its finished

my animation is now finished though for some reason it wont upload on to here i will try again later.

putting it togther

Ive used Premiere pro to put the three scenes together along with the sounds and the title screen and credits. i got the sounds from the sounddog website and i made the credit boards myself. the only effects i put in were the fade to white between a couple of transitions now all i need to is export it and it will be done!

time to render

have started rendering it now though it will take two days to do the whole thing hopefully it will look good.

new biped attempt

even though i had issues with the biped tool before i did have some limited success in places not enough to do my original idea but enough that my new idea can use it to emphasize the emotions and expressions.

morpher tool

Ive created the expressions to be used in this animation and used the morpher tool to insert them I'm quite please at how they have turned out and think when the sounds are added they will look all the better.

new idea

due to the problems Ive been having with the bone and biped tools i wont be able to make my initial idea for my animation so instead i shall use the morph tool to give him facial expressions and use the biped tool in a very limited way, due to the problems i had with it, to show off his personality. I'm hoping this will still be as good as i am putting a lot of effort into his expressions.

even worse problems with the bone tool

have finally finished putting the bones in him manually and unfortunately again it hasn't worked i filled the mesh with the bones but the envelopes are not effecting the correct areas the envelopes extend out in a vertical oval shape which makes the jaw bone effect his chest and his foot bone effect his tail. so i wont be able to animate him this way.

problems with the biped tool

Ive used the biped tool on my character and unfortunately for reasons i cant fix it hasn't worked. The tail goes straight down through the floor the wings go all over the place when he walks his head goes off center when it turns and the envelopes grab to many vertexes of different areas. unfortunately this means i shall i have try using the bone tool which will be a lot harder to do.

the finished character Lyle the baby dragon

this is my finished character, Lyle the baby dragon, rendered with a sky light on and shadows turned on i am really happy with the finished results i did his skin colours using a multi/sub object material setting in the materials tab and chose 4 different colours rather then importing any textures. now to the animating!

my character - dragon - modeling his body and wings

this is the finished body of my character made from a sphere he has come out looking a lot better then i expected and should animate well all that's left to do is adjust some of the colours on him and then it will be finished. the wings below were made using a cylinder which has given them a good wing look these need to have some colours changed as well then all that will be left will be to attach all the pieces together.

My character - dragon - modeling his head

this is the finished head of my dragon character, who currently has no name, i modeled it all from a cube apart from his eyes, which i used the tutorial noted earlier on to make, and his ears which i made from a sphere and attached later.

making a walking man

we used the biped tool to create a skeleton which we gave a basic skin by modifying a box we then lined them up and attached the two using the physique modifier and using the envelope tool we extended the envelope of each bone so its movement effected the right parts of the skin. when this was done we used footstep mode to place several footsteps which the character would follow. this can also be used to make him run and jump if needed.

tutorial: Cartoon eyes

we followed a tutorial and made a pair of cartoon eyes which we were able to manipulate using an FFD box which we could use to give the eyes expressions. we also used point helpers to move the pupils by assigning the rotation movement to the helper i did this for both eyes then linked the two helpers to a 3rd helper so i could move both of them with the 3rd.

New project Making 3D characters!

the brief for this project is quite cool. we have to create a short animation with a comedy type character aimed at 4 to 14 year olds in a sort of Disney/pixar way the character has to be fairly original and expressive with personality. the expressions, personality and movements of the character are more important in this project then the over all look of the rest of the animation. for this project we have been asked to watch documentaries as well as people in the street so we can accurately reproduce body language and facial expressions.