Unit 52 3D Animation

3D modelling with Cinema 4D

Making a simple scene

Learning the basics of 3D by creating a simple scene with some basic 3 dimensional objects.

By making this scene we learned a lot about how Cinema 4D functions.

The steps i did to create this scene, was to first start out by creating the floor, to do this i added a plane which i then gave a tiled texture to and gave it a reflection effect.

I then added the basic primitive objects, I added a cone, a cube and a sphere.

I then gave the primitive objects a simple coloured material and a reflective effect.

And the finish the scene i added a light source.

Making a basic ipod

To make these ipods i started off by creating a cube which i then modified it's dimensions to get the shape of the ipod and added a fillet to create the rounded edges. I then went on to create  the screen with a thin cuboid and the buttons with a thin tube. And then i added the materials, i imported a photoshopped image of a cool equalizer i found on the web and set it as a texture on the screen and then i added a customised the ui buttons image to the tube, and finally i changed the colour of the ipod and duplicated it and changed the colour of the second one.

Making a Glass Bottle

To make this Bottle i had to first look for an image of a bottle i wanted to recreate with the software.

Once i found my image i placed it in Cinema 4D and used the spine tool to trace the half of the bottle image, i then placed the spine in Lathe NURBS which crated the whole of the bottle.

I then quickly made a simple cork for the bottle and gave it a cork texture.

To create the glass texture look i changed the texture options to transparency instead of colour and tinted the glass with a very slight blue colour.

Small animation in cinema 4D

I made a weird looking spaceship using a cube and modifying it with some extruding tools, once finished I used the subdivision surfaces tool to get rid of all the hard edges and make it rounded.

I then set it up for an animation by giving the background a sky texture and by placing the ship in different locations for different frames to create the animation.

Making quick ball vs obstacles  animations

I made an animation using cinema4D that shows a ball rolling over a ramp.

this animation was quick simple to make, but at times it was kind of complicated to create good looking ball physics.

I then made a more complex animation with a ball going through some kind of obstacle course to further test my animation skills. When making this animation i slightly messed up as i forgot to make the ball's rolling animation before making it's positioning animation but i slowly managed to make it move nicely but i do think i could of done better.

Making earphones

We were quickly shown how to make a pair of earphones and then we were told to create our own pair with cinema 4D.

To make these i first started out by placing some circles of different sizes next to each other to form the shape of an earphone, once I had enough circles I used the loft tool to connect all the circles together to give the 3D shape of the headphone, I then adjusted some of the circles to make it look a bit more correct. I then went on to creating the cord, to do the cord I needed to place a freehand line next to a circle and then use the sweep tool to complete it. After that I connected the cord with the earphone piece and duplicated the whole thing and placed the duplicate in a good position, I then created the rest of the cord and jack using very similar techniques.

Text animation test
Making a quick text animation using the different tools in cinema 4D.
To make this I used the freehand text tool and attached it to a sweep to make it 3D i then messed around with some of it's properties to animate it an create different effects

Following a cinema 4D tutorial to learn some new techniques

I made this thanks to THIS tutorial.

From this tutorial i learned a bit more on how materials work, how lighting works and some speacial lighting effects like the sun and shine effect you can see.

Creating a game character in cinema 4D

I made the character Sackboy from little big planet with the help of some basic front and side drawing of the character. I used these images as a template for tracing the characters body parts by reshaping cubes to form 3d shapes that fit the character's image. These 3D shapes were then smoothed out thanks to the HyperNURBS tool. After creating all the different  body pieces I applied a sack texture and added some eyes. The mouth was created thanks to a rounded shape and the boole tool to make the rounded shape indent the head to create the mouth hole. And finally i create the iconic zipper the character has.

Final result

I think that my recreation of Sackboy in cinema4D is very successful.

Animating SackBoy

To make SackBoy's limbs animatable i needed to first give the model a skeleton so it can be articulated and moved accordingly.

Video of the animation

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Making a 3D sci-fi Animation

What is animation?
Animation is a simulation/illusion of movement created by displaying a series of pictures, or frames.

What is 3D animation and how is it made?
A 3D animation is an animated video/movie with 3D visuals. 3D animations are produced with the help of digital software such as 3DS Max, Maya and Cinema4D. The software is used to model and create 3D objects, characters and environments that can then be animated through the use of many different animation techniques. HERE is a quick video that explains the process in much more detail.

