Group Meeting 2

After having a 2nd group meeting, it has been agreed that an engine would be the most practical exhibit to create.

This is because we believe it to the the most interesting compared to the pumps, telephones, radios and other exhibits.

We believe that with the engine, it won't limit us on how creative we can be.

Not only can we present an engine in three dimensional form, but we believe it can also be made interesting to explain how the engine works.

With the use of sound, speech and animation we believe it possible to create an engine.

The group discussed the benefits of producing a 4 stroke engine as well as a 2 stroke engine.
In the end it was decided to go for the 2 stroke. The problem with the 4 stroke is there are far too many parts within the engine that are unseen, so to produce an unfamiliar product would seem senceless.

Thanks to the museum offering a demonstration 2 stroke engine, it allowed group members to take apart and rebuild a basic 2 stroke engine from scratch. This meant that certain group members were familiar with was made such an engine.



The group then discussed what elements would need to be created in order to reproduce the 2 stroke engine, they were:

- Engine casing
- Spark Plug
- Fan
- Pistons
- Animation of Pistons/Fan
- Simulation of firing order

Once created the group would then have to look into produce:

- Textures
- Lighting
- Camera work
- Animation

I believe that the group has a very strong idea for what they want to achieve from this project.

We aim to have a meeting on Friday 16th October where we aim to get dimensions so that each group member can produce their part of the engine so it fits with the others. Once the ratios have been setup it will be time to delegate the tasks.

Back & Sides

Since my previous blog entry I have been concentrating on producing the back and sides to the head.
This consisted of copying existing quads to form the basic shape. Then by using the target weld tool, connecting the vertices together.

Here I learnt how important it is to have the features lined up. Where I was working using only one view I didn't notice that i was moving the points so far out of place that the head appeared lop sided. Even though I thought it was easier working from one view, I decided to use multiple views so I could keep track of where every vertex was being moved to.

I found the tutorial for this section to be poor. The explanation for completing this process seemed rushed, and lead to panic when I wasn't sure how to produce the side of the head.

I realised it best to think back over techniques that I had taught myself during the tutorials so far and was able to produce a full head.

After completing this process I realised that the forehead of my character was petruding too far at the front so decided to adjust this while it was fresh in my memory.



Another problem that I had spotted was the jaw line of the character. It appeared stronger than what the picture appears.



I have decided to edit this area one I have produced the lips. This is incase I am forced to edit the region anyway as it saves time by editing it twice.

Group Meeting 1

The first group meeting was setup for Monday 5th, and even though only two members managed to make it to the meeting some good ideas were discussed. We looked at what exhibits were on offer at the museum.

We ruled out producing an animation that represented how electricity is produced. This was due to the museum already having a physical representation.

The first idea we had was to produce an animated version of an engine that the museum owns. In the meeting notes (below) you can see what me and Kiel discussed as to what aspects of the animation would be important.

Another suggestion to what the group could produce was the pendulum clock. With its simple design, made of basic shaped parts. The only problem was making this into an interesting animation.



The next offical group meeting has been set for Monday 12th October. Here we will discuss in detail what the group believe should be animated within the engine, a shot sequence (storyboard) and possibly a delegation of tasks.


After the initial discussion I am pleased with what Kiel has managed to collect so far. He has a number of detailed pictures of the couple of engines, and has managed to find a design of inside an engine.

If the group can get together often enough then I believe we can succesfully answer the brief.

Mirroring & Nose

Even though it is possible to build the entire face without symmetry, a mirror style technique was used to produce an entire face. This allows both sides of the face to be adjusted with only selecting one point.

When adding the symmetry modifier, I found that the face looked severely pinched around the centre.



I found that the reason for this pinching was I had Vertices too close to the line of symmetry, so moving them across slightly allowed for a more natural curve to the face.


The next stage was to produce the nose. I had a lot of trouble with this process and at the moment the nose still isn't perfect. The main reason for this is due to the way the quads were formed around the nose and mouth.



This is the current state of my characters face, as you can see from the 2 angles the nose doesn't appear natural. The nostrils are currently too small and are set too far forward .

