I Little Thing I Would Like to Change.

If I had time to re-render my scene I would like to change the material that was applied to the window inside the room. When you look at the animation it looks like a skyscraper is sliding past the building as you're moving in the room.

This is because i originally applied a map to the envirnoment of the scene and made the window see through. The problem i had with that is that the image didnt look straight when looking out the window. After this I added a new material to the window, which had the skyscraper scene as a diffuse map and this gave a better look, at the time i forgot to remove the environment map and therefore i get this error when running the animation.

A few problems

When animating the scene i found a few problems along the way.

I started off with the camera at the beginning of the corridor and moved this down whilst looking at some of the posters on the wall. I done this by simply turning the auto key feature on and then moving the camera down whilst moving the frame slider down.

The first problem that i had encountered was that it was very difficult to get the hand to open the door the way i wanted it to.

When first moving the hand into the scene, as the hand approached the door handle i adjusted the fingers to make it see as though the hand was getting ready to grip. When i did this initially the hand became very distorted and looked a bit of a mess. To resolve this i adjusted each finger at a time, all of which seem to be ok. I then adjusted the thumb which seemed to be causing the probelem. When this was moving into the door handle the thumb position just needed to be moved up slightly, giving a more smooth feel.

I also then found that it was very hard to get the door handle and the hand to move together. I tried creating a link between the 2 objects but when i played the animation it messed up the position of either the hand or the door handle. The only solution to this i could find was to turn the auto keyframe on and adjust the position of each object every 3 frames to give a smooth looking animation.

When creating the turning page as i had 2 pages each with a different material applied, which were stuck together i found it very hard to animate this turning, without one over lapping the other. This was also a very long process, in which i had to note down how much twist and bend i applied to one and then apply the same to the other. In the end i got the result i wanted.

My Scene

Need a Hand!

When thinking about starting the animation, i decided that I would like to create a hand so that it can be seen opening the door when entering the recording studio.

To do this i firstly got a couple of reference images from the internet, which I would base my hand and arm around.

These images were then added to the background of my top and back viewport and they were locked. This meant that they would be there for a reference.

To begin with i made a box roughly the size of the palm and then added enough segments so that the shape could be easily manipulated. I then turned this box in to an editable poly and applied a turbo smooth. Going back to the edit poly modifier i checked the box to show cage, this meant that the palm could be manipulated with the turbo smooth already applied.

I then moved some of the vertices's on this box to create the basic shape of the palm, making sure that the top of the palm had 5 flat faces where the fingers could be easily attached to.

The same method was used to create the fingers on the hand. The whole model was then adjusted by using the scale and move tool to match the reference image for the shape of a hand.

The fingers were then attached by removing a face from the palm and finger and then welding the vertices's together (the connect tool was used to create another segment on the palm of the hand)

To create the nails at the end of each finger select the polygon at the top of the finger and extrude it downwards into the finger, then keeping this polygon selected scale it down and extrude it back out creating the hand.

The same method was used to connect the hand to an arm.

After making some final adjustments to the shape the arm was now ready to have a group of bones attached. This was done by firstly creating a group of connected bones inside the hand. then applied a skin modifier to the hand and attached the bone to this.

Finally I applied a UVW Map to the hand and applied a skin material.

Here are the results of this:ja

I was very happy with the outcome of the hand model. Raz and James actually used this model in there scene also.

The Lighting

For the lighting I added a series on photometric 100w lightbulb, along with a couple of omni lights, one inside the room the other at the end of the corridor. I also changed the ambient light to be slightly yellow as the light emitted in a room is normal of this shade.

Adding a Corridor

When thinking about animating my scene i decided to add a corridor into what i've already done to give the whole scene a more realistic feel.

The animation would then walk through the corridor open the door to the studio and then look around the studio before sitting down and then looking through the magazine on the table.

Finishing Touches to the Room

Once all of the objects were added to the room and positioned I just needed to add a few final touches before i could begin animating.

I added some boxes and boxes on the shelves, these were made simply using the box tool.

I also used the boolean tool to cut a hole for the door in one of the walls. I then added a pivot door.

Using the sweep tool, i created the door handle and also mirrored this on the other side of the door.

Finally posters were placed around the room and the main part of my scene was complete.