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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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