Sky Map

The skies are ready. I've uploaded the files to humyo... details, videos and instructions are on my blog post here.

Might be an idea to use both, perhaps the sunset on later on. Either way, for any outdoor scenes it'd be good to organise which scenes need which sky... We dont want continuity problems from the sky changing between the two every scene!

models needed in each scene

People,

I have listed all the models needed in each scene from 7 - 27, we should be able to recycle scenes to make it easier. I've also made a couple of scene cut suggestions. any feedback would be great.

Scene 7

Boy on French ship
Canon
Gun powder container
French ship deck
Sea

Scene 8

French ship
Canon balls
English ships
Sea
Environment

Scene 9

French ship
British ship
Sea environment

Scene 10

See scene 9, just change camera view

Scene 11

British ship
Canon balls
Rigging – French ship
Man
Environment map

Scene 12

British ship / canon deck
Canon
French ship
Canon balls
Sea
Environment
Shrapnel

Scene 13

Canon balls
French ship – shrapnel
Canons

Scene 14

I’m not too sure this scene is vital, so for now I suggest we just make a scene of carnage, to save having to animate someone being shot by a canon ball.

So models would be;

French ships
Sea
English ships
Environment
Shrapnel

Scene 15

Nelson
Deck of victory
Crew
Canon

Scene 16

Man over board??? Same as scene 14 really

Scene 17

Nelson
Victory deck
Environment

Scene 18

Canon
Crew member
Deck of victory
Canon ball

Scene 19

Nelson

Scene 20

Chain link canon ball
Mast, rigging, sails
Environment
Deck of ship?



Scene 21

French ship
Sea
Environment
Shrapnel

Scene 22

Shooter
Musket
Bullet
French ship deck
Nelson
Victory deck

Scene 23

Nelson kneeling
Victory deck
Blood

Scene 24

Nelson hand
Blood
Victory deck

Scene 25

Repeat 24, blurry

Scene 26

Victory deck, camera view on the side

Scene 27

Victory deck

Humyo Downloading

Im trying to download the Spanish/French Ships in order to try animating them, however I can't seem to get them with their maps. I don't know if they have been completed or not or if I am not downloading them properly! Advice would be great! Thank you!

Crow Nest

Crow nest is ready.

Scaling

Leah, the scaling issue was not directed at you so please don't take it personally, it was simply that you had made the ship and plane too small.

OK, this is how Tim described to me to be the best way to scale things, in the customize menu, at the top of the max screen, go to units and change it to metric, and metres. Once this is done create a rectangle which is the height of nelson. This will be your 'measuring stick'. Once you've done this you use the measuring stick to gauge a ratio of Nelson to a ship, so if nelson is 1 metre high and the ship is 100 metres high, then you duplicate the measuring stick and scale it up by 100 times and then scale the ship to be the same size, using the height element, as the stick.

I hope this makes sense, maybe if anyone does re-scale a ship when they save the scene they could make this apparent in the file name so people could use some of the models if needed.

Items Needed

I am currently working on scenes 3 of the view of the ships, scene 5 of the crows nest and the scene of nelson walking. However none of these scene are possible to create.
For scene 3 I scaled original sea and ship with nelson but apparently was not correct so I need the correct way to scale the enemy ships in the scene correctly.
For scene 5 I need the crows nest and the biped for the sailor in the crows nest.
For the scene of Nelson the final mapped nelson is not available yet, however this is due to a saving error which I was aware of yesterday and I have uploaded nelsons biped onto Humyo to be remapped.
Please can you let me know when these parts are on Humyo and I can start animating before Friday. Can someone also let me know the scale and I can complete scene 3 on Thursday morning when I will be in doing extra work.

Victory

The full version of the victory is now up on humyo.

Note for all

This is a little note for all, but also mainly aimed at Leah. All will make sense...

The scene of all the scaled item that leah put together are actually not scaled correctly, In comparison to the ship Nelson was far too big, so, I've rescaled the items and posted them back upto Humyo. To keep the sea animation correct I had to up the number of segments on the plane so it may take a while to load.

Hope the animations are all coming together. Scene six has been created by Richard, and I'd like to offer my greatest thanks for that as he is not an animator.

If anyone is finding that they are at a stand still with waht to do, compilation of scenes would be good. This wasn't really set out as a job but will make it easier as were animating.

See you guys all friday. 10 o'clock please, we've got a lot to do.

