Rigging and skinning

Rigging is the process in which you create bones within a scene and then animate them to bend in a certain direction. This process is used in all character animations as it creates the skeleton of each character and allows them to move in a lifelike fashion, this can also be used to exaggerated features within cartoons such as a hammer hitting an object and rippling. 

Skinning this the process in which you add a mesh to the rigging that has been created, in this case a cylinder to these 4 bones. This is how the characters will get there appearance in the scene. There are problems that can arise from doing this as if there are to few vertexes at the bend points it can cause conflicts between each bone and also can create z fighting where both textures on each bone are fighting for the same area to display.

I have chosen not to use these techniques within my animation scene as I do not have any characters within it and also I do not wish to exaggerate any aspect of my scene but this could come in useful later on when creating other games that could require character animation. 

Key frame animation

key frame animation

This technique allows you to create animations within a set number of frames, this means that the object can be manipulated at different frames to give it a more fluid and natural motion. 

With this technique i will be able to animation the ships to wobble while they are flying to give the effect that they are being driven by real people. 

Spline motion

This is a new technique will allow me to animation my ships along a line so they will have forward movement with the ability to turn and bank when required within the scene. this technique will be the most useful as I will require my ships to have forward momentum and also encounter sideways movement, this is key to provide a realistic movement that a space ship would encounter.  

This technique can not only be used on objects or models, but it can also be used to have a camera tracking a model as if it was one of the model or it could create the effect that it is chasing the model. e.g tie fighter chasing x-wing.

Animation in action

week 7

This week we watch a Pixar animation called "One man band", this gave use the first insight in to animation and camera selections in professional work. This taught me how multiple elements of camera angles and processes can come together to create a realistic scene.

Link:
http://vimeo.com/19621692

Completed X-wing

X-wing

Techniques used and why

The techniques I have used within this model are nearly exactly the same as the too previous models, One major difference is with this model I tried to use the least amount of extra boxes and other shapes to create the entire model. The first technique I used was the extrude tool this allowed me to create the fuselage of the ship with a box, I also then created and manipulated edges and vertexes to create the final shape, I used this a it was the best way to enlarge the box with straight angles rather then curved ones. I also used bevel to create the engine, I used this technique because it was the simplest way to create cone shaped objects with out creating a cone. 

There is limited detail on this model now but there will be more add before the animation via textures, this should make the model less boring. This model will not be close up the the camera at low speeds so does not require a huge amount of detail anyway.   

Completed Darth vader tie fighter

Darth vaders tie fighter

Techniques used and why 

The techniques I used within the process of creating this model was almost exactly the same as when creating my tie fighter. As you can see I used the same center sphere as my tie fighter because they are very similar and this help save time on redoing it again, I did make small changes that where there where no similarities. I used bevel again that allowed me to create shapes that where angled such as the inside of the wing, I used this technique as it was the fastest and most precise of the two techniques I know that would create this shape. The other technique that I could have used is inset and then drag the smaller polygon in the direction required. Another technique I used was extrude, this allowed me to create depth within the model, I used this because it was the best tool to create definable depth without there being a curve present. As seen in the photo I also used the visual editing studio to line up the different aspects of the ship, this time however I did not size the picture correctly so I had to roughly line the shapes up which may have caused some problems. 

There is not much detail in the model as I will be adding in textures later on before the animation is complete to add more detail, also high detail is not required for my animation as there will be no close ups of this ship.