Week Four - Lighting

This weeks tutorial was all about learning to use the lighting tools and how they can be used to created different effects.
First of all we were asked to download a Pumpkin file from this site and then to add materials to it, this pumpkin was then used in our first part of the tutorial about lighting. We learned how putting certain lighting tools in specific places allows shadows to be shown and thrown about in certain ways and certain colours.

Below are some images of the pumpkin in the design stage and with a final rendor:

Design of Pumpkin

 

Rendor of Pumpkin

Another thing you can do with lighting is change the colour of the object on the stage by shining different colours lights at the objects. An example of this is below:

 

Colours to begin with

 

Rendor with the coloured lights effect

From the images above you can see that whilst shining different colours lights the objects change but within the rendored image above all the objects are red expect a single blue cylinder, this is because whilst creating the lights you can select which images are effected by which lights, so the blue cylinder is the only object effected by the blue light and the rest are effected by a red light.


Another type of lighting is the day light effect, this effect shows images as if they had the sun shown on them. An interesting thing about this type of lighting is that to change the direction of the light you must change the way the compass faces that appears when the day light object is created, you can also change the time of the day to change were about the sun is in the sky.
This allows the objects to have some very interesting effects and shadows, images below show the day light effect on reflective objects.

Day light being created

Day light effect when rendored

Close up to the objects

Week three

In week three's tutorial we were taught how to use materials, this is usefully for applying real looks to images or animations that have been created, the example we did was we created a leaf using a plane and then used the materials to insert an image we were given on to the plane to make it look realistic.

To get to the materials editor you can simply press the M key and this will bring it up, as well as a list of different settings each useful for doing different things, such as changing the effects of the images within the material editor.

At the moment i cant upload my version of the leaf as im currently at home and will hopefully upload it when im next at university.

Tutorial Two

In Tutorial Two we were asked to created a tank, below is my attempt going through the stages:

 

The first thing i had to do was get the tank plans from Richards Blog and save them, then i inserted them into 3D Studio Max.

 

Next i had to start creating the tank using different shapes and techniques, the first thing i created was the wheels, treads and base of the tank, this was done mainly by using Cylinders and Boxes for the wheels and bases. To create the treads i used the line tool and manipulated the lines to create the effect of treads.

 

After creating the treads, wheels and base i created the tanks top half, this included the "hatch" part of the tank as well as the main section of the tank, again these were done by simply using the box tool and manipulating them by converting them to editable poly and then manipulating the edges and vectors from there on.

 

 Then i created the cannon on the tank, this was done by just using the Cylinder tool again. I also manipulated the "hatch" part of the tank to invert it within itself to give it a "dented" look as if to show that there was a hole there.

This is the end look of my tank, i believe it looks okay but could do with some work. As this is only the second time i have ever created anything in 3D Studio Max i still believe it was quite good.

Research board

This is my Research board, abit late as i have been abit ill for the past few days but here none the less!

For my animation i have decided to go with creating a Casino Royale trailer as i feel this trailer would be the most interesting to animate..

I hope this is right as i've never actually done one of these before.