3D Animation Q/A

[BuddyB309]

Originally Posted by Damelvin

I felt like making and xbox 360 just to have it in the animation as an easter egg.
Just wondering since I am just bitmaping a box with pictures of the xbox 360, how would I smooth the edges with effecting the pictures much. Also if I take off teh xbox 360 logo i should be ok and not get any trouble with microsoft?
Pic:

Instead of XBOX 360 why not put XBALL [YOUR TEAM #]?

[Capt.ArD]

I always use editable poly. i think there are certain editing features and options that differ between the mesh and poly, but i don't really know off the top of my head. try it out sometime.

to smooth the corners, you can chamfer the edges or start the model with a chamfered box (in the extended primitives section of the objects rollout). in photoshop you can edit the corners of the bitmaps to fit the rounded edges that you add to the box. make sure the edges are not TOO round, or it will look kinda dorky.

[ctshirk7]

im no good with aimation but our team uses 3d max and it seems pretty user-friendly..

[Damelvin]

Originally Posted by Capt.ArD

I always use editable poly. i think there are certain editing features and options that differ between the mesh and poly, but i don't really know off the top of my head. try it out sometime.

to smooth the corners, you can chamfer the edges or start the model with a chamfered box (in the extended primitives section of the objects rollout). in photoshop you can edit the corners of the bitmaps to fit the rounded edges that you add to the box. make sure the edges are not TOO round, or it will look kinda dorky.

Not really good with photo shop so i don't how i would do that. Looks better though with the chaffered box.

[Cody Carey]

Try puting a mesh-smooth on it and ading a uvw modifier, try using the shrink wrap setting.

[Damelvin]

Been trying for a couple hours now to get all the pics to wrap around the box so it looks like an xbox 360, but when I try to fit one bitmap on one side of the box the other sides that I have modified get messed up, anyway to fix this. I tried appyling multiple uvw maps to the object and taht doesnt work.

edit*
Nevermind, I figured it now I wish I had a straight on picture of the sides and top of the xbox 360.

[Nuttyman54]

try using the UVW unwrap feature. there are tutorials in the book and online.

[Damelvin]

Well here is what I have done and probably stop till I get some good pictures of an xbox 360 sides and top:

[Capt.ArD]

that looks fine, man. one last suggestion: take the same picutures you used for the textures and convert them to grayscale. then use them as bump maps. it will add a little more realistic that way. Other than that, it looks good.

[Mike Ciance]

our animation is going to take a while to render this year, and i want to network some computers together to share the job. can anybody tell me how i would go about doing this?

[Capt.ArD]

We have not yet been able to do a real "net render." theoretically, you have 1 computer run the autodesk backburner manager program, another runs the server program, and the rest run the client or node or whatever they call it program. the manager sends the scene data to the server, which splits up the data into bits, then send it off to the nodes to be rendered.

however, that is a bit tricky, and our school's network will not allow us to run the server program, or something.

the easy/ghetto way of doing this is to simply share the max scene file over your network. open it in each of your computers seperately. now you have 5 computers running independant of each other, all with the same scene loaded. then tell each computer to render a set of frames.

Computer 1- frames 1-50
Computer 2- 51-100
computer 3- 101-150
and so on...

now you have 20 little mini animations, which, when put together in a media program, form your final product.

inefficient and boring as you can get, but this is the most reliable way i can think of to render your stuff quickly.

[Damelvin]

Anyone here good at using garmet maker and cloth? I am trying to make a blanket that covers a bed but the corners don't look right. I want it to wrap around the bed and look the same in the corners as the sides, not sticking out.

[rowe]

Originally Posted by Capt.ArD

the easy/ghetto way of doing this is to simply share the max scene file over your network. open it in each of your computers seperately. now you have 5 computers running independant of each other, all with the same scene loaded. then tell each computer to render a set of frames.

Computer 1- frames 1-50
Computer 2- 51-100
computer 3- 101-150
and so on...

now you have 20 little mini animations, which, when put together in a media program, form your final product.

inefficient and boring as you can get, but this is the most reliable way i can think of to render your stuff quickly.

To elaborate to this. Instead of output as movie files as suggested by Capt.ArD, you can make the output a .tga, .jpg, or .png sequence (.tga and .png should preserve transparency which can come in handy if you want to put effects behind your animation in post). What this does is it saves you animation as [filename][framenumber].[extention], then you can move all the files to the same folder and use a video editor to import the sequence. (I know this works in Adobe After Effects and it should work in others, just make sure it does before you spend the day rendering it.) The nice thing about .tga sequences is that they are uncompressed so then when you compress them in post, you get better quality than if you were to compress an already compressed video.

[Capt.ArD]

Originally Posted by Damelvin

Anyone here good at using garmet maker and cloth? I am trying to make a blanket that covers a bed but the corners don't look right. I want it to wrap around the bed and look the same in the corners as the sides, not sticking out.

i actually think the corners make it more realistic.
i guess if you wanted it to fit the bed better, you can use a box with one side deleted, and is a *tiny* bit bigger than the bed itself. make sure your poly count is relatively high, then reactor it as a cloth so it drapes itself over the bed. then just take the hanging vertecies and tuck them under the "mattress." i think that's kinda what you wanted, lemme know if it is the right solution.
If you could make "hospital corners" that would be awesome!

@ rowe, yeah, that's another, better way of doing it, only it is more work and is more complicated. I actually intend on doing it that way, but use the method i described if i run out of time.

[Damelvin]

Originally Posted by Capt.ArD

i actually think the corners make it more realistic.
i guess if you wanted it to fit the bed better, you can use a box with one side deleted, and is a *tiny* bit bigger than the bed itself. make sure your poly count is relatively high, then reactor it as a cloth so it drapes itself over the bed. then just take the hanging vertecies and tuck them under the "mattress." i think that's kinda what you wanted, lemme know if it is the right solution.
If you could make "hospital corners" that would be awesome!

@ rowe, yeah, that's another, better way of doing it, only it is more work and is more complicated. I actually intend on doing it that way, but use the method i described if i run out of time.

I'll try tucking them in sounds good, but I dont like using reactor, just cloth and garmet modifier since the tutorials and some vids from 3ds max use them.