Scene 6

Hey guys I have really simply put together scence 6 and have animated the flaps being pushed open by the cannons. It is on the net space

Uploads to Humyo

All the sails that have been uploaded on to humyo are now animated and have been loaded into the ships file and in a new folder called animated sails.

Fridays Meetings

Friday 23rd Morning Minutes

Models which needed to be finished

• Crews heads - for this use the heads created in weeks 1-6. The textures need to be baked.
• The sailor that shoot Nelson - Model, bake and animate

Jobs assigned

• Tim- Model a musket.
• Kerion- Map Nelson
• Tim and James T - Rigging Sails
• Panos - Bake textures on the Victory
• Jo Bowman - create a water colour sky.
• Lara and Richard - Narrator script and recording, look at sound effects.
• Sam - look at animation of cannon fire.

Everything needs to be mapped by the end of the day.

Friday 23rd Afternoon Minutes

Points brought up in the meeting about todays work.

• Ali, richard and Lara have found ambient noise and seagull effects. The narrator voiceover has been created.
• Marc has created the animation of of nelson writing and can use this scene to show an overview of the stratergy of the battle being created. These scenes need to be rendered for friday.
• For the third scene the main boat and the background boats have been modelled.
• Leah and James W have created a biped fro the crows nest and will be finished monday.
• James T is creating the crows nest.
• An extra meeting has been set up for monday at complete modelling and start animating.
• All finished models with the material baked need to be uploaded to humyo. Please can the victory and Nelson be upload than a lot more animation can be completed.
• Also post up screen shots of your progress on your blogs and in the computer room with the other print outs.
• Tims has finished the musket and will upload shortly.
• Jo will have the sky texture finished by wednesday.

Important - Animation deadline is friday 2nd.

Sound effects!

Richard and I managed to obtain from the media lab 2 CD’s of sound effects, which we went through today. We took some good sound effects from them and created some really effective ambient WAV files in Premier Pro. We have made them to be about 1 minute long so that when we come to the final animation, we should have them long enough to be able to re-use or to cut in order for it to fit. They have been added to humyo as I cant seem to add them to this!

Me and Richard also managed to find a microphone and so recorded some narration for the begginning of the animation. I have included this on my blog, but I will post it here as well:

"The Battle of Trafalgar saw the British decisively defeat a combined French and Spanish fleet on 21st October 1805 in the most significant naval battle of the Napoleonic Wars.

A Royal Navy fleet of 27 ships of the line destroyed an allied French and Spanish fleet of 33 ships of the line of Cape Trafalgar in South-West Spain.

The French and Spanish lost 22 ships, while the British lost none. The British Commander Admiral Lord Nelson, died late in the battle, by which time he had ensured his place as Britain's greatest naval hero.

In the Battle of Trafalgar, Nelson orchestrated a controversial battle plan that had scarcely been seen before.

Popular battle tactics at the time involved maneuvering to approach the enemy fleet in a single line of battle and then engaging in parallel lines.Nelsons plan was to deliberately cut the opposing line in two, approaching in two columns sailing directly at the enemy, one near the centre of the opposing line and one near the trailing end.

His ships would break the enemy formation in half, surround that half, and force them to fight to the end. Nelson specifically hoped to cut the line just in front of the flagship: the isolated ships in front of the break would not be able to see the flagship's signals, hopefully taking them out of combat while they reformed.

The result of this plan was truly devastating......."

Getting files from Humyo

This morning I have been getting the rest of the ships I need to animate of humyo. However when downloading the files they all have no link to their maps as only the max file has been uploaded with no attached map files. We need to some how load up the maps with each scene.

On all the ships I have opened so far there are no sails which I was going to animate this morning. Next I will attempted to add some sail to animate unless anyone has create some. Please let me Know.

I have seen that James T and Tim were both organising the files with separate folders so this morning I have added an animation folder, a videos folder and a nelson folder. I have also put all the ship is into the ships folder. I did this as I could not differentiate which piece of work was for which stage of the animation. Hope this ok. Any ideas on how to categories the work would be brill.

Online storage

I've uploaded the cannon on to our online storage now (humyo). I tested out the Resource Collector Tim mentioned. Its a very useful tool, to output all of the resources used into one folder. Keep in mind some textures with .jpegs etc will copy or output the .jpegs into the folder, but the 3dsmax built ones ith in built noise and so on, will just be stored in the .max file. After outputting all o that into the folder, I RAR'd it, and put it on our storage.

