Carriers...I think canvas bags are the preferred now...

When I received the Carrier design from Jamal I thought immediately it would be interesting to explore the notion of capturing them rising out of the clouds and having the cloud vapour be present when it rises up and out of the cloud layer below. My first thought when trying to create this idea was a particle system, but the big issue with that would be that the particles wouldn’t pass around and over the craft it would just pass straight through. I managed to rig up a system of multiple deflectors which would interact with the particles simulating them rolling off of the ship’s nose and wings. The particles themselves were given a material much like the fire tutorial once more but in a very light grey/white in order to appear like clouds. As a further attempt to make it look as real as possible I placed some Wind forces in the scene and had these act on the particles after they had collided with the deflectors. This all combined to give a nice stream flowing off of the ships exterior. 

Whilst creating this scene I came across the issue of running out of particles able to be shown on the screen at any time. At this stage however I was unaware of the limits to one particle source and therefore ended up just using trial and error to find an appropriate statistic which would give the highest flow without the particles disappearing too early. 

Another unfortunate, but in the end magnificent, problem I had whilst working on the cloud stream particle effect was that I didn’t have access to the planes. This led me to conclude that a good idea would be to hide that fact. In order to hide the lack of planes and still be able to get the scene finished I manipulated the Carrier by extruding the original runway into the body of the ship and creating a new one which could be moved up and down as desired. I then set about adding a new pair of massive doors that would sit above the runway, colouring these doors with the material used for the main bulk of the Carrier meant they blended well with the rest of the ship. 

Once I had finished the initial appearance of the Carriers I set about making a reveal of the planes within. I chose to take a slow pan along the side of the ship as it seemed appropriate to show off the detailing placed within the modelling of the Carrier. I do tend to find my shots end up being slightly influenced by how much detail the models have, as I always like to display the models to their fullest wherever possible. I also fired off the cannons, primarily just because they were there and it seemed pointless passing the cannons without them doing anything. I did however think up a little justification for the act afterwards. The firing of the cannons from the lead Carrier could be seen as a sign to the others that the attack is about to be a go and thus readying their aircraft is a process required. 

After passing by the cannons, the engines were focused on. Originally I tried to get the camera to head down from the wing and then swoop back up and through the engine, unfortunately this merely equated to making a viewer feel queasy, as the motion was quite jarring and no amount of tweaking managed to get it smooth. 

With the engine passed I wanted something dramatic(ish) to have the camera shoot back to the front of the Carrier to finally perform the plane reveal. Initially I went for a patch of smoke racing along the door line, meant to represent an escaping gas. Regrettably this didn’t look quite right, I wasn’t overly enamoured with it from the outset but when it was questioned (“What is that?”) I came to the conclusion that it didn’t look like an escape of gas it just looked like a strange clump racing along the ship. I ended up adjusting it so that the entire line of the door released some gas. This proved to eventually look better, but I came across the particle issue again. On this occasion I looked it up and discovered reference to a limit placed on the amount of particles when dealing with Particle emitters. This meant once more I had to adjust the number through trial and error in order to get the perfect amount for the appropriate time. I also duplicated the particle emitter to bolster the amount of particles in order to make it look better. 

For the dramatic opening of the doors I keyed them to create the motion and then added a row of atmospheric apparatus with a smoke coloured explosion within them. With all of these going off at once and then having them rise above as the doors open, it provided a nice gas escape which added to the excitement of the simple door opening. 

When attempting to render the pair of these scenes I found the standard lights were not enough to light the entire orb which made up the background. This made me want to add my own lights in order to have control over how much light was in the scene. I remembered from the tutorial I viewed to create the rolled map the idea of a pyramid array of omni-lights and therefore decided I would attempt such a thing. It seemed to work in a way but didn’t feel quite right to end up with quite so many lights in a scene. I feel my goal for future projects is certainly to research lights and how best to light a scene, as my current methods seem overkill with the sheer volume of lights that end up in the scene. 