How is 3D Animation used within the industry
3D animations isn't only used for the creation of animated films and short 3D animations it's also used in advertisement, Architecture, video game development, Film and visual effects, engineering, scientific simulations, illustrations, product design and much more.
Here are some examples of 3D animation used within some of these areas i mentioned.

Here is a CGI VFX breakdown of the movie Jurassic World and it shows many different live action video effects for implementing 3D animations. This is great for making movie scenarios a monsters a lot more realistic and amazing.

Here is an advertisement video for a samsung galaxy phone that shows the use of 3d animation and visual effects. The animation work, within this video is mainly just camera movement but the lighting work, is very well done. 3D animations like these are great because they give a very appealing image of the product that is being advertised as it all looks very slick and nice.

Here is a video showing of professional 3D architecture work with some simple animations like the sliding windows the change of light of the lamp and the camera movements for when it pans in and out. This type of animation is useful for showing customers or employers how a building will look before it has even been made.

Here is a 3D animation showreel of a video game called Evolve. In this video you get to see a wide range of different types of professional animation techniques for creating very organic looking creatures/monsters and characters. These animations were then used within the game to make the game more immersive and realistic for the entertainment of the player.

Here is an animated 3D model of a Four Stoke Motor made in Solidworks. Recreating mechanical components with the use of 3D software is useful to help people better understand how the mechanical pieces work and it is also a great way to prototype new mechanical pieces without using any real materials and instead doing it all virtually.

And finally there is short/full animated films used in the entertainment and film industry to create story's in very specific 3D styles. Here is a short animated film as example.

This animation was very interesting and well done it's main character (the robot) looked really cool and interesting.

The first half of this trailer is an animation for a game called Planetary annihilation and it has the similar type of art styled I am hoping to go for and achieve.

I really like the way this trailer's animation looks and i think that it wouldn't be too hard to recreate but seeing that i'm not too familiar with 3D animating and Cinema 4D i don't know if i will manage to make it as good as this trailer but i will try.

After looking at many different sci-fi themed animations i have decided that i want to make a simple short film that could be used as a cut scene in a game.
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Project proposal

Section 1

Working title: One Of Six

Target Market

People who enjoy short cartoony sci-fi animations

What you will work towards producing:

A 3D animation of a alien spaceship sending a giant alien Robot to attack earth.

The animation will be a short sci-fi film showing and alien spacecraft arriving to earth through space and the sending a giant metal cube down to earth, the metal cube lands in a harbor that will be modeled after the Bristol harbor, and the cube will then transform into a big robot that will start shooting lasers to the nearby buildings and that's when the video will end.

Section 2
Influences, starting points and contextual references:
One of my biggest influences is a game called Planetary annihilation as it has a nice and simple art style that I really enjoy and it also has some nice looking robots which also influenced the idea of the way my concepts looked and War of the worlds and other alien invasion films.
      
Early ideas research and sources:
One of my earlier ideas was to have the spaceship come down to earth and destroy the city but instead I had the spaceship send a robot to do the work

Section 3
Intended techniques, non digital and digital processes:
Tweening and other 3D animations techniques, drawing concepts and a storyboard and 3D modelling techniques such as cutting
 
Timescales: 

Week 1: creating the 3D models and getting the basic scene set-up

 

Week 2: creating the space and spaceship scenes animations

 

Week 3: creating the final crash landing transformation scene animation

 

Week 4: Final touches on the animation.

Section 4
Proposed methods of evaluation: 

I will upload my final animation to YouTube and have some friends watch and get their opinions on it to see how good it was.

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Mind Map
I made i mind map to get a general sense of what kinds of animations i could make with the theme SC-FI and i came up with quite a few interesting idea but the ones that stuck worth me the most was the idea to have an alien invasion with an alien spaceship coming to earth and having it attack in some way I also want there to have robots involved.

MoodBoard
Mood board to get the general ambience and feel of the animation
The general idea is that the animation is going to involve some kind of an alien invasion with big robots and spaceships going to earth.

Concept Art

 The robot that attacks the Harbour
Creating quick concept art for the alien robot that will attack the Harbour

After reviewing my concepts and ideas with other people i cam to the conclusion that the drawing on the right of this image is the best looking alien robot and would also be quite simple to create as most of it's body is just one big cube.

StoryBoard

This first half of the story board shows a stereotypical UFO arriving near earth and then sending a metal cube down to earth to start an invasion. This part of the animation will take 3 to 4 scenes to make.

this part of the storyboard shows the Cube crashing into a harbour and then going through a transformation to show it's real form and it then start to attack the harbour. the animation ends right after the robot makes it's first shot and a "THE END" scene with credits show up. This will take about 3 to 4 scenes as well.

