Tuesday 23 October 2007

Lightwave 12

This post marks the end of a lot of things, the end of the final assignment, the probable end of this blog and the end of uni.

Well not quite the end of university but near enough to it.

Today went smoothly enough until it came time for the final animation. I had arranged everything the way I wanted in the Lightwave program with the lighting and the motions of the camera just right and all that business.

I set the program to render an export it as a QuickTime .mov file and the program does it's little show where everything slows down to a crawl because some or all of the system resources are being used.

When it finished which took almost 20 minuets I opened the folder to where the movie should have been and there was a file that had the file name but there was no images whent he file was played.

After another 2 attempts one of which Stuart checked and recommended a few minor changes to the current set up I had my final animation rendered out as 1200 .jpg.

By this time class was over so I burnt off what I had only to learn that what I had done was very, very big.

I left off some of the less important information and burnt off to 3 CD's 2 of which Stuart gave me the work. I even found trouble there though because the last video I had was 1.4 Mb too big to fit on to the CD's. After a run through the zip program it fitted nicely at just under a 100Mb.

In closing I'd like to say thank you to Brendan for being there to look at my work and share an opinion and to Stuart for those off the jokes and views on life and just for doing what a teacher does best.

Tuesday 16 October 2007

Lightwave 11 (blog)

It has been a long day not that today unexpectedly changed from 24 to 27 hours or anything like that. I started earlier then normal and left late.

Today was a quiet, mostly because everyone was working towards finishing the 3D project.

In my own work I made five more models; cannon, a small pile of cannon balls, a rocket, a pipe from the Mario brother’s games and a display stand.

This work went relatively smoothly, it was the animation part that caused a few hiccups. In theory it is quite simple what I want to do. I put in a few key frames adjust the camera and move.

I couldn’t find where to adjust the output settings/ save files and I couldn't get the key frames to work correctly. After a brief chat with Stuart and some helpful directions I was on my way. The first attempt looked awful, the camera swung in the wrong direction at certain key frames and the speed the movie moved at made it hard to see the model properly.

After class finished I stayed back to do some more work however working without a key finally caught up with me. In the design section while in demo mode you can save work as long as it is smaller then 200 points per layer this means cutting it up and sharing the mess over a few layers.

In the other half of the program there is no saving of work in demo mode and exporting it as a QuickTime .mov left my work with a chequered watermark. It was quite disappointing especially after I got the timing right on the movie.

I spent the last of my time in the class room cutting and resizing the models so as I can go straight to the animation when class starts back next Tuesday.

Lightwave 11 (10:41am)


More cannon fun

Lightwave 11 (10:40am)


This mornings early work

Tuesday 9 October 2007

Lightwave 10 (Blog)

As one could probably guess looking at the other posts today, I've been busy.

I started my morning with my Fred Flintstone special. 2 great round stones for wheels a couple of logs to hold them in place a few chairs a steering wheel and a canvas covering.

While I still don’t have a definite direction with this project I do like making the models, especially when all I need to do is think of the object in simple shapes and keep in mind which view section I am working from. Usually it is the top and right view and inspect the work in the perspective.

A small list of things I want to try and build are;
A boat/ ship
Swords
Shield
Axe
Cannon

I'm not at all sure how I am going to present them all yet but win or lose it will be spectacular.

All I know is it is better to keep working and making models then sitting around thinking "what am I going to do?"

See you in a week

Lightwave 10 (1:25pm)


Took a lunch break but besides that nothing much else has happened.
I loaded the cars into the Lightwave animation section to have a look at what the works would look like rendered. Except for a few minor touch ups I am quite happy with the end result.
I think the wheel looks especially good.

Lightwave 10 (12:02pm)


Another car I just knocked up.
I've got a feeling this might end in a show room of some description or museum.
Basically I'll just keep knocking out models until I am satisfied.
That last sentence may get me into a lot of trouble with fashion enthusiasts and the law if it was taken out of context and I was personally causing unconsciousness in the pretty people that get photographed and painted for a living.

Lightwave 10 (11:26am)



This is image is part of my final project for the class.
Posting the image was a massive task too seeing as I have gone 40 posts in text.
Could be worse I could have gone the year without it.

Tuesday 2 October 2007

Lightwave 9

I'm not here today, gone tomorrow I'm here today gone early this afternoon.

Today was a good day and while that should be explanation enough for work requirements alone I have to go into details.

I got the results for my Kitchen project (Lightwave 7) All of which I am quite pleased with.
Concept development: High Distinction
Technical Finish: High Distinction
Presentation: Distinction.

As for the work I did today it was mostly balancing lights. Before the break we were to design a structure and place it in a photograph. I finished the structure and got held up with the part second part. The technology was not doing as it was told. Lightwave would not take the Targa files for what ever reason; it was only by accident that I found out that the program took jpegs.

After putting the backdrop in and some minor stuffing around I got my building on to sit where I wanted it. Lastly there was the lighting.

A simple adjustment, a small shift of hand and mouse can and probably will knock several carefully placed objects out of place. Fortunately this only happened to me 4 or 5 times maybe more I was focused on where the object was and what I was doing it didn’t make much difference.

When I got the work to a satisfactory condition I saved, burned and buggered off.

The previous statement is to be considered very carefully as it is brimming with local dialect, self made abbreviations and would probably make more sense said out loud.

Accurately put once I was satisfied with the condition of the work and the lighting I saved it as a standard Lightwave file, exported the file as a jpeg, gathered up all related work on this assignment into a folder on the computer and copied or burnt it to a CD. Once the burning process was completed I wrote my details on the CD and on the CD case handed it in to Stuart and departed the class room to follow up on some of my other errands.

Next week is a free build to show exactly what it is we have learned and understood from the last 9 weeks of class and create magic, or art. I have decided to be spectacular but I'm not sure how yet. Either I'll figure it out or I'll make pancakes, using a real frypan and ingredients because polygons give me gas... probably.