Getting Ideas For Star Wars

I started looking at the Star Wars website : http://www.starwars.com/explore/encyclopedia/ to get ideas for the location and the kind of spaceships I was going to have in my animation.

I decided that I really liked the 'Mustafar' location and wanted to use this in my work.

http://www.starwars.com/explore/encyclopedia/locations/mustafar/

[Accessed 09/10/2011]

Planet Mustafar is made up of many active volcanic peaks surrounded my rivers of fiery molten lava, along with stormy, smoke filled skies. For me, this location stood out the most for me as it looked quite intense and dangerous in comparison to some of the other locations. 

http://www.starwars.com/explore/encyclopedia/technology/tie/

[Accessed 09/10/2011]

  Spaceship wise I wanted to use the Tie Fighter (as shown above). I chose this one because I liked the unusual look of it as it didn't have a stereotypical ship or plane design. 

Creating A Castle

Another task we were given was to create a small castle using some of the techniques we had previously been taught.

To begin with, I started by creating a cylinders to create the four corner towers. I built the first cylinder by going to the Create menu at the top and selecting Standard Primitives, then Cylinder.

 

On the grid, I drew a tower with a radius about the size of one square, and made it about four squares high. Now that I had created the main part of the tower, I needed to create the spire to make it look more like a castle tower. I did this by going to the Create menu again, only this time selecting Cone instead. I made the radius of the cone roughly the same size as the cylinder, and adjusted it in the right hand panel so the radius measured exactly the same as the cylinder.

As I had both parts of the tower made, I just needed to align them so they were on top of each other in the right order. I did this by selecting the cylinder and clicking the Align tool at the top, before selecting the cone causing a new window to open.

I changed one axis to 'minimum' and maximum', the other in the opposite way, and the other to 'centre', which caused the cone to sit accurately on top of the cylinder.

Now that I had finished creating the tower, I wanted to clone it three times for the other corners of the castle. The cloning method is a much quicker tool to use rather than creating 4 separate cylinders, especially to get them all the same size.

To clone the tower I simply selected the tower using the 'Select' tool, and then right clicked on the object and selected the 'Clone' option. Once the cylinder was cloned, using the 'Move Object' tool, I moved the cylinder into the correct position on the grid. I did the exact same for each of the cylinders, making sure they were all evenly position on the grid and the same distance apart.

For the spires of the tower, I again cloned them using the same method and then used the 'Move' and 'Align' tools to position them accurately.

The next part of the castle I chose to build were the walls. To do this, I chose the 'box' under the Create menu.  I created the box so that it fitted between the two corner towers sufficiently, and was slightly smaller in height. To get the size even more accurate, I used the right hand panel to adjust the length more precisely.

Once the wall was the right size, I wanted to clone it to create the rest of the walls for the castle. For the opposite side, I was able to just clone the wall and move it, using the 'Clone' and 'Move Object' tools. However, for the two remaining sides, I had to rotate the wall first. I did this by, selecting the wall and right clicking, and choosing the small box on the 'Rotate' option. A new window then appeared where I was able to make the object rotate 90 degrees. Now that the wall was positioned in the right direction, I simply moved it into the correct place using the move tool. I then just had to clone the wall and move it to complete the last wall of the castle.

On the front wall I wanted to make an archway. I did this by firstly creating a sphere using the create tool. I made the sphere the size I wanted the arch to be. As soon as I had done this, I used the move tool to position the sphere in the centre of the wall where I wanted it to be cut. I then selected the wall and on the panel to the right hand side, I chose 'Compound Objects' on the drop down list,  clicked the 'Boolean' option below and pressed the 'Pick Operand B' button before selecting the sphere. This then cut out the sphere shape in the wall, leaving an arch.

Additionally, I wanted to add some battlements to the front of the castle. To make these, I created a small box using the Create tool and positioned it at the top of the wall. I then used the Boolean tool to cut the shape out of the wall. I repeated this method all away along the top of the front wall so that the box cut outs were evenly spaced out.

 

Now that I had made the main part of the castle, I decided that I would add some more towers within it. This time I thought I would create a square tower for a change. So using the Create Box options, I created a tall square shaped tower. I also used the Move tool to position the tower more accurately where I wanted it. I then created a Pyramid shape using the Create tool and made sure it was the same size as the tower. Using the Align tool, I selected both objects and altered the positioning of the axis's so that the pyramid was on top of the box.

Furthermore, I went on to add some windows in the tower. First off, I created a small box, making it the size that I wanted my windows to be. Then, using the Boolean tool, I positioned the box in the tower where I wanted the windows to be and cut out the shape. I did this several times on the tower, so they were going up vertically.