So that I do not waste too much time, I have decided to move onto the next stage and work on the nose at a later in the project if there is time. This way I can continue to gain knowledge with using the techniques that I have already learnt, as well as gain knowledge with using new techniques.





Updated...



I have since managed to edit the area of the nose and have pin pointed the reason for my problems.


I had managed delete a vertex within the nose so not all quads were actually connected to the face.

After correcting this problem I have managed to move the nostrils so they sit deeper. A new problem since moving the nostrils is that the nose appears extremely angular. With the use of the turbosmooth modifier I have found a way of quickly correcting this problem.

Welding and modelling

Today I went to weld all the vertices together, this is done to make sure that when you move one part of the face, the surrounding areas are adjusted.

Next I had to start forming the shape of the face, this gives the three dimensional element to the head. Well this process started well, but I didn't really understand where I was supposed to be moving the vertices to. Here I decided to stop viewing the remainder of the tutorial and mess around with the vertices until I understood what I was actually aiming for.



This was the right thing to do for me,it meant that I understood why the lines curved in certain directions and also allowed me to learn more of the settings within 3ds through mistakes i was making.

One technique that i have managed to learn that will become useful for the future, is producing extra vertices and also deleting unused lines. The reason that this will become useful for this particular project is that i can now recreate areas where i have made mistakes.
For example, areas of my topology did not weld togeter within 3DS. This means that holes were left within the face when setting the topology as a editable poly. (Below I explain how i got round this problem and was able to produce a cleaner looking face design).



With this technique it allowed me to delete lines easily if i had accidentally produced a triangle on the face. All I had to do was select a vertice (vertex mode) or a line (edge mode) and press backspace on the keyboard. This would open up a larger quadand reduce pinching on the face.

A problem I found with this though, is that by deleting an edge it would produce a straight line across the face, this was frustrating if it was the cheek area which required a smooth rounded surface.

But there is another technique that can easily rectify this. By selecting the "Vertex" mode, it gives us the option to added points on the face which will allow you to produce more quads.



With this step you have to select the Edges option and check the "Insert Vertex" option. This allows you to select anywhere on the face where you would need a vertex.

Once the vertex has been setup, go into "Vertex" mode and highlight the vertices that you would like to connect together and press the "Connect" button.

I found this an invaluable technique to use when finding problems with producing the basic shape of the face, and no doubt I will have to use it again at some stage further on with this project.

Character face continued

Over the next week I am to complete the next three tutorials based on the building of a head.

I have just completed adding my topology to 3ds using the line tool. I won't express my thoughts fully, but my word was it just a little bit tricky!

I finished my first attempt, went to connect the entire set of lines and found giant holes in it. So I thought, ok this isn't so bad i'll just go back an edit the lines. More and more triangles started to appear and I was panicing.

The good thing about finding the triangles at such an early stage was that it didn't take long to put things right. I did this by using the line tool again and reattching vertices to produce more squares.

the next stage is to start producing the shape of the face in three dimensional form. I found that when I went to view the vertices, that far to many were appearing, the tutorial shows around 240 vertices for the face. Mine was appearing with a figure closer to 5000.



I'm not sure what setting I had selected for this but I had to produce the head references again.

Museum first impression

So far i believe my tutorial work has been progressing quite well. Even though I have hit a couple of problems, I have managed to get round them thanks to feedback or exploring what options are given with the software.
Now that the first three tutorials have been completed I decided to take a trip to the Museum of Power. I wanted to get a basic idea as to what the museum is about and what exhibitions are on offer.

My initial thought was how small the museum is. It didn't seem the most welcoming of attractions (with it being impossible to track someone down that worked for the museum).

When finally making my way round the exhibits, I was shocked at just how technical they were. The museum was home to numerous styles of pumps, information on how electricity is made and what it is used for.


It was intriguing to learn how the pumps work and what each was used for, but the exhibit that impressed me the most was the car engines on display.



After collecting an varied amount of photos from the museum I have had the chance to think of ideas as to what the group could do to promote an exhibit. A group meeting has been setup for Monday 5th, to compare ideas and detail what the group would like to achieve from the project.