Havent really had time to play with humyo yet, but the drag and drop upload was cool. I dont know other peoples experience with ZIP/RAR/TAR compressed files, so if anyone has problems with .rar format, get in touch, but I'm pretty sure either Windows XP has a way of using it like a folder, or WinZip, WinRar, 7-zip can be downloaded to extract them. I'd advise using them on files if they get really large in size, or a huge amount of maps etc.

I'm going into uni again today because my laptops running 3d stuff awfully slow now. Rigging is practically done, should have the sails done tomorrow too. I would like to work with Tim for a bit, to merge the files, and make sure thats all neat, and I think tomorrow would be a good time for me to work on environmental stuff. I can't remember exactly what I'm doing with environmental things, but I want to get a sky dome done.

Looking good!

It's good to see people using the joint blog, and the storage site. I hope this is making things easier. Leah has offered to do the animation of Nelson, and has played around (with the help of James W) with making a smoke effect so those two parts of work that James was going to do should be ok. I'm going to have a look over what else was assigned to him and what work other people are doing or have done and re-assign the rest of his work.

If people could help me out by posting up on here what work they have already completed or are working on that would be a great help.

I just wanted to remind everyone that we should have all the mapping completed by Fri, and that the animators should have an idea of what they are doing, so that the animation can be complete by next week.

If anyone is having any problems please let me know.

Maps List Infos

Remanding List for the map makers Attenion

Map Makers: Tim, Panos, Kieron, Ben, James T, James W

--Jobs--

Main Ship Mapping
French flags
British flags
Start fighting flag

Rigging
Ropes, hooks
Masts
Iron/metal textures

Skin
Blood skins
Hair
Eyes

Uniforms – French, British,
Medals Emblems,
Crew uniforms

Weapons
Cannons
Muskets

Surrounding Environments - Office, Decks Environment
Sea
Sky

Birds

Victory

I need the mast from James T and the sails to fit on the Victory's deck...

Brittish ships

Hey guys, I've just uploaded the other (smaller ships) so the mappers and animators can get busy! ;)

Re-assigning Animation

Today James West has been working on rigging Nelson with a biped. Once completed he is meant to animate Nelson, however if he leaves us I would like to animate Nelson walking as today I have had a go using a biped. James will finish rigging Nelson this week and upload the file for the animation.

James west was also going to be completing the smoke effect which I have completed on my blog. We will need to re-assign the other parts of animating Nelson.

Sails Movement

I have now added a map to the sails added movement. I had to add the canvas map to make the movement show up a little more as the white sail with no map did not the full effect.




I have also added the water. Any ideas on my making the movement more visible or any suggestions let me know.

Uploads

I've just uploaded my lamp, barrel and ammunition to the storage site.

-Ben

Online Storage

K, Guys and Gals,

We now have our very own online storage space. here are all the details. We need to keep all the finished work on here so that everyone can access it as and when they need it. Pass this on to make sure everyone knows.

www.humyo.com

Sign in details:

samantha.holdaway@student.anglia.ac.uk

Password:

battle07

You can upload any files, as you'll see to test i uploaded my room of exploding barrells. Hope to see some more files soon.

Ok, so this week, its 11 o'clock and theres a fair amount of people here, weve just had our meeting and the following has been decided,

We're sticking with all the scenes but were gona concentrate on getting the main ones done so that we have a complete film, were pretty much on time at the moment but we only have 3 WEEKS left so we need to keep focused, and knuckle down, Lara and Richard are going to the library today to try and get hold of some sound effects to add to what Marc has already found.

Most models have been made at this point so were passing them onto the animators and mappers and should start seeing some good results soon. Im gona have a go at one of the animation scenes today using Richards Victory ship. James W may be leaving, which we'll all be sad to see, so we need to reassign his work to other people. So... we need someone to do the nelson animation, and other people animations. This is a major job, anyone who feels they have nothing to do, or maybe wants to try doing some animation then please let me know so that we can get this underway. For now thats all I got to say.

Keep up the good work, those who are contributing on a regular basis, and can we all please a try a little more punctual, we need the entirety of friday lessons to get this work complete.

Also, we need to communicate with each other more, the minute a model is finished/mapped/animated we need to pass it straight over to the next person. Either contact through the blog or through someone who has the persons phone number. We need to contact each other more regularly than just seeing each other on a fri.

Friday 16th November Meeting Minute

Now my job is set as meeting scribe here are the minutes from today's meeting.
Lets start with the modelling.

Modelling
Completed models so far

• Nelson's Hand
• Nelsons Office
• The Victory Ship
• Tim's Modelled ships
• Nelson Himself - Note: nelson currently has two arms and only has one!!

