About the authorMy name is Marquise Deal, sophomore at Durham School of the Arts.
Disclaimer: " views and opinions expressed in this blog are solely those of the author and do not represent those of Durham School of the Arts or Durham Public Schools.")
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I personally would describe this quarter as me very problematic and requires a lot of self problem solving. Having to do a lot of reading and research on ways to fix your issues in 3ds Max, finding easier ways to get the final product you want, but also done the correct way so you receive the grade. I'm going to briefly describe my struggles of each lesson. Cameras Now with cameras I did not have a whole lot of troubles. Just because i'm so familiar with them outside of this class. The only issue I would say I had with cameras was finding the correct lighting settings for most of the scenes I had modeled and animated. Also finding the right angle to put the cameras at were a challenge. Rigging I have not had to start really working with rigging. But knowing the terms has been a struggle. So studying the terms would be a easy way to solve this. Animation Ok this is the second most problematic lesson I have worked with this year. Recently I had just done a Bouncy Ball activity. Working in the curve editor and with key frames was a pain in the ass honestly. I ended up for this activity copy my first two keyframes and using those as a template for the rest of the animation and just changed the X, Y and Z coordinates when I wanted to change the direction of the ball. (I've added the video in so you can watch) Lighting My actual least favorite was lighting. Just for the simple fact that you'd have to do so much playing around with the settings and I personally just did not have the time for error fail during the time we were learning lighting. So I would ask classmates on their settings and see if it would fit my modeling and just changed those settings too the liking of the scene. In Conclusion;
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As easy as Lighting sounds, it's actually quite difficult while working with it in 3d modeling. Lighting with other digital arts are way more easier, like working with lighting with video and photography is quite simple you change the settings on your camera or use natural lighting. But with 3d modeling you have to adjust settings like intensity, decay, attenuation. Those settings i'm not quite familiar with. Things like color, temperature and contrast are things i'm familiar with because they're quite universal in the digital arts world.
Also having to be familiar with all the lights to create a certain effect. If you want a shadow of a lamp but also want a light coming out of the lamp. You have to know how to use Omni, which lights up all directions and then a Target Spot which lights up in a cone shaped direction. You want to use the Omni to create the shadow of the lamp and then Target to create the "lamp light". See its quite different from lighting with a camera and video. You actually have to create the light yourself and adjust the settings until it meets the requirements for which you want. I've did some research on why lighting is so important in 3d modeling, here's what i discovered. That choosing the correct/perfect lighting technique can enhance a modeling project. Also lighting in a video games, they're mostly interactive and lighting can effect the characters actions. A example would be a character shooting could shoot out a light in the game and it would change the rest of the game is played. In Conclusion;
References; “Light Up Your World: How Lighting Makes All the Difference for Games.” Pluralsight, 15 Mar. 2014, www.pluralsight.com/blog/film-games/understanding-the-importance-of-lighting-for-games. “Light Up Your World: How Lighting Makes All the Difference for Games.” Pluralsight, 15 Mar. 2014, www.pluralsight.com/blog/film-games/understanding-the-importance-of-lighting-for-games. These last couple of days in DDA II class, we started working with UVW mapping. Which is wrapping a object with a bitmap texture. So far it's been pretty easy, Taking bitmaps and adding them to a standard material.
So whats is the hardest part I have while working with UVW maps? Like I said previously its all pretty easy but the hardest or most annoying part I would say is, getting everything lined up and being accurate. While doing my Boxing Things Up assignment I created my own video game box. I took all the pictures and cropped them in Adobe Photoshop, then added them to each side of the box I created in 3ds Max. But some images did not automatically fit into the poly. So I had to rotate the "Parameter" 180 degrees for side 01 and side 02. Another frustrating thing is the pre-production. When taking the photos you have to make sure everything is symmetrical to avoid white corners in 3ds. One thing that surprised me is how realistic it looks in the end product. Like it literally looked the real life box. In Conclusion;
This year I have had the opportunity to work with 3ds max in detail. Aside from the large workload and deadlines, its been a pleasing year so far.
To be completely honest, I have not yet worked with Simulations all but one time. I created a basic tiger clothed pillow for my portfolio. It was straight forward and easy too use. But I was asked the question, what simulation tools and techniques do you think you would get the most use out of in creating a video game and why? Daylight Systems & Cloth System would be used honestly. Lets start with the Cloth System and lets say we're making a superhero and villain video game. You need costumes/clothing for the characters, and using the cloth system would give them realistic fabric clothing and then you can add material you designed in Photoshop for the characters costume/clothing. Now unless our game is set in night for the entirety of the game. We need to simulate our scene from day to night. The Daylight System helps model the transition from night to day or day to night and any type of atmospheric changes. Summaries;
“Simulations and Effects ” Autodesk Support & Learning, 15 June 2017. “Sunlight and Daylight Systems” Autodesk Support & Learning, 5 Dec. 2017. Another week down with 3ds maxs. I feel way more confident than I did than the past couple of weeks. I was finally introduced to "materials". Materials allow you to add specific effects to a certain part of a primitive. Everything is easy to manipulate and navigate when your working with materials. This is something I was hoping that came with 3ds max. But one thing I am still confused with is which materials input to what and which don't. So I researched more about this subject.
You have the two main components when working with materials. Maps and standards, maps go into standards. Example say you wanted to create a nice looking spaceship. You would create you spaceship using a box primitive and messing around with the vertexes after converting it to a editable poly. Then click the "m" key to maximize the materials window. Now you drag out the standard material. Now you want to add like a NASA logo on top on the spaceship so you would want to use the bitmap "map" and set that as your diffuse color. Now you want to add more but you can't because their can only be one diffuse color for a standard. This is when you want to use the "composite" standard so you can add multiple maps. You can now add things like the marble tint, dent, cellular to make it look more of a spaceship. In Conclusion;
References; https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/3ds-max/getting-started/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2018/ENU/3DSMax-Tutorial/files/GUID-5BA72891-97EC-4688-8B50-9FACCF1FF040-htm.html This week I worked a 3D modeling project with a lot of freedom. I decided to create a modernized lamp. I referenced it to a lamp I found on google with holes in it, as well as a box/spherical body to it. Immediately I knew I had to use a box primitive and turn it into a editable poly and then add the spherify modifier. Then modify it into a sphere. Then I Ctrl-clicked out a pattern and once I did that all the way around the sphere. Once that was finished I extruded it inward to create that hole effect.
Next I had to add the actually lamp part. So the last primitive I used was the cylinder. I made one with the dimensions so It was real tall and skinny. That resembled the lamp rod. Then lastly I need to make a lamp cover. So I made another cylinder and scaled that one to be a little bit larger. This was my final product. |
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