A Beginning, A mid…well a beginning…

One of the key elements we thought up early on was the idea of having a missile sequence reminiscent of a scene in the movie, X-Men: First Class, where missiles head up and outward towards the viewer then crash onto a map, exploding. It seemed reasonable to do this as an intro because we could give indication of the situation within Europe via the map and missiles.

Another thought I held was the power that quotes can have, they tend to sum up a situation quite succinctly and lend a certain gravitas to pieces of media. The quote was made up to sound ominous of the coming scenes where America is pulled into a War. The idea of fire was meant initially as merely a metaphor for how War often escalates and spreads throughout its surroundings; however it ended up being dealt with slightly more literally due to the particle effects chosen to transition from the quote to the main section of the intro.

In order to get into the map I desired something interesting and thus worked backwards from the idea of missile launchers on the map and the map in front of the audience. First I had to decide how the missile launchers would arrive, it felt appropriate to have them possess some motion and the idea of them fading in whilst moving to position was something I thought would look rather eye-catching. The next step was how to have the map appear, this was an interesting issue. I could have gone with a 2D style map piece and just had it be there, but ultimately I was using 3D animation software in a 3D course, it seemed more apposite to utilise 3D elements. This is where the idea for 3D islands and the clouds moving upon the map came from as it really made the map stand out and visually pop. The idea of the scroll came up due to the fantasy setting, often fantasy maps are seen upon ancient scrolls. The roll up idea was just a logical transition between scenes; it was natural to think that a scroll would be rolled up upon first retrieving it.

Within the intro I used the visibility track, within the curve editor, quite a lot. My previous knowledge of this technique meant the fades progressed quite swiftly. The main new element learnt here was the looping of the fades. I found with my standard choice of loop that the clouds faded earlier than desired on their subsequent loops, something I did not want. This was solved by merely adding extra keys in order to match the entirety of the visibility length to match that of the movement. The second problem was the loop was now permanent, so all the earlier footage of the quote had the clouds looping across on it. I discovered the remedy for this was rather than just clicking upon the overall loop icon within the out of range types if you pressed a small arrow at the bottom of the icon it would loop from the point you animated it onwards, rather than in both directions. This small detail will likely prove invaluable in the future.

 A key element to the intro is the transition between the quote and the map. This effect was accomplished via a particle system. It was done by using a polygon select modifier to separate the word ‘fire’ then having the first PArray throw particles from the selected polygons which were just the ones that made up the word. The second PArray then activated over the entire sentence. Once the fire had appeared to spread I wanted it to turn to ash. This was done by fading the original sentence down via the visibility channel in the curve editor. During this fade another particle system was engaged, which was a PFSource, this system was calibrated to form the sentence out of its myriad of particles. Once the flames died down a deflector which was set to activate a collision detection within the particle view dropped down over the sentence causing the particles to fall gently to a different deflector which didn’t move. Once settled upon the "ground” a wind force was introduced so that the particles would fly away as the map entered the screen.

At first I was going to just have the sheet forming the map enter, this unfortunately looked terribly boring and the plane that was the sheet didn’t exactly look anything like paper, it merely looked like a shape. This was solved by looking up how to create a rolled parchment effect. The way it is done is to add a bend modifier and then move the centre point of the bend to have the paper curl up. Auto-Keying this act allows you to get the motion of curling up or uncurling as an animation. The final act to get the map was just perfect and this was done by a double sided material, one side a plain coloured paper texture the other side featuring the very bottom layer of the map.

The clouds were an interesting build as they utilised an opacity map. Designing the cloud in Corel Draw was done by taking several reference images and taking elements of each to form a cloud design. This cloud was then taken into Photoshop where the opacity map was created. Once both the base and the opacity map were complete it was a simple case of applying the main material to the diffuse slot and the opacity map to the opacity slot. When layered this equated to the plane the material was on becoming partly invisible and forming the perfect image of the cloud.

