Metal Sonic Update

Okay, now I know why it was taking my University classmates several hours to render just a few seconds of their animations, whilst it only took me about a 10th of the time.

Before I explain why, here is a few comparison images of my model with some Official Concept art:



As it can be seen, I have managed to create a successful model true to the concept images. The only major areas that need improving on are the dimensions of the hands and feet. The reference image that I was working from when creating the model cut off just below the body, making it difficult for me to model the hands and feet accurately. Despite this though, I still believe that they still look in proportion to the rest of the body.

Now onto Mental Ray...

I finally applied Mental Ray to my model and it made an enormous difference:


The model on the left is before Mental Ray was applied, and the ones on the right are after it was applied, and are shown in different lighting.

It instantly gave the model an element of realism, making it much more appealing to the eye. However, at the expense of the realistic lighting, it now takes 10 times longer to render each frame. In fact, it took 3 and a half hours to render 6 seconds of Metal Sonic's eyes flickering on and off whilst the model remained still. Not only this, but my laptop is seriously struggling to run with Mental Ray applied.

Unfortunately due to these reasons, I am unable to complete the short animation that I had planned. As I am no longer a student, I don't have access to the computers at the University, so all I have to render my model is my laptop. It just sadly cant be done. So I have decided to move on from this project. Maybe one day I will animate the model without Mental Ray applied.

3D Model - Metal Sonic

I thought it was about time that I made a much more detailed model. At first I wasnt sure what to do, but as I am a huge Sonic The Hedgehog fan, I thought that I should make a model of one of the characters from the games. I decided to go with the robot character 'Metal Sonic', as I wanted to experiment with the mental ray option in 3DS Max, and I thought that using a character with a reflective body would be perfect.

Concept Art of Metal Sonic by SEGA


It took some time, but after several long hours, I made this:

My model of Metal Sonic

I am extremely happy with this model. When I started creating it, I never imagined that it would turn out as close to the original design as it has. It isnt without its faults though. Unfortunately there are a few traingle polygons. I did try to avoid these at all costs, but found that the only way to get rid of them was to add another line of polygons all the way around the model. I am trying to avoid creating models with excessive amount of polygons, so I decided not to fix the triangle polygons for this reason.

At the moment, the textures have simply been glossed up in order to give it a reflective look. I didnt get around to using mental ray because by the time I finished the model, I was so pleased with it that I just decided to leave it.

I am currently in the process of rigging the model and will then use it to create a short animation. I will apply mental ray to it then.


I finished this in july 2011.

Animation - Disco Beaver

After finishing uni and realising that despite my love of 3D modelling, I had little to show for it, I decided to get to work on a brand new animation. This way I could I would be able to add something to my port folio, as well as use this as an opportunity to improve my animation skills.

I really enjoyed the last project that I did, which was the short animation aimed at children, so I decided to do another one in the same style. One of the first things that I decided on was making the characters dance, as dancing involves a lot of movement, and therefore meant that it would test my animating skills. I eventually decided on having a beaver as the main character, as it rhymed with fever, as in disco fever. I also included a wolf character for the story.


Disco Beaver, and the Wolf!


The animation is almost 5 minutes long. It starts off with the beaver building a dance floor. Once he completes it, he starts to dance, only to be interrupted by a wolf. The beaver thinks that the wolf is about to eat him, but infact the wolf wants to join in with the dancing, so the two dance together.

Its a light-hearted story to suit the simple model style of the characters. I believe that it would be suitable for children, much like my last project, 'Pigham'.

Disco fever!

I am satisfied with the final animation. Whilst I believe that there is certainly room for improvement, it is still a good quality animation. The main aspects that I would like to improve on is the walking animation of both characters and the lighting. As I used my own bone rig for the biped of the models, I was unable to use the built-in walking animation that Max provides. I have to work on the animation in order to make it more fluent. I would also vastle improve the overall lighting. Lighting has never been my strong point, but I would love to one day be able to create realistic lighting in order to make my animations much more effective.

Very cool


The animation can be viewed here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lD_-unfJOg

NOTE - Without thinking, I decided to use copyrighted music for the dances rather than royalty free music. As Youtube is extremely strict with copyrights, it may be possible that the music in the video is eventually replaced, or the video itself may even unfortunately be completely taken down.

I completed this animation in june 2011.

Unity Game - Celestial Void

This was a project that I had to complete in my third year of University. I had to create a demo of a new game that would meet the specifications of a client using the Unity video game engine.

The programming side of this project was a bit of a nightmare, as I find it quite difficult. However, I very much enjoyed the design side. I decided to go with a First Person Shooter game, inspired by Nintendo's 'Metroid Prime' series, as FPS games are extremely popular.

When designing the characters of the game, I purposely decided to make them quite basic. This was because I had never used Unity before, and was not aware of how detailed the models could be before causing memory issues. As it turns out, I could have given them more detail, but I stuck with the simple models as I felt that they were still visually appealing.

From left to right: The friendly alien, the main character and the boss

As I enjoy animating, I decided to create a short 20 second opening to my game in order to establish the story and mood.
The main character receiving a distress call from an alien planet

Using Unity to create a video game demo was a challenging, yet enjoyable experience. It allowed me to see my 3D models in a different light. While it certainly was great to see the combination of my programming and models to fuse together into a game, I think that I would much rather stick with the modelling and animating side of game development.

View of the entire level in Unity


This was completed as part of my University course in April 2011.

Introduction

The aim of this blog will be to show some other 3D related projects that I completed both whilst at uni, and afterwards.

Instead of the usual layout that I have followed on my previous blogs, each project will be confined to a single blog post.