Also, I created two more circular towers next to the previous tower. I made these using the same techniques as before, by using cylinders and cones, and aligning them on top of each other. I added windows to the towers too by using the same Boolean technique.

Lastly, I just changed the colours of the castle. I changed the colours by selecting the object, using the Select tool, and then on the panel to the right, clicking on the colour box and choosing the colour I wanted. For the walls I chose a deep red colour and for the outer towers I chose black. I made all the castle spires black, but for the towers within the castle I used blues and greens. I simply chose these colours out of preference and not to make the castle look more realistic in any way. 

Further Skills & Techniques

In the third lecture, we were introduced to a few more skills as to how to create things in 3ds Max.

One of the things we were taught was to use the Boolean method in order to mould and cut out shapes into another object. For example, one of the tasks we were given was to make a castle. Therefore, using this new technique we would be able to create features such as windows and archways to make the structure look more realistic.

To carry out the Boolean technique all you needed to do was create a shape that you wish to be cut in to, and then create a another shape which is to be the cutting object. So in the sense of creating an archway in a castle, a box object would be used to create the wall, and then a sphere, which would create the arch and be the cutting object. Once, the objects are effectively placed together in the right positioning, on the right hand panel on the drop down list, the 'compound objects' needs to be selected, before clicking the 'boolean' option underneath. The 'Pick Operand B' option then needs to be selected so that you can select the cutter shape, which will then create the cut out in the shape. (I will go in to this in more detail in the making of my castle later on.)

Another technique we were taught was using the Alignment tool, which can come in very useful when you want to align certain objects together quickly and efficiently.

To do this technique, an object first needs to be selected before clicking the Align tool, located on the top tool menu bar. You are then able to select the second object you want to align, which will cause a new menu window to pop up. The new window will allow you to adjust the position on each axis of the object to move the object inalighment with the other in a chosen position.

Getting Started - Making a Ship Wheel

So in our first practical session, I started to try and get familiar with 3ds Max. The program was quite challenging at first as I had not used a program similar to it before. For this lecture, we were given the task of creating a Ship's Wheel using the program.

Firstly, I started out by using the create tool in the top menu bar. I chose the option 'Standard Primitives' and the selected 'tube'.

Once I had selected the object I was going to use, I then clicked on the grid to create it and adjust the size. I chose the 'tube' object' to make the main part of the wheel as it didn't involve any further cutting or adjusting make the right shape.

I then wanted to create a smaller circle within the tube. I did this by, again, going to the create menu at the top, only this time selecting 'cylinder' instead. I created the cylinder at the centre point of the tube and made the radius quite wide, and the height reasonable small, the same as the tube.

To create the handles of the wheel, I used another cylinder. This time, I changed the viewpoint on the grid, so that I could see the side of the wheel rather than the top view. I then created a small thin cylinder from the centre of the wheel to the inner rimm of the wheel. I used another cylinder to create the smaller handle on the outser side of the wheel.

 I used the 'move' and 'rotate' tools at the top of the program, to make sure the handles were positioned correctly and evenly.

Once I had got the first handle positioned evenly, I then selected the object, using the 'Select Object' tool at the top, and then right clicked and selected 'clone'. After this, I moved the object using the movig tool, and positioned it evenly on the other side of the wheel.

Now that both horizontal handles were complete, I wanted to do the vertical ones. To do this, I cloned the object handle and right clicked on it again and this time selected the small box next to the 'Rotate option'. A small window then opened, giving me some options.

For the Z axis I entered in '90' so that it would rotate in perfect positioning. Then all I had to do was move the the handle to the centre of the wheel. I cloned the same handle and simply moved it down vertically to make both the bottom and top handles. 

To make the handles in between the horizontal and vertical handles, I simply changed the rotation option to '45' and then used the moving tool to position them evenly on the wheel.

Now that all the handles were in place and the wheel was made, I wanted to change the colours to brown to make them look more realistic looking. I did this by selecting the objects and and clicking on the coloured box on the left panel on the screen.

Introduction

So, in our very first lecture we were introduced to the course and the new software, 3dsMax. We were shown some of the basic tools to help us get started as we had never used the software before. For example, we were shown how to create different objects using the create tool and how to navigate around the program.

Additionally to this, we were informed that we were going to have to make a 30 second long animation on the topic of Star Wars. For this assignment we do not have to create people, but more of the surroundings of the scene, along with the spaceships and props that we may want in our animation.