Something interesting I stumbled across was the combination of a multi-layered and a bitmap material. Initially I found the multi-layered colour to be too bright and reflective but reducing the reflection didn’t help, a standard colour was too bland and didn’t stand out enough and a texture fill on it wasn’t enough to capture the notion of a map displaying a colour key the groups of differing countries. In the end I realised that I could have the best of both worlds, by lowering the amount the texture fill was displayed in the diffuse map slot I could bring through the multi-layered colour, this gave a delightful colour that was unique.

The vehicles were built briefly via the standard method and their purpose was in mind the entire time which was primarily why the wheels/treads don’t move nor is there proper under carriage colour. The new element I tried with these was to experiment further with Linking and constraints for the rear missile holders. Both were linked to the base unit and had their rotational capabilities restricted so they could only go up and down. The linking had the further advantage of allowing the missiles to still be manoeuvrable independent of everything else.

The link for the tutorial on Parchment rolling is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmyjT5XM6aA

The research images utilised when designing the missile launchers for both the central and allied powers.

Copying the map was done in Corel Draw, the map is representative of the Europe map but I altered the shape of parts to reflect the island style of our fantasy world.

The map was copied roughly before each line was curved in order to greater match the map.

Being able to add text and then extrude that text is rather useful

The particle effect for having a shape be made from particles and then have a deflector interact was something I learnt a couple of years ago

A tutorial provided greater knowledge of how the bend tool can be used to manipulate shapes, while also providing details on how to curl a plane.

 

Several Cloud designs were researched but the nautical-esque cross-hatch shaded one won the award for best looking cloud for our theme.

Using the Magic Wand tool then colouring the cloud black and white, where black is to be invisible is the way to make an opacity map

The cloud can be seen to be made from a plane, but thanks to the opacity map the plane surrounding the cloud is invisible.

The map was made from a parchment texture with a custom grid placed on one version for the sake of the double sided material

The continents were placed in from Corel Draw as splines converted to polys, then the edge was extruded and scaled down slightly to give a sloped edge to each island.

The Overall map was too bright at first and just didn't quite go with the parchment

Mixing the two material ideas provided something truly magnificent a rocky shiny colour which did go with the overall map theme.

And now for something completely different…

On occasions working non-stop on the same project can become a little draining and monotonous, this is why often when working on ventures I like to change things up and do other smaller ideas to refresh and even learn something new. 

During this project another design opportunity sprang up, a friend was about to do a live stream session for a group of people and it felt appropriate for them to possess a unique intro to the stream. This intro was for the benefit of viewers as well giving indication to them that something was about to start, allowing them to settle and inspiring intrigue within them. 

Knowing the topics and subjects the person desiring the intro liked made design quite easy, I chose to revolve it around the symbol he frequently utilises and on Warhammer 40K, a franchise he enjoys. This concluded with an intro that had a Bolt Pistol, from Warhammer 40K, firing a bolt that put forth the symbol. The key challenges were the construction of the Bolt Pistol and precisely how to get a suitable fiery effect to retain on screen in the shape of the symbol.

The Bolt pistol, although moderately time consuming, didn’t really introduce anything new to me, as it was primarily the standard modelling using a box to start with and then introducing vertices and connections in order to shape the parts to match the reference plates I had within 3DS Max. 

The fiery symbol was where I really learnt something, as I had a reason to now delve further into particle systems, primarily the PArray. To begin with I created a spline for the Bolt to follow; a simple path constraint animation meant the Bolt followed the symbols path nicely. The next step was to introduce fire, the general material settings and particle shape were the same as the fire tutorial and Tornado effects previously explored, except adjusted to become a dark purple colour. The next part saw me use a PArray with the setting ‘Use selected sub-object’ which meant that the particles would eject from a specific plane that had been selected, this enabled me to have the fire just spraying from the rear of the object. 

The problem I now faced was that the fire would follow the bullet, but spray off in the direction of travel after having been thrown out. This meant the symbol wouldn’t be seen as the particles didn’t settle. After multiple attempts at adjusting statistics I discovered that by reducing the speed to 0 and, more importantly, the motion inheritance to 0 the particles now were sprayed out and would stay in place on the symbol. With the appropriate life span settings this meant that I now had the fiery symbol I wanted. The next issue was that the fire was quite static and a little boring. To solve this I increased the spin value which gave it more of a roiling flame appearance. 

