Evaluation

As a group overall, believe the project was a success. We only received a few criticisms and these can easily be fixed (for the most part). As an individual, I am pleased with the amount of work that went into my animation, although I feel it is a shame that most of it either isn't seen, or is only seen briefly.

The intro came out just as I wanted, especially after sound was added. I feel the car animation could have been made better if it fell into the actual entrance to the roller coaster, although this would require more modelling than time allowed as I felt I would have to model most of southend seafront (or at least adventure island) to make it not look out of place.

The roller coaster was meant to start at the bottom and work it's way up, however due to the previous reason, I felt I had to start with it facing the sky, missing out the ramp and stairs. I'm not sure how I could have made this part better, possibly adding music. For the still in the background, I would have preferred to to be of a higher resolution, but it was the best I could find.

I think the transition to the next scene was good, but a bit sudden. If I had modelled the bottom of the roller coaster, I could have used motion blur to merge into the next scene.

The sounds and music go well in my opinion, although the voice sounds could have been done better if they were made professionally.

Despite the flaws, I believe it is a good quality animation, spoiled slightly by the lack of characters in the casino scene, but made up in the gig.

An odd bug appeared where I would lose the UVW map on my coaster car, because of this it rendered once, but in the main file it no longer works.

The original file I used to animate the clip has been lost, an attempt to recreate it has been made, but it isn’t identical.

Premier Pro

I compiled the pieces using Adobe Premier Pro CS4, added the remaining sounds and music, and added transition effects between each scene. I also added the ending clip of the website.

Once it was ready, I rendered it in 720p using the mjpeg compressor, however this created a 2.6GB file which lagged. took some advice from another group and rendered it as an f4v, and the size shrank to 26MB, without losing too much quality.

Intro

Once the main animation was complete, I created the intro. The intro consists of text that has been converted into editable polys, a plane on the ground, a target spotlight and a rigid body collection.

I set the "Essex" obeject to Inactive, and gave the "Nightlife"Object some mass. I then dropped them in turn (setting "Essex" to active later in the animation). I found that the object collided and fell over to begin with. So I created two planes either side of the objects to guide them as they fell. I set these to unrenderable so they wouldn't be seen in the animation.

Finally, I had my character drop in from above. I tried to exempt it from lighting, but for some reason it didn't work.

Sounds

The banging sounds in the intro were found online, the character's voice was recorded by me.

I recorded my own sound effects for the characters in the first scene. I tried to create the image of him falling at first, then muffled screams as they got higher. At the tip, there is a long scream. We figured that since it is a cartoony animation, real voices would be inappropriate. The cartoon-drop sound added to the theme, and I found sounds to give a thud as the character lands, and a mechanical sound as the safety harness closes.

The clicking sound as you go up the roller coaster was found online, and was a mechanical lathe.

I also sourced the sounds for the music in the two other scenes and the applause.

All sounds (including songs) are royalty free, to avoid copyright infringement.

Sources:

Crash - http://media.freesound.org/data/93/sounds/93302__m_O_m__crash_explosion_debris_01.wav

Safety harness - http://media.freesound.org/data/102/sounds/102966__LS__machinesounds.wav

Thud - http://media.freesound.org/data/108/sounds/108617__juskiddink__Thud_dry.wav

Mechanical clicking - http://media.freesound.org/data/58/sounds/58496__Benboncan__Treadle_Metalworking_Lathe.wav

Cartoon fall - http://media.freesound.org/data/102/sounds/102966__LS__machinesounds.wav

Casino music - http://www.danosongs.com/music/danosongs.com-rocketry.mp3

Gig music - http://www.danosongs.com/music/danosongs.com-artofgardens-intsr.mp3

Play music - http://www.danosongs.com/music/danosongs.com-silvershine.mp3

Second Animation

The initial idea for this animation was going to be a first-person view of going up the roller coaster, having the character blink and close his eyes at the top. In practice however, this looked horrible, and the fact that none of the characters have eyes adds to the confusion.

So I added the car from the first animation and did an over-the-shoulder view so the middle so that two heads were visible, as well as most of the track. When the car reaches the end, the car expands and moves to give the illusion that the camera zooms in on the seat (giving the illusion that a person looked down in fear).

In the final animation, the characters have textures. This file was lost however, so I had to recreate it and didn't put the individual textures back.

First animation

I placed all the characters I'd made into the car, lowered the safety harnesses, leaving one spare for the main character.

The original animation was to have the main character standing still, and have the car "scoop" him up. Although because of feedback which suggested it looked like he was being run over, I made him fall into the car instead.

