the bones in each finger which were simply linked to the corresponding bones.

 

             Finger Joint Helpers                     Individual Finger Joint Rotate

 

           Click for full-size image                         Click for full-size image

 

Then to finalise the skeleton I added additional helpers at the wrists and feet which were linked to the according IK chains. An extra bone was also created at the hip area, to serve as a master bone which is at the top of the hierarchy for all of the existing bones. This hip bone allowed the whole skeleton to be manipulated at once, which will prove beneficial when making the character jump or crouch for example. Another master helper was created which was linked to the entire bone system including the existing helpers. This consequently allowed the whole skeleton to be moved anywhere within the scene which as a result will be handy during the Ident animations.

 

                   Master Hip Bone                             Master Hip Bone Crouch

 

           Click for full-size image                        Click for full-size image

 

Final Skeleton

                        Front View                                                  Side View

 

            Click for full-size image                        Click for full-size image