Final Animation [Finished]

It has been a tough module, but my animation is finally complete after all the hard grafting and work put into it. Overall, I am proud of the final outcome and believe it shows off my 3D Studio Max skills very well. I thoroughly enjoyed this module as I had been waiting my entire university course to do it. It is something that I will take with me into my career and has been a massive learning curve. The lecturer has been hugely helpful throughout and have enjoyed the lectures that he provided.

I believe the module has improved my 3D modelling skills and will now help me to undertake a career in 3D modelling after graduating. It is something I now feel highly confident working with and believe I can now produce work of an even higher quality than I ever could before. If I manage to get a career in the field, I will always look back at this module knowing that it helped me on my way and really helped improve my modelling and animating skills.

Final Animation [Soundtrack]

When adding the sound effects to the video, I had already downloaded a good amount of clips from the website stated in the previous post. I simply imported the clips into the Premier Pro file and then dragged them onto the work plane into place. Some of the clips needed trimming as I did not want them to overlap onto the following clips.

I also downloaded a video mp3 for the Hero's voice throughout the animation. I wanted to include a couple of short voice clips just to make the character real and bring him to life. Here is the website link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLtZfJ2fnMY

I listened to the entire video mp3 and then cut out little sections to include across the animation. All that was needed now was a backing track to complete the artifact. And I managed to find an original soundtrack from the cartoon that was used for a fight scene much like mine. It links well with the animation theme because it is an original soundtrack and the tempo of the music is perfect.

http://www.dblegends.com/downloads/music/

Final Animation [Lighting]

After collaborating all of the videos together in Premier Pro, I noticed a slight problem with the clips.I noticed that some of the videos lighting changes as the video progresses and is slightly noticeable. When I was rendering out the clips I did include the same daylight system and sky-dome. However, it seems that the settings may have changed when the scene has been merged with the character.

Unfortunately, I do not have enough time to render out all of the clips again so that the lighting is the same, therefore it will be noticeable in the final video. But it is something that I will learn from in the future.

Final Animation [Re-Rendering]

It was a massive pain for the need to render every clip again after thinking I had done everything and only needed to assemble the animation and sound together. However I wanted to do it because the quality of the first renders was terrible after playback all together and the actual size of the clip was completely wrong.

After rendering a couple of clips out, it has become clear that now the settings are perfect and the final production will look a million times better. I have also made slight changes to the videos to improve them.

Here are a couple examples of the new renders. The rest will hopefully be complete by then end of tomorrow and then I will begin to assemble them and add the sound effects to complete the production.

Final Animation [Fixing the Problem]

As stated in the previous post, the final render in Premier Pro did not come out in the highest quality that I expected. The problem routed back to the format that I rendered each individual clip out as. I chose AVI files which I had found in previous year modules was not the right format, but for some reason this time around I completely forgot. I should have rendered them as Targa files and also in HDTV 1280 x 720 like our group did for Virtual Environments in the first semester of the third year.

Because I have left myself enough time to correct mistakes and have all the files saved as seperate scenes, I can go back and re-render all the scenes in the right format. Hopefully they shouldn't take any longer than the original clips.

Final Animation [First Render]

I took all the clips that I had rendered for my animation and placed them in Adobe Premier Pro. I organized them into the order I had story boarded so that I could see how well they play together, trim and move any clips that needed it.

Once I had done this I then exported the clips in the H.264 format before adding any sound just for a first test video. This would allow me to make any changes to the video before going to far and not being able to make changes.

Once the video had rendered I found that there was a problem. I think I rendered out in the wrong format because the entire video has become blurry and the edges of everything have become jagged. I will go back to the Premier Pro file and try to correct the issues before adding the sound.

Villain - Gohan Buu [After Effects]

Here I also used Adobe After Effects to add an effect to one of the other rendered clips for the villain of my cartoon. I wanted to emphasize the shock of the villain character by adding an exclamation mark onto the screen. I got this technique from the Stop Motion YouTube video that I have referenced in my sketchbook.

I basically  created the exclamation mark in Photoshop as a PNG file so that I could import the file into AE and then add it to the clip.

Again, I am happy with the outcome of the video. I will put all the clips together in Premier Pro and export them to see if it looks how I want, then I can add the sound effects and complete the animation.