Finally I did experiment with glow; unfortunately this glow didn’t seem to ever work out well. The main issue seemed to be with it being square, each particle shone a square glow and when you multiply that by the volume of particles required to form the symbol, it really proved ugly with this massive square glow behind it. This led to the conclusion that the glow would need to be left as no amount of statistic fiddling encouraged a nicer looking glow. 

With the Bolt Pistol in place the fire and Bolt travelling nicely I added some final touches. I included a Bolt shell being ejected from the guns ejection port, I added an explosion via an atmospheric apparatus which expanded as the Bolt was fired and included some motion blur upon the bullet. Motion blur was an effect that took me by surprise as it was very simple and merely a case of going into object properties and turning it on, the value set determines how much blur but it really was astoundingly simple to get a very nice looking added effect. As a note for future endeavours I feel I could have likely re-rendered with an increased Motion Blur value. 

With the 3D animation finished some extra images were placed on planes to act as reason for the Bolt ricocheting and the camera motion was created following the bullet, then revealing the symbol. A few extra bits of text were added via Premiere and the music and sound effects were included to finish the piece off nicely.

As is my way, I saved multiple versions of the file for the Bolt Pistol; this act did begin to spawn the notion of a change log. I had not considered it before but a record of what changes between file versions would prove useful in finding anything that needs to be bought back due to inadvertent ruination. It strikes me as something that would be good in both a personal project and business project setting.

The Final Version of the intro:

 



 

The starting point of many a 3D project...a blank work space with only reference plates...

Once that first box goes in though there is no stopping the modeling and extrusions aplenty.

Simply shaping each section by adding new edge, vertices etc leads to any shape required

To get the hole in the side of the barrel I used Boolean this I have found risky so I actually copied the barrel to make sure I always had a spare

There was always the notion in the back of my mind about having the clip eject, thus I made it a separate piece in case I did have it drop from the gun

Adding vertices and shifting them along edges was a lot easier than trying to cut the line into it, especially when dealing with curves

Some parts were only really visible on the side view and thus were accurate to that but the front proved ambiguous but it looked good even through that.

These were smoothed via mesh-smooth, something I may strive to avoid in the future, but I can't deny they do look good, and in small quantities it won't be too bad...

...ok so in medium quantities it will be fine...

...Ok so copied over the entire gun as rivets to hold it together...please be fine...

Interestingly it did seem fine with it, I guess with only the one object having this amount of mesh-smoothed objects is within the program's ability to handle.

This handle was perhaps a little lazily done, it was extruded from the top and then just put inside the lower side, I potentially should have cut out an opening in the lower side and connected the two officially. 

The handle was two separate objects the squashed sphere at the bottom and the main piece manipulated from box then extruded in the appropriate directions

The completed handle was carefully positioned next to the main trigger with each point being adjusted to just touch the main gun so as to look like they were attached

The trigger was pink...honestly that was the most exciting thing to say about it...I designed it so it could actually be pulled by going inside the main gun.

These grip sections were incredibly difficult to model but the result was certainly worthwhile

The side of the gun matched up perfectly with the reference plate which was immeasurably pleasing.

Certain details on each side were the same but certain others weren't this excluded the ability to use symmetry thus being able to see both sides at once proved invaluable via the x-ray mode.

Extra details were added to give the shape of the gun and its decorative nature.

To easily get splines for the decorative symbols, I fell back on my usual Corel Draw methods

When extruded the symbols took on a whole new life, and really made the gun visually pop

Both the Bolt and the Bolt casing were the next task

For the Bolt I introduced a new reference plate that I had drawn up a while ago

Space Marines like a good skull motif, so I tried out a variety.

The extruded skull motif

More symbols, these guys sure do love having stuff on their guns...

A quote was invented and placed on by extruding some text, the font was chosen as it was my friends preferred font.

Coloured up the final gun was something special I could be really proud of

Black, Red and Gold, do colour combos get better than that?