Modelling the Objects for the animation

Modelling the harbour

The Harbour I will be creating is modelled and based off of the bristol harbour side so I went into town to get some pictures of the harbour side for reference 

Making the cranes for the harbour.

This took quite a bit of time as I still wasn't quite use to the way Cinema4D works but after a while I did get the hang of it even after encountering some weird mesh issues.

When making the main map and the Mshed I wanted to make sure it looked some what accurate and to scale so it did my best at plotting down the main pieces of land and buildings in the right positions thanks to the Google maps map screenshot that I took and overlaid in cinema4D.

Adding some simple plain materials to the main building and cranes.

Making a simple boat for the Harbour i might or might not use it as I don't think it look all that great.
In the end i didn't end up using this model.

Making the planet Earth scene
Making this was actually a lot simpler then i expected and it came out to look quite real.
I found out how to make this thanks to THIS tutorial.

I think that this scene looks great for a space animation and it will do perfectly for my own animation.

Making the alien robot

to make this model i used my sketches as reference
when I modelled the alien robot I of course based it off of my concept art but I did end up changing some slight things in the design.

creating and adding the legs

creating and adding the grooves to the robot and it's power crystal.
creating the groves took way longer than it should as i didn't know what was the right way to create them but after a while of testing out i figured that i just need to mark down some lines and push them inwards but it wasn't easy.

I then decided to have the robot by a nice purple colour with red grooves to show that it has a lot of energy going through it and that it's crystal is it's main source of energy 

I am very happy with the way this robot turned out and as i think it looks very alien and menacing.

I then created a quick mockup of the robot in the harbour being attacked by a boat to get an idea of how it would look in the final scene.

Making the spaceship that arrives to earth's vicinity.

I had quite a lot of fun making this as i was just making it as i guy i didn't base it off any designs or anything so it would look quite unique.

Finished Spaceship with robot pods.

I'm actually really happy with the way this space ship turned out as i think it looks very alien and i really like how you can see it method of transporting the robot spiders that it will be sending down to earth. I think that it looks very original.

Animating

quick animation test with the new space ship

Working on the first few space scenes where the spaceships drives up to Earth

In these firs few space scenes what i animated was the spaceship with tweening techniques and i made the earth sin very slowly.

This is the scene where the spaceship arrives closer to earth and then sends one of it's robot pods down to earth.

Working on the harbour scene where the robot crash lands and starts attacking the Harbour. 

Here I was testing out the particle emitter to see if I could create a nice splash effect for when the robot lands in the water but the effect wasn't good enough so I made it so when the robot crashes into the water the camera doesn't have the time to view a splash as it was shaken up by the crash.

In this scene i have the robot arriving down to earth and creating some kind of a shock making the camera shake. The effect ended up looking pretty cool.

I found a new and improved way to make good looking water but it will take quite a long time to render.

Trying out the cinema 4D clouds system and figured that it looked pretty good so I will be using these for the final scene just to add something to the sky so it's not so plain and boring.

I created an animation manager which is a panel which I use to control and modify all the elements and body parts of the robot. This animation manager makes the animating process so much easier as i have all the correct parts than in the same place that i can animate thanks to a controller.

After finishing my animation for the final scene and letting it render for 6 hours I finally have the full animation all I need to do now is take each rendered scene and put them all together to create one video.

Final Animation

Final Evaluation

In this Unit we were told to create a Sci-fi themed 3D animation, and I decided to create a short alien invasion type animation. In the end I think that I created a decent 3D animation that shows an alien invasion but i do think that i could of done a bit more  with some better shots at the world and robot I created. 

If I had more time I would of definitely made the animation longer by giving the robot more attack animation and some building exploding from it's attack and i would of also liked to polish it a bit more as i found that some of the animations were quite simple.

some of my college colleagues reviewed my animation and this is what they have to say about it:

Comment #1: A very fluid and solid animation AND WITH SOUND! I like the camera work as well, wish i saw more after the bullet attack.

Comment #2: camera shots greatly considered for this space scene and ties in well towards your game unit as well. All object on the screen are shown to be realistic towards the use of gravity. Excellent work overall.

The comments on my youtube video say that my animation was overall quite good which i agree with but none of them really commented on some of the problems with it such as some of the movement animations from the robot even thought they are quite minor problems.