Modelling needed to be completed today:

• We need some sort of group work station where our work can be stored in one place.
• Rigging - James T
• Sails - James T
• Crows nest - James T
• Person In crows nest - James W
• Cannon Deck - James S
• Cannon Balls - Ben
• Cannons - Ben
• Barrels - Ben
• Uniforms - James W will create today.

Note from Tim - He has now blogged on the ships he has created and is contactable via the Internet.

Mapping

Today the modelling needs to be finished so it can be passed onto the mappers and animators. Some of the modellers have been mapping as they have been modelling but modelling needs to be finished to deadline.

Animation

Jobs have now been split between the group

• James W. - Nelson animation - including boning, Smoke. Nelson may prove difficult to animate as Nelson was produced light waves, we will have to wait and see!!

These jobs above may need to be split again depending when James finishes.

• Lara - Ship Movement (still be researched)- This can now start being animated as Richard has completed the Victory. To animate this the parts might have to be group so the all have the same movement. Currently the ship is not mapped, to be done this week.
• Leah - Sails Movement, sea movement & Fire - Will still need a little help from James W. on the sails before leaving to gain further knowledge.
• Sam - Explosions- It may take a while to create the explosions as the animation movement of the other parts needs to be created first to see where this effect will be position.

Sam is also looking at the bullet time effect to be used on some of the scenes.

Finishers

Sound effects- Marc has a CD of sound effect and Lara is finding sound effects on the Internet. Leah is looking at the main music and the credit music which currently stands at Captain Pugwash.

Narrator also needs to be considered and when it will be recorded etc.

Rendering - Think about the use of batch rendering and having a day to render. The key scenes need to be rendered first which are crucial to the storyline.

Transition- When scenes are rendered they need to have a second at the beginning and the end to add transitions without overlapping on the sequence itself.

Comments to be read by ALL !!!!!

• Firstly a very important point, this is a teamwork based module so we must work as a team.
• It is now WEEK 8 we must make a move on this. Time is of the essence!!
• Every week now we need to have a quick meeting at the beginning of each session so we keep up to date and on target.
• People MUST turn up on time or turn up at all!!!!
• A group work station need to be created where all the work can be kept.
• We have a new group blog, give Sam your e-mail and she will send you an e-mail to join.
• When modelling you MUST start naming your parts.
• Panos Please Comment on the parts you will be completing within your groups.

Well...

So, as you can see Leah has kindly posted the minutes from the first meeting up onto our joint blog. It would be really good to see some other blogs being published other than these, such as any comments on how things are going so far, or indeed posting some finished work so that people can see our progress.

I actually want to have a bit of a rant, so please bear with me as this is not aimed at everybody.

OK...
If anyone other than leah, and lara, and myself have been looking at each others blogs then you will have noticed a very good, very well modelled Nelson, which has been slaved over by Ali for a considerably large amount of time. You will notice he has blogged and documented his work so that we can all see the progress. This can also be said for Tim to some extent, although since the blog about his ship, then seagull there hasnt been anything else put up, but he has documented some work. I know for a fact that Marc has finished his model, in fact it was finished by last week which is great, even though I dont have a blogger address that works for him, I know things have been done. Again, the same can be said for Richard, he had nearly completed his model last week. Ben has been modelling, but has also been mapping stuff at the same time, whilst this may seem like a good idea and we are seeing some great work posted on his blog, BECAUSE HE IS DOCUMENTING FOR ALL TO SEE, its not really the way its ment to work, but we'll discuss peolpes opinions on this tomorrow.
People need to be documenting work more.

I appreciate that we all have other stuff going on, and its not always easy to work on this project, but we still need to.

Basically the point I want people to understand is that the blogs are a way for use to work as a group and document our progress so that no one feels 'in the dark'. We need to work together to get this done, and at the moment all I'm seeing is individuals.

Lets start working as a team.

We'll have a meeting first thing tomorrow, so, I suggest anyone with anything to say needs to be there.

Thank you if you read my rant.

Afternoon Meeting Minutes

Friday 26th 1pm - 5pm
This blog shows the minutes take from the afternoon lecture.Final Groups & Their Jobs.