Once the character is in, and the harness lowered, I rotated the camera around the car, before zooming into a seat and starting the next part of the animation.

Odd uvw bug (described in evaluation)

Characters

We decided on simple characters, inspired partly by the Windows Live logo.

The head is a simple sphere, the male body was a sphere that I cut in half. I capped the end and stretched it down to create the bottom. I cut the very top off, added the collar-type shape, then capped. The female body was made more triangular and thinner than the male counterpart.

I did an unwrap UVW on both, and created a standard template to create mass "costumes" for the characters. I then distributed the assets required to create the characters to the rest of my group.

I also created the Romeo texture.

Staircase

I created the stairs by using a box, altering the position of the segments to create an edge. I extruded out then scaled up for each step, extruding in to give it some depth. I altered the edges so it matched the reference images and began work on the handrail.

I created the handrail from a single box, and removed the inner parts, creating new polys as I went. I altered it to follow the stairs.

I would have added a detailed texture, but shortly after finishing it, I realised that I couldn't show it in the animation.

Frame

The next step was to create the frame for the tracks to sit on. I started out by creating a box scaling it to the height of the tracks. I then duplicated this 3 times to create the 4 corners of the frame.

I then created a box to cover the middle, scaled inner polygons to create a rim, and deleted the inner section. I then created polygons over the empty areas. I drew a line the height of the frame, and used the spacing tool to place them.

To create the diagonal bars, I used the same method of spacing and cloning to fit them. I used reference images to get as close as possible to the real thing.

Centre

The middle of the track was made in a similar way to the first part. It is comprised of 2 boxes on a scaled version of the initial line that have been flattened.

The chain in the centre is a plane made in the same way, with a custom-made chain texture on it.

The two outer lines on the middle are also created this way using boxes.

The bars connecting the outer part and the inner part were made using the spacing tool to duplicate them down the line.

Roller coaster

Now that I have the car done, I can move on to the track. I started by creating a line in the shape of the main drop (I feel I don't have time to create the whole track). From this, I took a cylinder with a fairly high side count, and applied a PathDeform modifier to it. I then attached this to the line I created to form the first half of the track. I then created a second instance of it to create the second half.

To create the horizontal bars in between the track,s I created a single box and fitted it. I then used the spacing tool to duplicate it along the line. I aligned any rogue bars and the main body of the track was completed.

Putting it all together

Once I had all of the components made, I create a clone of the car and tweaked the front end to fit it behind the first. I then attempted to use a UVW unwrap, which worked well, however due to a hardware failure it was lost. My next attempt was to select individual polys and add the texture to them. This worked well and gave the look I wanted.

To match the real car, I added a few extra features to the front car.

Seat backing

The back of the seat is a chamfered cube that's been flattened and scaled on both sides. The base was then extruded and scaled to form the rest of the seat.

Safety harness

I also created the safety harness from a cylinder which I extruded and scaled to form the correct shape. The handle on the harness was extruded from one of the polygons and connected in the middle.

I applied a symmetry modifier and meshsmooth, as well as adding a black texture.

I reused this handle and extended it to form the bar at the front of the car.

Coaster car

My first task was the coaster car. I created the initial shape using splines and closed it. I then separated it into quads.

I then extruded it to form a single seat, then extruded part to form a separate section and extruded the original selection. I then target welded the vertices to form a complete object.

I then applied a symmetry modifier to complete the main body of the car.

Initial ideas

After meeting as a group, we decided on a cartoonish style, and assigned the tasks. Since there was only 3 of us, the nightclub would be left and if someone finished theirs, they can take it on.

My first task was to create the car for the roller coaster.

Places

We have chosen Essex Nightlife for our animation, for this we have decided we will need to produce a theme park, a nightclub, a casino, a theatre and a gig venue. The best place for all of these is southend, so we scouted the locations and took pictures of where we could.

I was the one taking the pictures, and the first stop was Adventure Island. I'd picked Rage (roller coaster) to be the main focus of the animation.

22 pictures were taken in this location.

After this, the next stop was Maxims Casino. This was Ross' task, however we could not photograph inside the casino itself.

Next was the theatre. We decided on the palace theatre, and got a few pictures from the display outside. However, we discovered the Cliffs Pavilion was more popular and hosted both theatrical and musical events.

We didn't have time to see the Nightclub, although t most likely would have been closed at that time of day.

First post

We've been tasked with making a 3D animation on behalf of Essex County Council for www.VisitEssex.com. The animation will need to show a part of Essex to promote tourism for the county.

We will be working in groups to create this animation, so co-ordination is key.

My group consists of myself, Carl Barker and Ross Williams. I have worked with both previously, and I know I can get along with them.