FINISHED SCENE

In my finished scene i added textures and lighting to my mice, and made him walk back and forth instead of round, i played around with adding a camera to get a good paning view but i couldnt get the camera at the right angle.

BIPED WORK

How i fixed the envelopes on my BIPED

In the Control Panel, select the "Envelope" modifier under the "Physique" node. This will expose the orange spline (a curvy line) flowing through the character. Click the spline in the appendage you want to fit better to expose the outer envelope. The envelope will appear, colored purple.

In the "Blending Envelopes" rollout, click the "Outer" button to select the outer envelope, then increase the "Radial Scale" slider. Watch as the envelope widens; as soon as its outline encloses the appendage, stop increasing the slider.

Re-test the appendage by clicking the "Envelope" node again to de-select it, then click the appendage. Rotate it, and notice that the character mesh now sticks to it.

Repeat this process for each part of the character mesh. After fitting all parts, you'll be able to fully control the character through the biped.

BACKGROUND

REPORT

I have settled on my final designs having made only minor colour adjustments to my background. Im very happy to see how far my work has improved. I wasn't sure wether I would enjoy 3D modelling before I started the module, as its been really hard for me to get into it properly but for all of the frustrations of learning 3DS Max I have really enjoyed the module. The steep learning curve of the software and trying to comprehend working in 3D was very difficult at first but after I learnt the basics I slowly started creating my first model. I found I had to start creating my models over and over, I started from scratch on my first model. But each time I realised what was going wrong and hopefully wont make similar mistakes again. A big problem I had was using far too many polygons in my models which made, amongst other things, using UVW unwrap difficult due to the fact I couldn't stitch together the sections very easily. I often found I was doing things in the wrong way, but I had put too much time and effort in to start again.

Its been a real struggle for me to get my model to the final finished stage, but i am getting there and although i haven't gone down the exact route i wanted i have really learn a bit more, i do enjoy it but i think the lack of patience i have shows in the lack of my work, i need really to learn the basics and ins and outs before i really get involved with 3D animations, now i feel alot more comfortable and at ease with designing and making characters specially as designing mine was a real learning curve.

The areas i enjoyed were designing my scene and character, and then once designing him adding the textures and layers, as well as making him walk. i struggled with a few areas on 3D max like the biped and the envelopes.

UPDATES

Blog update:



Now onto the skinning which using the tutorial videos of skinning has made it alot easier, but ive had difficulty in getting the right section of the body selected as its not as easy as it looks!



my background is complete, i just need to change it slighty on one of the scenes, it basically shows a dark layer where the whole part is animated, as i set out the whole animation and design has been very simple, but i have sacrified the quality.

SCREENSHOTS

Here's my wolf model for the fable I'll be animating. Screen dumps below show the modeling process. I used a mouse tutorial provided by Richard and applied the techniques there to my own needs.

CONCEPTS

My Final Animation will consist of a story-line along the cat fable but with a few twists and different angles to the story, as shown in my story boards!

heres a quick preview of how my Mice will look. The stage that i am currently at is i have finished my 3D design of my mouse and need to get it animated, also i need to finish the background and features of the the mice, the only thing i am worried about is not quite achieving the quality i set out to achieve.

I my final ideas where alot more in detail, and involved the mice whering small capes over the heads and carrying tourches, but the feel and size of my mice where how the pictures show, so it has that rough and rigid look.