Modellers
- Kieron
- Ali Jobs –Small British ship, Nelson
- Tim Jobs - French ship, Spanish ship, Riffles, Seagulls
- Richard Jobs –The victory ship outside hull
- Ben Jobs – Ammunition, Gunpowder sacks/barrels, barrels, driftwood
- Marc Jobs – Nelson’s office
- James T Jobs – Cannons, Uniforms British & French
- James S Jobs – Cannon DeckShips include rigging, flags, ropes, cannon holes/port holes.

Other items to be modelled are dead people, the sniper, powder monkey, crows nest and driftwood.Cannonballs need to be modelled in several forms, normal, chain cannonballs and grape shot.

Animation
Sam, Leah, James W, Marc, Lara
- Effects Needed – Smoke, Fog, Blood, Splinters,
Animation Sequence
- Scene1 the drawing of the plan by Nelsons hand on parchment
- Scene 2 Fade into an overview of the battlefield and how the ships are positioned in the plan.
- Scene 3 shows the bow of the French ship close up to the camera with British ship line up in the distance.
- Scene 4 a shot of the look out in the crows nest looking at on coming ships. Camera pans round to the front to show the reflection in the telescope.
- Scene 5 shows telescope point of view (POV) shot of enemy ship with a flag raising. The raising flag show it is time to fight.
- Scene6 The lookout shouts down to the people on deck who prepare for battle.
- Scene 7 Panning shot of the side of the ship showing the wooden cannon holes. As the pan continues the port holes open and the cannons emerge. The camera swings round to show all the cannons.
- Scene 8 A shot of the powder monkey filling the cannons and lighting the fuse.
- Scene 9 A shot of cannonballs firing between ships and bursting through a ship sail creating rips and hole, lots of wreckage.
- Scene 10 Front view shot of the bow of the ship sailing towards the enemy. Sows waves crashing against the ship.
- Scene 11 Panning shot of two ships passing each and firing at each other. The front of the British ship crashes into each other breaking off the bow of the other ship.
- Scene 12 POV shot from the powder monkey through the cannon hole. An enemy ship passes and the cannon fire and the cannonball goes through the ship showing the insides.
- Scene 13 POV shout from behind the fired cannonball as it hits the ship.
- Scene 14 Nelson is show pacing up and down the deck.
- Scene 15 A man is shown being shot of the rigging by a musket and falls out of shot.
- Scene 16 A ship being shown under cannon fire. As the ship is hit there is a huge explosion and it begins to sink. There is lots of wreckage and driftwood from the ship in the water.
- Scene 17 Nelson is shown pacing the deck again but from a different angle.
- Scene 18 Panning shot as seaman are shot and fall overboard off their ship.
- Scene 19 As the battle get more intense this scene show the cannons firing and showing the detail of the jerking motion as they fire on passing ships.
- Scene 20 Reaction shot of the cannon fire breaking the mast of the enemy ship.
- Scene 21 An angled shot of sails ripping by a grape shot cannonball.
- Scene 22 Nelson final pacing shot, Pan round Nelson into a POV from his right hand man Hardy.
- Scene 23 Zoomed out shot of the sniper ready to shout Nelson. Zoom into shoulder view then the sniper fires.
- Scene 24 Slow motion shot of nelson being shot and falling to the deck onto his knees. As this happens the gunshot echoes and all other sound fades out.
- Scene 25 POV shot as looks at his hand which is now covered in his own blood.
- Scene 26 French ships sailing away with an audio over the top ‘we won the war, we won the war’.
- Scene 27 POV of nelson’s eyes blurring and slowly shut.
- Scene 28 Scene fades out and writing is shown explain who won the war and other facts about the end of the battle.
- Final Credits of everyone involved in the sequence.

Map Makers
Tim, Panos, Kieron, Ben, James T, James W
Jobs- Ship Mapping– Flags, canvas, French flags, British flags, beginning fight flag
– Rigging
– Ropes, hooks
– Wood
– Hull, masts
– Anchor
– Iron/metal
– Ropes- People
– Skin
– Hair
– Eyes
– Uniforms – French, British, Nelson’s Medals, shoes, crew uniform
- Weapons
– Swords – blade, handle
– Cannons, Muskets – metal, wood
- Surrounding Environments
– Sea, sky– Wreckage, driftwood
– Dead people– Birds

Finishers
Leah, Richard, Ali, Lara
Jobs- Render out animations
- Find sound effects- Find music
- Order animation in Premier Pro- Edit animation length-
Add transitions
- Edit music
- Bring Audio and video together
- Add final credits

Research
The flag to begin the battle.
Detailed facts about the battle.
Look at the uniforms work by officers and the crew.
Look at the detail of the ships used by both sides.