Re: Off-season Projects in 3D Animation
 

Nice work. The model looks quite clean and the lights are awesome.

Re: Off-season Projects in 3D Animation
 

Morgan, tom, and I did a speed modeling challenge. The theme was an alarm clock. The rules are that you have one hour to model, texture, light, and render your object. Here are my results.



I highly advise anybody who wants to become good at modeling to take part in these. These little challenges help you become a fast at what you do. And being fast at what you do means getting more done in a shorter amount of time. And getting more done in a shorter amount of time means a better looking AVA entry and more trophies! :D

Anybody who is still interested in how i did this I also have a time lasp of the me modeing up on youtube. You can learn how I do things and maybe will see some techniques you never thought of doing. time lapes

Re: Off-season Projects in 3D Animation
 

Dang.:eek: That was fast!

Re: Off-season Projects in 3D Animation
 

That was the best time lapse video that i have seen you make. Very cool. In a few months I will try and make some time lapse videos too. Good work tho

Re: Off-season Projects in 3D Animation
 

If only I figured out what was wrong with my on screen recorder before I got to far into the challenge. Oh well. These were my results.

Not happy, I got distracted during the time again.

Re: Off-season Projects in 3D Animation
 

Some footage of the space ship moving is up on youtube. Check it out here

Re: Off-season Projects in 3D Animation
 

This is just a quick project i did the other day.

[url="http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/54157505/"]

Re: Off-season Projects in 3D Animation
 

oooo wow, very nice. Very realistic.

Re: Off-season Projects in 3D Animation
 

Pete remeber most dont know my name. (My name is Tom if you didnt guess people)

Re: Off-season Projects in 3D Animation
 

This is looking great. The lighting effects are super nice.

Re: Off-season Projects in 3D Animation
 

My friend sent me a simple model of a starship and I turned it into a voyager more or less (not perfect by anymeans)... but I still don't know how to add textures to parts of objects. Could somebody help me out with that?
PS nice animations

Re: Off-season Projects in 3D Animation
 

Hmm.. First off you might want to clean up your model a bit. The mesh smooth you put on is causeing some problems with it. To add textures (lets say from a picture file) hit "M" to bring up the material modifier panal. Then go where it says diffuse and click the grey square next to the color chooser. It will bring up a new window and choose bitmap from that. Then you pick the texture file you want and then you can apply it to you object by draging the materal over to your object.
Now if 3ds max cant figure out how the UVW cordinates line up and need you to tell it how the textures line up. There are two ways you can align the textures up in your model.
UVW Map modifer
-this allows you to choose how program "projects" the texture onto the model. Apply this to your object and you can choose many ways in which the material lines up. This is quick and easy.

Unwrap UVW
This is more advanced. I do not suggest taking this route unless you fully understand materials and want cleaner and better results. (it takes more time also but produces the best results if done right) (Also works good with organic models) What this does is takes pieces of your model and you can flatten them out so you get a picture with just a wire frame that you can draw on. This is normally used with photoshop or another program similar to photoshop to do most of the texture work.

If you are still confused on what any of these are there is always the User Refference that you can refur to. Bring it up in max by pressing "F1" If you dont have a copy of the User Refference on your computer you can always go to the autodesk website and download a copy of the user refference for free.

Re: Off-season Projects in 3D Animation
 

This is the most recent project I started. I plan to animate the two most perfect alliances going at it. So far this is all I have done. Please tell me what you think.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=auoz9Mj3sIA

Here is a close up of the drive base.
http://www.putfile.com/pic.php?img=5313479

Re: Off-season Projects in 3D Animation
 

The drivetrain looks very good. I would suggest going back and chamfering the edges of the chassis. You would be surprised at how much of a difference it can make: Chamfer those edges!
Also, I was wondering why you chose not to use any chains. Does your robot really run off of gears? If you need advice on how to do chains, just let me know. Either way, the model looks good and clean.

Re: Off-season Projects in 3D Animation
 

I definatly agree with firebelly, You need to chamfer those edges.

Now about that animation clip you have of the robot picking up the innertube on youtube. Your forgetting that the inner tube has wieght to it. The part of the tube that is not directly in contact with the robot (the the side that is sticking out) is not going to want to go up as fast as the rest of the tube. Have a slight lag in it as it goes up. (some bend modifier). Thats pretty fast for a lifting mechanism in a robot. Going up that fast is likely to shake the front weels off the ground. The animation doesnt look convinceing cause your not paying attention to the wieght that is being thrown around.
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I have another update for my spaceship posted up on youtube. (dont look at the movement of the craft i was more worried about the light animation)

space ship update 2