Final Animation Uploaded

Final Animation

I have started uploading files into Premier. I have also been looking at the music. Tim has given some music and it amazing can't stop listening to Apocalytica. Monday the music can be trimmed and a choice can be made by all. If anyone has music please bring it Monday or put it up on humyo and blog up when you do.

Environment import tutorial

I just helped out lara with importing my sky map, and found it to be a lot harder than I originally thought. So I decided to write a short guide for anyone who wants to use the sky in any renders. The images are shrunk to fit on the page, click them to see full-size.

You will need:
DARK SKY 2.jpg
James textures.mat

Both are on our humyo account in the 'Sky' directory. Open the .max file that you want to put the sky into (i.e. your animation). Press M to open the material editor, then find a blank(default) material, click it, and press G to "get material" or use the button shown on the left.

Now, choose "Mtl library" where it says "Browse From:", and click 'Open'. Then go find the .mat file you downloaded, and it should have 3 materials in it. You probably want 'Gloomy Sky'.










Now this is kinda where I messed up. I thought that a .mat file would store the images and so on, but it doesnt. So you'll need to tell max, where the actual .jpg is again. To do that, scroll down on the material editor, to Bitmap parameters and click the big button to relocate the file.

Final thing to do, is set that material as an environment. Press '8' to make the Environments window appear (or find it on the toolbar under 'render'). Then drag your material over to the button that holds the environment map. You want to make an instance, that way any adits to the material will effect the one being used in the environment.

As you can see, a benefit of spherical environments, is that the reflections come out nice in close-ups. A lot of people use high quality reflections as an illusion of detail in the scene.

That instance copy thing can be useful, because I found that you can do it the other way around. You could load a .jpg into the environment button, then drag an instance into your material editor, to make it spherical, shiny, bright or whatever. For example if you want a real simple sky, just create a gradient, chuck it in the editor, make the gradient blue to white, and spherical, and thats it.

Music

Yesterday I researched a few pieces of music which I thought might fit. I will bring them in Friday so you can all say what you think.

Scene 20 completed

I will upload the mast breaking scene 20 tomorrow.

Ships!

OK, Humyo was not letting me download the Trinidad ship properly, but I managed to get a copy from Tim, however problems again have occurred. I presume that Tim did not texture the ship green, because I have not got the version that is mapped, again! And I don't even know how! This is confusing me sooooooo much! I am animating them though now, so hopefully I can ask Tim to see if he can sort out this problem.

Fiday 30th meeting minutes

Hello All,
If you have any problems downloading files use firefox not Internet explorer.
All the ships are mapped and ready on humyo.Animation needs to be finished for Friday morning, all scene complete and rendered.
scenes completed
scene 1 - Marc
Scene 3 - Lara and nine and ten when re-angled

Jobs assigned for animation
ship movement using reactor - Lara
Sail movement, sea/wave movement and fire- Leah
Explosions - Sam
All animator are gathering and animating the scenes.

Help is being given by the other team members to animate.
Scenes which can be removed 11, 14, 16

Scene to be created by
Scene 12 - Ben
Scene 13 - Tim
Nelson walking Scene - Leah
Nelson Being shot Movement - Leah
Blood for scene above - Tim and James T (I think please let me know)
Nelson's Face - Kerion
Cannon Motion - James S
Scene 21- Explosion by Sam

Scene to be created by anyone
Scene 20 - Mast Breaking
Model and animate the Shooter
Crew Member Needed - In the process of being made

Please will everyone help with animation.
Thank you Tim for taking scenes home to render.

Note to Tim. I forgot to mention please render the nelson walking scene from two different angles. sorry I forgot, Thank you

Monday!

Being able to use Max on a Monday is quite useful, Sam managed to complete scene 21, minus the sky, Lara has been creating good wakes, along with having some problems with her wake, one of the problems was quite amusing and made her ship look like it was floating, as though abducted by aliens. :) :) Lara will understand (scene 3, adapted to create scene 9 and 10). Leah has created a very good Nelson falling to the ship deck after being shot. Kieron has been working hard on the facial movements of Nelson, and I believe is using Leah animation and adapting part of it for the scenes where his facial expression is focused upon (scenes17 and 19). If anyone is unsure as to what happens in the scenes, refer to Ali's blogs with the storyboards. Ben also made an appearance and he is working on the animation from inside to gun deck, we had a little ca ht about it and it will now, briefly, involve a crew member (scene 12). Were really approaching the crucial point now and ideally the finishers need to have all the animations, complete, by Friday morning. This means animated and rendered. As for mentioned in the Friday meeting, Tim has been nice enough to offer his computer for rendering purposes. This means that the complete animations along with all the related files needed, for mapping etc, need to be passed onto him before Thursday. I know he's not a fan of Humyo, as he doesn't have very good net connection of an evening, so if you manage to complete any animations and can't render them yourself, try and get in touch with Tim. I have his number for any of you who don't.

I believe we can do this guys, lets all work hard and create a great final piece.

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......."